Film footage courtesy of Turin Film Corp.: http://www.youtube.com/user/TurinFilmCorp
Due to his anti-communist stance, the 39-year-old Nixon was selected by Republican party nominee General Dwight D. Eisenhower to be the Vice Presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in July 1952. In September, the New York Post published an article claiming that campaign donors were buying influence with Nixon by providing him with a secret cash fund for his personal expenses. Nixon responded by saying that the fund was not secret, and the campaign commissioned an independent review which showed that it was used only for political purposes. Republicans, including those within Eisenhower's campaign, pressured Eisenhower to remove Nixon from the ticket, but Eisenhower realized he was unlikely to win without Nixon.
Nixon appeared on television on September 23, 1952, to defend himself. He mentioned the independent third-party review of the fund's accounting, along with a summary of his personal finances. The speech became better known for its rhetoric, such as when he stated his wife Pat did not wear mink, but "a respectable Republican cloth coat," and that, although he had been given an American Cocker Spaniel named Checkers in addition to his other campaign contributions, he was not going to give the dog back because his daughters loved it. This speech became known as the "Checkers speech." It resulted in much support from the Republican party base and from the general public, and helped keep him on the ticket. In the 1952 presidential elections, Eisenhower and Nixon defeated their opponents, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and Alabama Senator John Sparkman, by seven million votes.
As Vice President, Nixon expanded the office into an important and prominent post. Although he had little formal power, he had the attention of the media and the Republican Party. Using these, Nixon and his wife undertook many foreign trips of goodwill to garner support for American policies during the Cold War. On one such trip to Caracas, Venezuela, anti-American protesters disrupted and assaulted Nixon's motorcade, injuring Venezuela's foreign minister. Nixon was lauded and attracted international media attention for his calm and coolness during the events.
Nixon lost the 1960 election narrowly. The final count recorded that he lost by 120,000 votes, or 0.2%. There were charges of vote fraud in Texas and Illinois; Nixon supporters unsuccessfully challenged results in both states as well as nine others. The Kennedy campaign successfully challenged Nixon's victory in Hawaii; after all the court battles and recounts were done, Kennedy had a greater number of electoral votes than he held after Election Day. Nixon halted further investigations to avoid a Constitutional crisis. Nixon and Kennedy later met in Key Biscayne, Florida, where Kennedy offered Nixon a job in his administration, an offer which Nixon declined.
Nixon portrayed himself as a figure of stability during a period of national unrest and upheaval. He appealed to what he called the "silent majority" of socially conservative Americans who disliked the hippie counterculture and the anti-war demonstrators, and soon won the nomination. Nixon's running mate, Maryland governor Spiro Agnew, became an increasingly vocal critic of these groups, solidifying Nixon's position with the right.
Nixon waged a prominent television campaign, meeting with supporters in front of cameras. He stressed that the crime rate was too high, and attacked what he perceived as a surrender by the Democrats of the United States' nuclear superiority. His campaign was aided by turmoil within the Democratic party: President Lyndon B. Johnson, consumed with the Vietnam War, announced that he would not seek reelection; Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles; and the party's eventual nominee Hubert Humphrey experienced some rough periods following mass protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Nixon appeared to represent a calmer society. With regards to the Vietnam War, he promised peace with honor, and campaigned on the notion that "new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific." He did not give specific plans on how to end the war, causing the media to intimate that he must have a "secret plan." His slogan of "Nixon's the One" proved to be effective.
In a three-way race between Nixon, Humphrey, and independent candidate George Wallace, Nixon defeated Humphrey by nearly 500,000 votes to become the 37th President of the United States on November 5, 1968.
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this appears to be from 'Millhouse (1971)', a clip-show which was shown in underground theaters. if anything it seems to show that the old boy was more plausible than any of today's characterless bores.
chuckcolson 2 years ago