Download Our App

All posts tagged "Dwight D. Eisenhower"

How one memorable speech can turn around a faltering campaign

How one memorable speech can turn around a faltering campaign

Twenty years before Watergate, then-Sen. Richard Nixon’s national political ambitions were in peril. He was accused of dipping into a private, $18,000 slush fund to cover expenses, and doubts about the propriety of his conduct intensified as the 1952 presidential election campaign unfolded.

Nixon was able to preserve what became a long career in national politics – and kept the vice presidential spot on that year’s Republican national ticket – with a talk on television and radio in which Checkers, his family’s cocker spaniel, figured memorably.

What is known as Nixon’s “Checkers” speech was without precedent, and it came at a moment when television was just beginning to have an impact on American political life.

Although popular memory of the speech has faded, the episode offers a reminder, perhaps loosely relevant these days to President Joe Biden, about how political firestorms – and demands that a controversial candidate quit a national party ticket – can in some circumstances be neutralized. ...

Attention Lincoln and Reagan: GOP senators scramble history with Trump greatness claim

Attention Lincoln and Reagan: GOP senators scramble history with Trump greatness claim

Seismologists report that the chunks of granite falling from the Mount Rushmore National Memorial come from the laughter of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt after they read a recent email blast from the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Donald Trump is “the greatest president in American history,” the NRSC’s fundraising missive declared.

The group, whose purpose is electing Republicans to the Senate, isn’t known for having a staff of eminent historians. But that didn’t stop the NRSC from making the claim about Trump in an email urging people to sign an online birthday card for the former president and current putative Republican president nominee. Trump turns 78 on Friday....