The speech now seems quaint at best, humorous at worst. Richard Nixon was baring his finances and using a family dog, Checkers, to paint himself as an Everyman wrongly accused of tainted wealth. For one looking back, the 1952 Checkers speech may seem mawkish, syrupy, and the height of insincerity.
But that perception risks missing the speech's power. That TV address not only saved Nixon's career and vice presidential candidacy, it also launched American politics on a path that still guides it today. Nixon sensed the power of TV to shape a politician's image and how image would shape politics. He also obsessed over the public's perception of him. "And it has to be called an obsession," says David Greenberg, author of Nixon's Shadowâ??The History of an Image.
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