Rhetorical Analysis Of Richard M. Nixon's Checkers Speech

Richard M. Nixon was the intended Vice President running mate on the Dwight Eisenhower Republican ticket in the 1952 election. A couple of months before the November general election an article in the New York Post alleged that Nixon was using privately donated campaign money for his own personal luxury. The scandal almost cost him his place on the ticket, but Nixon in response delivered the speech now referred to as the ‘Checkers Speech’, that saved his reputation and his place on the ticket. Speeches invoked as a response to accusations or attacks of character are classified in the rhetorical genre apologia or otherwise known as an apology speech. Interestingly enough, apology speeches do not necessarily include actual apologies. This essay will demonstrate that Richard M. Nixon’s Checkers speech belongs to the rhetorical genre apologia, imploring many characteristics common to an apology, but also serves as a campaign stump speech.
The genre apologia, gets its name from ancient Greece were it meant ‘defense of’. (Lewis & Short, 1889). In an article by Sharon Downey, “The Evolution of the Rhetorical Genre of Apologia”, she describes apologia in ancient Greece as

As stated above, there is potential upside to successfully delivering an apology speech. Nixon, however used the platform of this speech as much as a campaign stump speech, as an apologia, if not more. His main campaign tactic was to get digs in against his opposition the Democratic Party. “A rough classification of approximately 20 attack-statements in Nixon’s speech shows that one-third were references to unspecified opponents, another third were scattered digs at Mr. Sparkman, the State Department, Mr. Stevenson, etc., and the final third were epideictic magnifications of corruption in the Truman administration” (Scott & Brock, 1972,