In Nixon's first book, published in 1962, he discusses six of his major political crises. One of these was, of course, the Checkers Speech. The section on the speech is basically a defense of the w...

The Checkers Speech is included in Safire's book as a term for any speech made by a politician which is emotionally over-charged. It's an idiom that's lost traction for most people, but it's still...

One of the inspirations for Nixon's Checkers story was a speech by FDR, made on the exact same day eight years earlier. FDR was responding to a smear by Republicans that he'd accidentally left his...

The 2004 U.S. Presidential election wasn't all that different from the 1952 election: you had a Democratic candidate who was seen as something of an aristocratic egghead (John Kerry), and on the Re...

Spitzer was a powerful politician in New York politics who had risen as the Attorney General and eventual Governor of New York in 2006. Two years later, it was revealed that Spitzer had been deeply...

President Clinton called a press conference after rumors were made public about an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a young intern at the White House. By taking to the airwaves, he hoped to speak direc...