Checkers Speech: Fear Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Sentence)

Quote #4

Let me say, incidentally, that my opponent, my opposite number for the Vice Presidency on the Democratic ticket, does have his wife on the pay roll and has had her on his pay roll for the past ten years. Now let me just say this: that is his business, and I am not critical of him for doing that. (46-47)

If he's not critical about it, why does he bring it up? Also, do you notice that he starts every other sentence with "Let me say…"? This verbal tic gave comedians and impressionists a ton of material to work with. It was gold, Shmoopers, gold.

Quote #5

You wouldn't trust the man who made the mess to clean it up. That is Truman. And by the same token you can't trust the man who was picked by the man who made the mess to clean it up and that's Stevenson. And so I say, Eisenhower who owes nothing to Truman, nothing to the big city bosses—he is the man who can clean up the mess in Washington. (179-182)

You can't help looking at statements like these—at anything Nixon said, really—through Watergate-tinted glasses. Nixon went beyond corruption to outright law-breaking.