How we cite our quotes: (Sentence)
Quote #1
I would suggest that under the circumstances both Mr. Sparkman and Mr. Stevenson should come before the American people, as I have, and make a complete financial statement as to their financial history, and if they don't it will be an admission that they have something to hide. (153)
Nixon never says that the Democratic ticket is composed of liars and cheats, but he sure encourages people to think that.
Quote #2
You say, why do I think it is in danger? And I say look at the record. Seven years of the Truman-Acheson Administration, and what's happened? Six hundred million people lost to Communists. (170-173)
The unspoken accusation here is that if the Democrats win again, you might as well paint the globe red.
Quote #3
I say that a man who, like Mr. Stevenson, has pooh-poohed and ridiculed the Communist threat in the United States— he has accused us, that they have attempted to expose the Communists, of looking for Communists in the Bureau of Fisheries and Wildlife. I say that a man who says that isn't qualified to be President of the United States. (188-189)
Finding Communists hiding under ever bed was typical of the Red Scare era, and Stevenson had ridiculed this. There definitely were communists and Soviet spies in the U.S. at the time, but it didn't merit the level of hysteria people like Nixon and Joseph McCarthy were promoting.
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.