05-02-2008, 05:15 PM
That is a classic. Nixon totally pulled his ass out of the fire with that speech, and forced Eisenhower to bend to the will of the people and keep him on the ticket. It's sort of hard to understand how a man who so early on understood the power of television later had such a debacle in his debate with Kennedy. I have read that people who heard the debate on radio thought Nixon won, while TV viewers thought Kennedy won, which is an interesting piece of trivia to me. ANYHOW, getting back to Checkers, look at the salary of a US Senator back then and you realize how long ago this was!
First of all, a Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip that is, for himself and his family between his home and Washington, D.C.