Rhetorical Analysis Of The Checker's Speech By Richard Nixon

The Checkers speech was created by Richard Nixon during his run for vice president in response to allegations that he misused funds meant to reimburse his political expenses. The media accused Nixon of accepting bribes from supporters in exchange for favors should he become vice president. In this speech, Nixon defends himself and attacks his opponents through the use of rhetorical skills and devices. Throughout the speech, Nixon seeks to improve his own credibility to viewers, while simultaneously attacking his opponent's credibility. In other words, he is using ethos to create a sense of trust between himself and the people of the United States. To begin, Nixon states that “. . . the usual political thing to do when charges are made against …show more content…
Nixon asks the audience questions to achieve this, such as, “Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers?” (2) and “Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers?” (2). Nixon asks these questions because he knows the audience would be angry if they were forced to pay taxes for political campaigns, which makes him accepting donations to pay for his expenses the lesser of two evils. Nixon also uses the fear and anger towards communism caused by the Cold War to attack the current administration, “. . . the speeches that I had printed for the most part concerned this one message of exposing this Administration, the Communism in it - the only way that I could do that was to accept the aid which people in my home State of California, who contributed to my campaign and who continued to make these contributions after I was elected, were glad to make” (3). By giving the audience the idea that there could be Communists in positions of power in the United States Nixon uses their fear to imply that he is the superior candidate and he also has the power to take down the …show more content…
Nixon first uses this on the second page, when he describes the salary of a senator, “First of all, a Senator gets 15,000 dollars a year in salary” (2). He proceeds to explain how his office workers are paid through direct payroll from the U.S. Government. He does this to show why the funds from California were necessary to pay for other expenses. The second time Nixon uses logic is toward the end of his speech, “Six hundred million people lost to the Communists. And a war in Korea in which we have lost 117,000 American casualties, and I say to all of you that a policy that results in the loss of 600 million people to the communists, and a war which cost us 117,000 American casualties isn’t good enough for America” (7). In this line, Nixon uses logic and emotions in tandem to have a stronger effect on the audience. By giving the audience statistical facts about the number of people and soldiers lost to communists Nixon strengthens the people's anger, then redirects it from the Communists to his own political enemies. He does this by stating, “And I say that those in the State Department that made the mistakes which caused that war and which resulted in those losses should be kicked out of the State Department just as fast as we get them out of there” (7). The audience now has a clear group to aim their anger at, which is beneficial to Nixon. This speech was successful because Nixon was able