I WAS JUST thinking that in the wake of his campaign fund-raising problems, President Clinton might be able to learn something from Richard Nixon.
In 1952, Nixon, then a vice presidential candidate running with Dwight Eisenhower, was charged with shady campaign finances. After much hoopla in the press, he decided to appear on national television, explain his questionable $18,000 fund, and make a case as to why he should remain on the Republican ticket.It sounds tiny now - $18,000? Nixon took it so seriously that he endeavored to lay out his personal finances. He said he lived in a house in Washington, D.C., that cost $41,000 and had another house in Whittier, Calif., that cost $13,000. He said he owed $20,000 on his Washington house and $10,000 on his California house.
Equally small potatoes.
He said he had $4,000 worth of life insurance on himself, but none on his wife and kids. He drove a 1950 Oldsmobile. He didn't really talk about the fund itself, except to say he never spent any of it for his personal needs.
To make his story more personal and poignant, he said that his wife, Pat, did not have a mink coat - only "a respectable Republican cloth coat." Then he mentioned a sentimental gift his family had received from a man in Texas, who heard Pat say on the radio that her "two youngsters would like to have a dog."
Nixon said a few days later he got a message from Union Station saying they had a package for the family. "You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl, Tricia, the 6-year-old, named it Checkers.
"And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it."
The speech made such a sentimental impression that numerous voters wrote to tell Nixon they wanted him to stay on the Republican ticket. The principal reason, according to historians, is that Nixon used his little cocker spaniel dog so effectively.
Checkers died in 1964, and Nixon died in 1994.
Now, one of the most famous spaniels in political history may join his former master at the Nixon grave in Yorba Linda, California. According to U.S. News and World Report, Checkers will be exhumed from his plot at Bide-A-Wee Pet Memorial in New York and reburied on the grounds of the Nixon Library.
Despite his pivotal role in Nixon's fund-raising problems, Checkers seems to have emerged from history unscathed. For his part, Nixon graduated to senior statesman status before he died.
Which gets me finally to the point. I thought maybe Clinton could give a talk of his own, preferably on national television, to explain his own fund-raising difficulties.
He could frankly uncover his financial records, talk about how much money he makes, chat about his Whitewater investments and his fund-raising phone calls during the recent presidential campaign. Then, before anyone could get carried away, he could pull a Nixon.
He could devote some emotional paragraphs to Socks, the presidential cat. He could tell how the family got Socks (all cats are gifts, aren't they?), and pledge never to give her up, no matter how much criticism he gets from Republicans.
I can feel it in my bones. It will be a tour de force. In future years, we will read and re-read the astonishingly sentimental "Socks Speech." We will watch it on videotape. There will be tears in our eyes, and we will not even remember Clinton's fund-raising problems.
Small potatoes.
Some day there will be a suitable place for Socks on the grounds of the Clinton Library in Little Rock - but we're all going to have to bide a wee longer.