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"That Richard." So convincingly did Alger Hiss deny Whittaker Chambers' charges, that the House Un-American Activities Committee was about to call off the investigation and run for cover. But Committee Member Nixon detected ominous hedging in Hiss's testimony. "I was a lawyer and I knew he was a lawyer." Nixon recalls. "I felt [he] was just too slick ... If Hiss was lying, he was lying in such a way as to avoid perjury, with a very careful use of phrasing ... It was very possibly an act, it seemed to me."
To get facts, Nixon worked around the clock, often traveling to Chambers' Maryland farm. Sometimes he would stop at the York (Pa.) farm where his parents were living temporarily. Says Hannah Nixon: "That Richard looked so tired I thought he would break apart. Then he'd go to the piano and play for maybe an hour. When he sat up, he looked refreshed and ready to go on down to the Chambers farm." In the second Hiss trial, Nixon's efforts paid off.
Armed with his Hiss case success, Nixon ran for the Senate in 1950 against Helen Gahagan Douglas, and won by a 680,947-vote margin.
"You're My Boy." Less than two years later, Dick Nixon was the Republican nominee for Vice President. He was running a smooth, effective campaign when a thunderstorm burst over his head: disclosure of a private fund raised by backers in California to pay some of his political expenses while he was a Senator. Democrats bellowed that the money was 1) raised from favor-seeking-California fatcats, and 2) used to provide Nixon with luxuries. They demanded that Ike drop his running mate. Some Republicans did, too. Ike called for the facts and let the storm blow.
National emotions were at gale force when Nixon took to a nationwide TV hookup with his memorable "Checkers"*speech. The Democratic charge appealed most to those who did not know the laws and rules governing U.S. politics. Nixon could have made a technically solid defense by expounding the rules. Instead, he met the attack at its own untutored, emotional level. In a masterpiece of political showmanship, Nixon explained his fund in simple terms, projected his engaging personality onto thousands of screens, and turned a desperate back-to-the-wall defense into a victory. Nixon got a sensationally favorable audience response, flew to Wheeling, W. Va., where Ike threw his arms around him and said "You're my boy."
Until campaign's end, Nixon's enemies tried to smear him with new charges of bribery and corruption. None was even remotely proved, and one was based on forged evidence. When Ike and Nixon were elected, a favorite Democratic crack was: "The country can probably survive it as long as Ike lives out his term, but the thought of Nixon being one heartbeat from the Presidency is terrifying." Much of the anti-Nixon feeling stemmed, consciously or unconsciously, from the resentment of those who were wrong about Alger Hiss when Nixon was right.