General Discussion

This was back in the 1950's. Even so simple a gift as that got Nixon castigated by the whole country for accepting it. Eisenhower was thinking of dropping Nixon from the re-election ticket. But Nixon went on TV to explain himself (and make himself out to be the victim, of course), and mentioned how much his daughter loved her new dog (playing shamelessly off of the sentimentality of Americans), and Eisenhower kept him on the ticket.

The TV broadcast became known as Nixon's "Checkers Speech", and has gone down in history as an example of his shameless manipulation of the American sensibilities in order to get what he wanted.