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Nixon's Speech

This is a red herring, otherwise known as "ignoratio elenchi." The following paragraph has nothing to do with Nixon's having or having not committed deception.

This red herring can be seen in several places: the first where Nixon extolls the office of the Presidency and says that people need to have confidence in the President since he is holding such high office:

To me the office of the Vice Presidency of the United States is a great office and I feel that the people have got to have confidence in the integrity of the men who run for that office and who might obtain it

(this in itself being irrelevent since the character of the man has nothing to do with his position).

The second where Nixon goes on to elaborate on whether or not the accusations that he was accused of contained a morally wrong act.

This one, too, commits the same fallacy where Nixon declaims that that "no contributor to this fund, no contributor to any of my campaign, has ever received any consideration that he would not have received as an ordinary constituent" is irrelevent to his argument. His according or not according attention to his constituents is irrelevent to whether or not he was dishonest.

3. By Nixon simply perambulating, he is going around in circles, leading his listeners nowhere and indulging in vagueness. He is, in short, distracting his listeners with empty, irrelevent articulations. His only pertinent statement in this entire digression is: . "I want to tell you my side of the case."

The next paragraph points to Nixon using the argument of appeal, appealing to Americans about his lowly beginning and how he worked his way up:

Our family was one of modest circumstances and most of my early life was spent in a store out in East Whittier. It was a grocery store -- " one of those family enterprises. he only reason we were able to make it go was because my mother and dad had five boys and we all worked in the store.

He goes on to detail his struggles after marriage elaborating on his income and -as he describes it -- limited and loans

I have just $4,000 in life insurance, plus my G.I. policy which I've never been able to convert and which will run out in two years. I have no insurance whatever on Pat. I have no life insurance on our youngsters, Patricia and Julie. I own a 1950 Oldsmobile car. We have our furniture. We have no stocks and bonds of any type. We have no interest of any kind, direct or indirect, in any business.

Now, that's what we have. What do we owe? Well, in addition to the mortgage, the $20,000 mortgage on the house in Washington, the $10,000 one on the house in Whittier, I owe $4,500 to the Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. with interest 4 1/2 per cent.

To further arouse compassion, he includes the personal detail about his parents:

"I owe $3,500 to my parents and the interest on that loan which I pay regularly, because it's the part of the savings they made through the years they were working so hard, I pay regularly 4 per cent interest."

. He calls himself "a man of modest means" adding that Abraham Lincoln said: "God must have loved the common people -- "he made so many of them." Nixon, inother words, refers to himself as a 'common'man.

In Paragraph 4, he abuses his opponent commiting the as hominem fallacy i.e. attemtpting to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out negative characteristics or beliefs of the person supporting it.

And now I'm going to suggest some courses of conduct. First of all, you have read in the papers about other funds now. Mr. Stevenson, apparently, had a couple. One of them in which a group of business people paid and helped to supplement the salaries of state employees. Here is where the money went directly into their pockets.

And I think that what Mr. Stevenson should do is come before the American people as I have, give the names of the people that have contributed to that fund; give the names of the people who put this money into their pockets at the same time that they were receiving money from their state government, and see what favors, if any, they ave out for that.

Not only Mr. Stevenson is condemned but Mr. Sparkman too:

And as far as Mr. Sparkman is concerned, I would suggest the same thing. He's had his wife on the payroll. I don't condemn him for that. But I think that he should come before the American people and indicate what outside sources of income he has had.