of his modest financial assets, and offered a glowing assessment of Eisenhower's candidacy. The highlight of the speech came when Nixon stated that a supporter had given his daughters a gift, a dog named "Checkers," and that he would not return it because his daughters loved it. The "Checkers speech" led hundreds of thousands of citizens nationwide to wire the Republican National Committee to urge the Republican Party to keep Nixon on the ticket, and Eisenhower stayed with him. Despite the red-baiting of the Republicans' right wing, the campaign on the whole was conducted with a considerable degree of dignity, and Stevenson was seen as reinvigorating a Democratic Party that had become exhausted after 20 years in power and as refreshing its appeal with younger voters. He accused Eisenhower of silently tolerating McCarthy's excesses. Stevenson went before the American Legion, a bastion of hardline conservatism, and boldly declared that there was nothing patriotic or American about what McCarthy was doing. Even with the dignified nature of the campaign, the dislike between the two candidates was visible. Stevenson criticized Eisenhower's noncondemnation of McCarthy and his use of television spots, and Eisenhower, who had initially respected Stevenson, came in time to view him as simply another career politician, which he strongly disliked. Television The 1952 election campaign was the first one to make use of the new medium of television, partly by the efforts of Rosser Reeves, the head of Ted Bates, Inc., a leading advertising firm. Reeves had initially proposed a series of radio spots to Dewey in the 1948 campaign, but Dewey considered them undignified. Reeves later maintained that Dewey might have won the election if he had been slightly more open-minded. Studying Douglas MacArthur's keynote speech at the Republican Convention in July, Reeves believed that the general's words were "powerful" but "unfocused" and "all over the map." Eisenhower's public speeches were even worse since he was unable to make his point to the voting public in a clear intelligible manner. Reeves felt that Eisenhower needed to condense his message down to a few simple easily-digestible slogans. Eisenhower at first also fared poorly on television and had a difficult time appearing relaxed and at ease on camera. The television lighting was not flattering and made him look old and unattractive. In particular, his forehead tended to glisten under the lights. Eisenhower became upset when the CBS correspondent Dave Schoenbrun pointed