His Checkers speech September 23, 1952, was before my time but my father remembered it and said it made him want to vomit.

He was the only man my mother would admit to disliking, and it's hard to imagine how far he could go in politics. But he went all the way and what a ride it was.

But he did things no one else could do, such as playing the China card. Oddly enough I learned about his plans to go to China when I was visiting the Soviet Union and I learned it from a Russian in the Russian language. The American kids with me would not believe me!