Vote Nixon ‘92
Presidential elections in the United States have always been filled with some sort of drama or controversy but few are filled with as many laughs as the announcement of Nixon running for president in the 1992 election. On April 1, the “Talk of the Nation” radio program featured Richard Nixon declaring his candidacy with the slogan “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.” The show went all in and did an entire segment on Nixon’s decision.
The show even featured a discussion with Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor, and Howard Fineman, a reporter for Newsweek, about Nixon’s entrance into the race. The show also played a sound clip from press secretary Torrie Clarke stating that the announcement was trying to upstage their foreign policy initiative.
The sound clip was from when Nixon really did run for president and everyone else on the show was in on the joke. It was done so well that plenty of people were fooled. Many people called into the show to voice their opinions on Nixon in the race, many of which believed it was a bad idea. After the fact, the show admitted that they only aired people who seemed oblivious to the joke and never aired the calls from people who caught on.
At the end when host John Hockenberry announced the prank no one was surprised to find out that the comedian that had done the voice of Richard Nixon had been none other than Rich Little. The man of a thousand voices had managed to convince thousands that one of the most notorious presidents in American history was attempting to run again.