Adlai Stevenson: The Last, Sad Years

...The last years were painful, even pitiable...

...The sad part of Stevenson's last years was not merely that he lost in dignity, nor even that he allowed himself to do some very dirty work for Kennedy and Johnson...

...But let us not delude ourselves as to what Adlai Stevenson signified...

...Staughton Lynd, who has recently delivered himself in public print of a fantasy about demonstrators taking over the White House...

...he sought to puncture his opponent's pretensions, not to destroy his existence...

...He was a man who tried to act by civilized standards within the present society, and he did not succeed...

...The ADA: is it anything more than an agency for passing a few resolutions...

...In some cases, however, the intellectuals were drawn to him precisely because he lacked the militant posture of the traditional American liberal: they were drawn to him because, in the increasingly conservative 'fifties, when the myth of social peace came to be accepted with barely a qualification, Stevenson represented what they hoped to become rather than what they had once been or might still be...

...Yet there is no reason to suppose that Stevenson would have taken the lead as public spokesman for the opposition, stirring the country to the outrage in the Dominican Republic, the danger in Vietnam, the distortion of the Alliance for Progress...

...only his admirers did...

...But in practice, what did that mean...

...Loyalty one can understand, even to presidents he might not have quite admired...

...An attractive human being is gone: we have not had very many in public life, and our present leaders do not encourage expectations of more...

...he believed in civilized discourse...

...It was as if, in their affection for his style, they could not bear to acknowledge his distance from their belief...

...And he never pretended to be anything but what he was...

...He was happily free of those delusional claims to omnipotence and omniscience which seem to overcome men of power, even in democratic republics...

...The lack of structure, the absence of coherence, the failure in sustained controversy, which characterize our political life also limits the opportunities available to individual leaders...

...His wit was real, and it was his own...

...He was ready to listen to opposing views with courtesy and attention...

...He was not a man of the left, not a traditional or even new-style American liberal...

...He was a cultivated man in the tradition of an older America that seems almost to have disappeared...

...foreign policy from a radical perspective...

...Stevenson did not try to create a legend around his person...

...He was not that kind of man and, what is more, he did not hold the views of those of us who criticize U.S...

...Perhaps that time had come...

...For there is no real, no significant, no major opposition to which he could have turned...

...But as we use the word "liberal" in this country, to signify someone more-or-less militantly devoted to social and economic reform, Stevenson was certainly not a liberal...

...perhaps it is true, as some correspondents have written, that he was preparing to resign...

...He could have led the opposition...

...The "new left": can you imagine Adlai Stevenson linking arms with Prof...

...Stevenson's failure was the failure of an old-fashioned style of personal politics, the cultivated conservatism of the nineteenth century trying to cope with the realities of the twentieth...

...It might have helped stem, or slow, the disastrous course of President Johnson's foreign policy...

...He came alone, without a clan...

...Stevenson at the U.N...

...was forced to defend precisely those aspects of American policy—the Bay of Pigs, escalation in Vietnam, invasion of the Dominican Republic—that were least defensible...

...The teach-ins: well perhaps, but they hardly constitute a major force within American life...

...He shrank in valor and manliness by choosing to repeat untruths and allowing himself to be used, quite cynically, by two presidents who needed his reputation and skill but cared little for his advice...

...He had the courage to enter American politics without a "lovely family": he had neither an unforgettable wife 3ike Mamie nor a beautiful one like Jackie...

...But there comes a time when it is loyalty to one's deepest convictions which matters most—that and nothing else...

...For the wistful delusions of his admirers he could not be held responsible...

...The trade unions: can you see those intellectual eminences, George Meany and Jay Lovestone, welcoming Stevenson...

...He had no zeal, no crusading fire, very little of the gift for reaching the ear of the masses which his far less attractive contemporary, Harry Truman, did have...

...Indeed, there was something both comic and pathetic in the eagerness of his intellectual admirers to remold him in the image of their desire...

...And for thoughtful people there was something intensely affecting in his readiness to acknowledge inner doubt, as if it were not at all a cause for shame but rather a mark of humanity...

...No, the sad part was that there was nowhere for him to turn, no arena of liberal criticism in which he could speak...

...But this is no longer a matter of liberalism, only of intelligence...

...It would have been good...

...A moderately conservative man, Stevenson was prepared to accept the welfare state and some humane extensions of it...

...In underlying values and personal manner, Stevenson was a liberal man...

...They cannot do by themselves, even if they should want to, what the political system does not support...

...Still, we who would judge Stevenson for not having resigned—and I do judge him—must also consider what his choices were...