ADLAI E. STEVENSON: LAST CHANCE
Neuberger, Richard L.
Adlai E. Stevenson: Last Chance by RICHARD L. NEUBERGER This is the fifth of a series of articles exploring Presidential possibilities for 1960. Subsequent articles will include a portrait of...
...Some weeks later we mentioned this episode to Stevenson...
...Yet today, nearly four years later, Nixon himself has opposed a resumption of nuclear testing...
...They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election...
...He had to be convinced, with irrefutable figures, that the private dam would leave a good deal of the potential hydroelectricity of the Snake River undeveloped...
...Zealous advocates of 90 per cent price supports rarely appreciate such gingerly backing...
...Many electoral votes were potentially at stake...
...Indeed, they often boast of the task force of skilled experts in each field whom they have recruited for this task...
...He would be too much of a loyal Democrat to win over partisan Republicans, but might be too fair and temperate to delight the extrem ists in his own party...
...Many Stevenson enthusiasts hapStevenson has told me that he will pen to be intellectuals, civic leaders, not spend a four-cent postage stamp and generous campaign contributors...
...I rather imagine he would be a President who tried the patience of every special-interest group in the nation...
...Quite obviously, this shut off his meager campaign exchequer from benefactions by the powerful oil industry...
...Stevenson has persisted in recognizing that good-will journey* or vague platitudes are seldom substitutes for "generosity and decency in human relationships, and equality in human opportunities...
...For example, one of the accomplishments of which he boasts as a feature of his service in the Illinois governor ship is this...
...The test of a farm program may be in the price of hogs, only 25 miles off at the railhead...
...My impression of him was not necessarily of a fervent liberal but rather of a fascinating intellect, who knew not only world diplomacy but also the subtle differences between a Douglas fir and a Ponderosa pine...
...Many of his early affiliations, in business and corporation law, have helped to anchor him to rather orthodox economic ideas...
...The path ahead of a two-time loser is pocked with perils, and 1960 is undoubtedly his last chance...
...He is no enemy of entrenched privilege...
...At the risk of mis understanding and misrepresentation, I will say again and again that restor ing 90 per cent price supports to meet the present emergency is not to say they are a solution, but only that it is a better program than sliding sup ports which slide only one way...
...Somehow, Adlai Stevenson has come to epitomize in many minds a political figure who tells the truth, irrespective of political consequences...
...Dean was a fine Secretary of State," he said...
...We journeyed together to Yosemite's granite cliffs and plumed waterfalls, and we hiked in the majestic fastnesses of Muir Woods...
...This was a major issue in the four states which stood to profit heavily from such a transfer—Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and California...
...I know some politicians tell us that we don't need allies," Stevenson has observed...
...It lends itself no more to authentic assessment prior to the event than does the whole question of the religion of Senator John F. Kennedy and California's Governor Pat Brown...
...Deficit financing, which is attractive to quite a few Congressional liberals, is not found in the Stevenson litany...
...Over and against this is the dry comment of Palmer Hoyt of the Denver Post: "Who could have licked George Washington...
...He was twice vanquished for the Presidency under the most trying and difficult circumstances...
...Stevenson himself is definitely not a doctrinaire liberal...
...I knew the General was not polishing speeches at midnight...
...Many men in politics, flattered beyond belief and the object of constant sycophancy, whine and wail whenever matters do not suit their fancy...
...I have sat beside former governors and former Senators, listening to hours of abuse against those responsible for their political downfall...
...This occurred in the campaign of 1956...
...Roosevelt herself quillity, Stevenson continues to be re"came away with increased populargarded as the most likely nominee of ity and respect...
...Raymond P. Brandt wrote in Because millions of his fellow the St...
...Here are a few as compiled by Stevenson's staff shortly before he closed his desk at Springfield for the last time: Put the state police force on a merit basis, removing it as an item of patronage...
...Why, he's no radical at all— in fact, he's barely more liberal than I am, and I'm certainly no New Dealer, I can tell you that...
...Stevenson could have ducked the question completely, or he could have imitated Eisenhower's ambiguous acceptance of the states' rights position...
...They remember tales of Jefferson, in rented lodgings in Philadelphia, drafting the stirring and rhythmical language of the Declaration of Independence...
...Foreign policy is the supreme challenge...
...But if Stevenson is unable to win at the polls, I would rather succeed with a Democrat of lesser stature than to lose again with Stevenson...
...He did not instantly assume the attitude that a federal dam was, ipso facto, better than a private utility company dam...
...Perhaps the statement reveals why he has never carried a state in the nation's bread basket...
...When former President Truman endorsed Averill Harriman for President before the 1956 Democratic convention, he said candidly that Stevenson was not liberal enough for him...
...Stevenson redent of the United States...
...Stevenson's Record As Governor of Illinois And there you have it, the strength of Stevenson intellectually and the weakness of Stevenson politically...
...I first met Adlai E. Stevenson at the United Nations Conference in San Francisco in 1945...
...He brought tears to millions of eyes besides his own on the night of his defeat in 1952, when he told those who had worked in his losing cause: "Someone asked me, as I came down the street, how I felt, and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours in Springfield used to tell—Abraham Lincoln...
...This, too, may be the key to a good deal of the basic Stevenson image...
...I won't be met at the Iowa state line or the Oregon state line by people who will tell me the purportedly appropriate thing to say to win votes in that particular locality...
...If I ever am foolish enough to let myself run for President again," he told me one day, "1 will run exactly as my own man...
...What kind of President would Stevenson be...
...I have never heard Stevenson deride his conqueror or speak poorly of those who failed to support the Stevenson campaigns...
...Some liberals find it easier to propose methods of spending governmental funds than in raising revenues to finance these undertakings...
...The precinct liberals have rarely cottoned to Stevenson...
...Yet the world's top Communist, Khrushchev, may possess the power to shape an American election simply by rattling the nuclear sword or fluttering the dove of peace at appropriate moments...
...After the cheering is over, the enigma of a divided Berlin or Soviet space supremacy still remains...
...What if Khrushchev finds that the mailed fist or the gloved hand, on his part, can stampede American voters into favoring one party or the other as an instrument of supposed peace...
...After a defeat at the polls, they blame everyone except themselves...
...On agricultural legislation I would guess that he might be too con servative to please the National Farm ers Union and not conservative enough to satisfy the American Farm Bureau...
...Enforced the over-weight truck laws to protect the deteriorating highway system, and increased high way revenues...
...One of the highest tributes which he received was when he strayed briefly from this role during the 1956 Presidential campaign...
...Khrushchev's sweeping disarmament proposal, he certainly gave me new hope that they meant business this time...
...He was definitely not in favor of increasing the cost of borrowing money, but he wondered if there were anything to the claim that this might be necessary to quench the fires of inflation...
...his party for the third consecutive time...
...In the grave crisis of World War II, he was assistant to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who had been the 1936 Republican running-mate of Alf M. Landon...
...I refuse to pass upon the dilemma of whether or not Stevenson's two previous defeats at the hands of Eisenhower stamp him indelibly as doomed to failure in quest of the Presidency...
...It has introduced a jarring and even frightening element into our political life...
...For example, in interviews with The Progressive and the New York Times on Khrushchev's disarmament address at the United Nations, Stevenson exclaimed: "This is the first time I have ever felt encouraged on the subject of disarmament...
...In 1952 my wife Maurine and I were visiting Governor Stevenson in the Illinois capital...
...A sound measuring stick of Stevenson's philosophy might be found in some of the other features of his gubernatorial reign which excite his own pride and satisfaction...
...A casual inquiry at the front door fails to duplicate the emotions of an election in which hysteria and fanaticism might run wild...
...Most of them were initially perturbed by the fact that the final drafts of speeches generally bore little resemblance to the drafts they had painfully prepared, but . . . with pride and truth they could proclaim that the speeches as Stevenson finally gave them—speeches which would be gathered into a best-selling book months after the campaigning had ended—were very much Stevenson's own...
...Maurine pleaded with him not to consider this because Eisenhower was sure to be the Republican nominee...
...Their allegiance to him seldom wavers...
...I personally favor a Democratic ticket of Stevenson and Kennedy...
...Stevenson Works Hard On His Own Speeches Kenneth S. Davis, biographer of Stevenson in the book, A Prophet in His Own Country, has written that Stevenson's counselors in 1956 assumed he would delegate the writing of speeches to others while he was left free "to concentrate on public appearances and personal 'politicking.' " On many occasions in 1952 local bigwigs could not see the candidate because he was busy polishing his speeches until curtain time...
...Destiny often foils those who seem most prepared for destiny's climactic events...
...I'm sure it shortened his life...
...ceived by far the most vociferous ova tion...
...Indeed, people have come to expect candor of Stevenson...
...So does former Senator Herbert H. Lehman of New York, another of unquestioned liberality...
...He is no tribune of the people...
...He has what it takes to be a truly illustrious President...
...Initiated a program for state fi nancing of tuberculosis sanitaria...
...I will relate to voters—everywhere—the blunt, hard facts about our position in the world and about the sacrifices required if we are going to improve it...
...It all seemed dreadfully inefficient for the candidate thus to drain his energies and strength, especially when I thought of Eisenhower's smoothly-functioning campaign colossus with its troupe of writers and public relations experts...
...I agree with Lucas," said Stevenson...
...Regardless of the course he followed, Kennedy was damned if he did and damned if he didn't...
...I have listened to Stevenson asking the same kind of penetrating questions on the issue of Hell's Canyon Dam...
...We need, above all, the moral strength that the solidarity of the world community alone can bring to our cause...
...Davis, in A Prophet in His Own Country, has thus described the reaction in 1952 of those who made the pilgrimage to Springfield to fortify the Stevenson cause with their pens and typewriters: "All of them became convinced, if they were not at the outset, that Stevenson was a far better writer of Stevenson speeches than any of them ever could be...
...There is not even time in which to scan the ghost-writer's product before it is presented to the waiting audience and to the nation...
...Louis Post-Dispatch has observed: "In 1956 Mr...
...Brought Illinois from the lowest to one of the highest levels of state aid for common schools...
...He either will be nominated in July at Los Angeles, the city of his birth, or he never again will be considered seriously for an office which many people regard as die natural niche for his talents of intellect, originality, and temperament...
...It was nearly midnight...
...Although Stevenson has had at his disposal some of the most gifted literary talent in the land, he has a hard time relying upon it...
...With his flourishes of worldwide travel and pilgrimaging, Eisenhower has substituted the appearance of a policy for policy itself, in the view of James Reston of the New York Times...
...They might be called the catalytic He is personally fond of both Humagent of the Democratic Party...
...Some Democratic politicians also felt, with audible relief, that it removed Stevenson from the lofty plane and high ideals which had characterized his 1952 appearances...
...Intolerance cannot be measured apart from the conditions and atmosphere which tend to create it...
...Positions which some liberals take, almost by reflex action, do not come so automatically to Adlai Stevenson...
...only if Stevenson does not actively It is my judgment that most of the enter the field...
...In our era Stevenson, alone among leaders, seems to respond to these gleaming chapters from our past...
...And yet when I came away from Stevenson's room that night with Jebbie Davidson, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, there were tears of pride in our eyes...
...This was supposed to be shrewd politics in certain states...
...They phrey and Kennedy, and he has are what make the water fizz...
...And above all, we should not hastily and cynically dismiss his proposals as 'clumsy propaganda,' 'old stuff,' or 'utopian nonsense.' For thereby we only redouble the propaganda impact—if that is all it is—of Russia's posture as the peace maker—the mighty Russia which first put a satellite in orbit and has just pinned her colors to the moon...
...The test of foreign policy may be in the sprouting seeds of a war which Americans a decade hence might have to fight on the opposite side of the globe...
...Restored many sales-tax evaders to the rolls and insisted on equal treatment to all on tax collections...
...He did come out for 90 per cent price supports to cope with a crisis, but he could not quite bring himself to claim for such supports any panacea status...
...The PROGRESSIVE...
...What Kind of President Would Stevenson Make...
...I think this is one of the truly disturbing developments of our era...
...We need allies because they are the source of indispensable strategic materials...
...If they accurately measured his appeal, then Democratic Party delegates will shy away from him as the 1960 nominee...
...But the in tellectual liberals consider Adlai their nonpareil...
...His dinner consisted of a bowl of canned vegetable soup and crackers, eaten off a lap tray...
...It's the fun of my life...
...On some other subjects, however, it has not been so simple for him to accept the traditional position of liberal Democrats...
...If somebody were to ask what I think is the vital difference between Stevenson and all other candidates in both parties, I would answer that it was an almost indefinable ingredient which might be called "stature...
...Improved the care and treatment of the 49,000 patients in state mental hospitals, and provided for collection by the state of the cost of such care in cases where the patient or his family are able to pay...
...Certainly it required courage to tackle the inflammable issue of labor reform...
...I N 1956, after his second defeat for though they happen to be wearing the Presidency, Adlai E. Stevenson somebody else's campaign button on made a statement regarding the hightheir lapel or bosom at the moment...
...At innumerable Demoleaders of the Democratic Party look cratic gatherings, I have heard people upon Stevenson as the nation's intelvolunteer the information that their lectually best prepared man to serve heart belongs to Stevenson even in the White House...
...If it had not been that in Lincoln's time, would the 16th President have been able to persuade his countrymen to accept the first military conscription and the first income taxes in American history, so that the nation might be kept united...
...His references to the President of the United States, whether spoken in public or in private, are always in terms of personal respect...
...I recall talking to the late Phil Jackson, publisher of the Oregon Daily Journal of Portland, after his newspaper had given a luncheon in honor of Stevenson, whom the Journal had indorsed in the 1952 campaign...
...The St...
...He shook his head sadly with a wry smile...
...Just how liberal is Adlai Stevenson...
...But Stevenson has been beaten twice...
...I still have my own vivid memory of Stevenson in the cramped bedroom of Portland's then only union-operated hotel in October of 1952...
...Stevenson, grandson of Grover Cleveland's Vice President, will be 60 years old this February...
...He is the man who offers "blood, sweat, toil, and tears" when others are hinting temptingly at tax reduction or more federal subsidies and benefactions...
...I only wish he and Mrs...
...He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications foT the office, would very much like to be President...
...While he ate, he revised a speech on power and conservation which he expected to deliver the next day...
...One should listen to former Senators commenting on those who occupy their chairs...
...He is the pragmatist who threatens his own political chances by reminding audiences that we cannot thumb our noses even at countries which occasionally offend our precious sensibilities...
...We all know of the advertising agency which plans a promotional campaign for whiskey one day and a crusade for the Presidency the next...
...The metamorphosis didn't work...
...It cost him a lot...
...Nikita Khrushchev's doorstep has become a favorite platform for American political hopefuls...
...We must pay attention, cautiously but carefully, to what Mr...
...Ours is an age of the synthetic—of the ghostwriter, the tele-prompter, of makeup to hide the candidate's bald spots...
...Stevenson, to me, possesses Lincolnesque qualities of soul-searching, of personal inner doubts, of a brooding awareness that the way ahead is stern and hard...
...Yet many of these same individuals confess to some doubt that Stevenson can be elected...
...We only can hope that the bigotry which plagued Al Smith in 1928 is no more...
...People sense this and yearn.for the days in our history when Lincoln and Jefferson wrote, under crucial stress, what they themselves felt and believed in...
...the party's nomination—even though Thus, in spite of all the zeal and some of his closest friends trust this fervor for that brace of tireless camwill not be the case, for they wish to paigning Democratic Senators, John see him spared the ordeal of a third F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, nationwide campaign...
...He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh...
...Nor can it be wholly forgotten that Judge Rosenman's be loved patron, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was quite universally looked upon as a conservative among Democrats prior to his brilliant unfurling of the New Deal...
...But the statement also reveals that Adlai Stevenson is a sincere and honest man in bigtime politics...
...Furthermore, I would classify him as relatively prudent on the broad issue of federal spending...
...It helps to explain why the genuine Stevenson shone through so little of the oratory during that campaign...
...The new division of labors in 1956 was an unhappy one for Stevenson...
...The Stevenson riddle may not be quite so difficult to unlock, and yet surely the impact of previous failures is a generally unknown quantity in most elections...
...to win the Democratic nomination...
...And nobody could beat Ike," she added...
...Stevenson is a different kind of bird from the usual political breed...
...After Knox's death from a heart attack, brought on by assiduous adherence to duty, Stevenson said: "I loved that man...
...That was how General Eisenhower was presented to the American people...
...This is the great behind-the-scenes debate within Democratic ranks regarding Adlai Stevenson...
...This is quite different from being a good President or a successful President, as a number of the other aspirants unquestionably could become...
...His eyes were hollow and gaunt with exhaustion...
...Excesses are frequently the fuel of political fires, but Stevenson cannot bring himself to light such faggots...
...This year, 1960, is virtually the last call for him...
...Yet, by contrast, Mrs...
...It may just be possible that the prophecies of F.D.R/s amanuensis, Judge Sam Rosenman, could prove equally inaccurate about Adlai Ewing Stevenson...
...The Communist Party is unable to poll a fraction of one per cent of the vote at American ballot boxes...
...Instead, Stevenson crisply endorsed the majority Supreme Court opinion that the petroleum-laden tidelands were properly within the custodianship of the federal government...
...Still, a thoughtful man's performance in the American Presidency never can be predicted in advance with supreme safety and confidence...
...Most template in tranquillity the distinct of the Democratic White House popossibility that I will never be Presitentials were present...
...They are his shock troops...
...On the eve of the 1956 campaign he was finally persuaded to endorse 90 per cent price supports on so-called "basics...
...He had just completed a long airplane flight...
...I do not know whether Adlai Stevenson ever will become President of the United States...
...Adlai Stevenson Is America's Hairshirt Stevenson has never indulged himself in these luxuries...
...Such a person might have tried to do away with the sales tax altogether rather than bring honesty to its enforcement...
...He later explained to Kenneth Davis that the actual preparation of speeches, "the 'creative' thing, is what I like to do...
...They do not inevitably describe an orthodox political liberal in the conventional meaning of the term...
...That is why the visits of leading Americans with Khrushchev must be reported faithfully and realistically, and without self-serving embellishments...
...Alas, this counsel of restraint is frequently honored far more in the breach than in the observance...
...Were 1952 and 1956 fair tests of his national vote-corraling ability...
...Louis Post-Dispatch that only Americans do not share this tranStevenson and Mrs...
...But he did not quite let go of the lanyard...
...I'd die if many adherents of these men continStevenson lost again," said the attracually make it evident that Kennedy tive wife of a wealthy and enlightened and Humphrey are their first choices date grower near Palm Springs...
...Noble and stately words, these, but not the kind to make a partisan audience leap onto its chairs...
...He then was being casually discussed for the Democratic Presidential nomination...
...Adlai E. Stevenson: Last Chance by RICHARD L. NEUBERGER This is the fifth of a series of articles exploring Presidential possibilities for 1960...
...This honesty was established for all the nation to see in August of 1952, when Governor Shivers of Texas called ostentatiously at Springfield and asked Stevenson to favor the return of the rich oil tidelands to the states...
...Avoided new general taxes so that only two states, on a per capita income basis, have lower per capita state tax collections than Illinois...
...Despite all the current flyspecking as to his record in the Senate, I look upon Jack Kennedy as one of the superior Senators of our era...
...Nor can Harry Truman be said to savor his bourbon and branch water exclusively in the company of those who score 100 per cent on ADA's voting score-sheet on Capitol Hill...
...I have heard him sharply question several of my Senate colleagues from the Northwest about high interest rates...
...They seemed anxious to make known their utter contempt and dislike for the Democratic Party's unsuccessful nominee of 1952 and 1956...
...Stevenson countered with the information that Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois, the Democratic Senate leader, believed Taft had the GOP nomination all wrapped up...
...And in this day, when our position is more perilous than it has been since Korea, let us also profit from our past mistakes, while we deplore them, and let us think of foreign policy not as partisans but as Americans...
...It is probably an irony of our era that Stevenson, poor politician though he is, suffers the most when he permits his political peers to persuade him to be out of character...
...Life would certainly be much simpler if that were so, for our friends can be highly irritating...
...Acheson thought better of me...
...Eric Sevareid relates how Stevenson, shortly before the Illinois elections of 1948, told him they had written off Paul Douglas as a possible winner and that if he, Stevenson, won at all, it would be by a very narrow margin...
...Yet F.D.R...
...Courage is a prime requisite in politics...
...But it is not so...
...In his personal associations, Stevenson does not dampen litmus paper to test if each acquaintance is simon-pure on every possible public question...
...This has been demonstrated by the fact that, although Kennedy strived successfully to pull some of the sharpest fangs in the Landrum-Griffin Bill, he nevertheless now is enduring bitter criticism from some politicians with close labor alliances...
...Let us, indeed, remember that he who plays politics with peace will lose at both...
...It is Hamlet's dilemma repeated, Vice President Nixon called this suggestion "extraordinary and appalling, catastrophic nonsense—the height of irresponsibility...
...Neither is elevating nor meaningful...
...Men and women instantly complained that he was out of character, that the 1956 campaign product was definitely not the authentic Stevenson...
...He made it evident that he was approving an expedient and not an ultimate answer: "While firm price supports keep income up they don't keep surpluses down, and I say again, lest the dam burst and engulf us, we Democrats must press on, with Republican help, I hope, to develop the much broader national farm program which is re quired to restore the full parity of total farm income...
...Stevenson Would Shape A Time of Greatness Stevenson has a nobility of spirit which is rare in politics...
...It can be more penetrating than bullets, more durable than steel . . ." Stevenson is America's hairshirt...
...And there the topic ended...
...Most topflight politicians make no secret of the synthetic authorship of their speeches...
...For example, this is Stevenson talking to a Democratic National Committee dinner in Chicago in 1955, slightly later than midway between his two Presidential defeats: "Let us be very clear that Republicans want a safe and sane world every bit as much as Democrats...
...His loyalty to President Roosevelt, his political adversary in 1936, had a de fiant quality, and his admiration and respect for his chief seemed to grow as the going got tougher...
...It could even be a matter of temperament...
...At 42, Kennedy's youthful magnetism and personality might also be a useful foil to what some look upon as Stevenson's lack of lure to the distaff vote...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader...
...Pressed for elimination of chis elers and cheaters from the public assistance rolls...
...We need allies because we have only six per cent of the world's population...
...Reformed the administration of parole laws by appointing experts free from political pressure...
...Candidates in both parties frequently have speech manuscripts thrust into their hands at the last moment...
...est elective office in the free world This was vividly demonstrated at the which was both renunciatory and banquet in New York honoring Eleaphilosophical...
...The vilification continued for a long time and was obviously no secret...
...What I deal with is too vast for malice...
...Not even 20/20 vision can discern these measurements...
...Stevenson's record as chief executive of Illinois makes it likely that he would not be in this group, which perhaps accounts for the questioning of the degree of his liberality by former President Truman, Judge Rosenman, and others...
...And he made a very great contribution to his country in her hour of greatest need...
...But if the previous two elections are written off as forlorn hopes for the Democrats, regardless of the identity of the party's candidate, Adlai Stevenson could still be the overwhelming choice of those who will assemble in Los Angeles next July to make a fateful decision...
...Lincoln said, "I shall do nothing through malice...
...His replies to my questions left me with the clear understanding that in his view an international control body should have the power and facilities to control and inspect each step of the disarmament process to the extent necessary to insure compliance with the step, such power and facilities to vary according to the needs of each phase . . . "While I wish I were more sanguine that something positive might come of Mr...
...He said that he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark...
...And I wish we could learn that with the Communists the important thing is not always whether they are sincere but whether they are serious...
...Eliminated non-working political appointees with whom state payrolls had been padded...
...Khrushchev says about disarmament because he has a lot to say about the life and death of all of us...
...A Democratic Ticket of Stevenson and Kennedy These acts reveal a man who has a warm humanitarian heart, who possesses fiscal soundness and prudence, who administers government without fear or favor, and who is not afraid of political pressures...
...They tell why Stevenson is a greater favorite with the PTA president than with the local ward chairman...
...One night at a dinner party in Washington, my wife and I heard the Dean Achesons ridiculing and denouncing Stevenson...
...They were landslides...
...Why Stevenson for President...
...I have never heard Stevenson bewail his political fortunes...
...Eleanor Roosevelt, whose liberalism has never been diluted, constantly reiterates her admiration and affection for Adlai Stevenson...
...I was told by a generous and liberal-minded California contributor to Democratic coffers: "If I could appoint a President, I'd appoint Stevenson...
...We need them because the overseas air bases essential to our own security are on their territory...
...He was brave and honest...
...Franklin Roosevelt once described the Presidency as "preeminently a position of moral leadership...
...Let us never underestimate the weight of moral opinion...
...Kept state expenditures on a pay-as-you-go basis by ending the use of extensive deficiency appropriations at the end of a biennium...
...Within Stevenson, I believe, are the essentials to be a great President...
...And they feel best-man-win benediction...
...Subsequent articles will include a portrait of Vice President Richard M. Nixon by William V. Shannon and a study of Senator Hubert H. Humphrey by Michael Amrine.— TH E EDITORS...
...He said, "I can connor Roosevelt's 75th birthday...
...This may accentuate certain suspicions concerning how far left-of-center Stevenson really dwells...
...But what I do know is this—if Stevenson does not go to the White House, millions of his fellow Americans will feel they have been robbed of their opportunity to live in a time of greatness...
...If it were not for this doubt, he probably would be a certainty for the nomination in 1960...
...Similar episodes may have occurred elsewhere in the nation, serving to explain why some flaming liberals cool off when confronted with a third candidacy for Stevenson...
...Actually, Douglas was elected to the Senate overwhelmingly, and Stevenson went to the gubernatorial mansion at Springfield by one of the most colossal majorities in the history of the state...
...Discussing the unrest among the teeming millions of Asia and Africa, Stevenson has said, "Underneath the recriminations of diplomats and the conflicts of nation-states, there boils up today the hopes, resentments, and aspirations not just of leaders but of great masses of people seeking for themselves and their children the rights and privileges which, [Woodrow] Wilson said, 'all normal men desire and must have if they are to be contented and within reach of happiness.'" It is easy to be superficial about foreign policy because the guideposts are frequently so far away...
...Bismarck did this as a calculated policy in Prussia to influence French politics...
...That is why it is so easy to promise ultimate liberation for their relatives to foreign-language voters in large American cities, or to hint that eventually the Soviets will be overthrown by revolution and thus we do not need to worry about Russia's spectacular shot at the moon or its satellites in far orbit...
...All my fat-cat friends at the Arlington Club have been telling me what a radical this man is," said Jackson...
...These were not photo-finishes...
...This question disturbs some Democrats, as exemplified by the strictures and doubts voiced by Judge Rosenman...
...kept Jesse Jones in his Cabinet and he enjoyed cruising on Vincent Astor's yacht...
...Stevenson, as I see it, has come closer to such a goal than any other important visitor to the Soviet dictator...
...Only a seventh son of a seventh son could answer this question...
...But can this actually be determined until it is put to the test...
...America today desperately needs a great President...
...An issue like the tidelands was no problem for Stevenson...
...They given each of them a sort of may-thecreate public opinion...
...He was no intellectual, God knows, but he was highly intelligent—which a whole lot of 'intellectuals' aren't, you know—and he knew his fellow man from a rough and crowded life...
...Who can rival his eloquence and basic wisdom...
...This is not usual in American politics...
...Stevenson lost the support of some of his 1952 admirers when he followed the advice of certain campaign strategists and deviated from his 1952 policy of 'talking sense to the American people/ " No person is more thoroughly aware of this than Adlai Stevenson...
...It is perhaps a clue to Stevenson's outlook that he took no cognizance of the fact that Colonel Knox was not a liberal, but only that he was not an intellectual...
...One defeat was by a margin of 6,500,000 votes, the other by 9,500,000...
...Departing from the 1952 style which had inspired and lifted so many Americans, he allowed himself to get down to such narrow specifics as the price of hogs or the cost of kilowatts...
...Walter Lippmann might hope to expunge the column which he wrote on January 8, 1932, about the man who was subse quently to become the Democratic nominee that year...
...But if a a sense of kinship with Adlai Stevenstalemate should occur at the Los son that they seem to sense in no Angeles convention, it is probable other Presidential hopeful in either that Stevenson will be available for party...
...If public opinion in our country is to be unmoved by Soviet bombast or blandishments, then American statesmen must be entirely candid in analyzing their impressions of Khrushchev's motives and aspirations...
...Stevenson is not a particularly adroit politician, and he himself probably would be the first to admit it...
Vol. 24 • February 1960 • No. 2
