STEVENSON FOR PRESIDENT
PROGRESSIVE "Yk shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Stevenson for President "It appears this year's campaign will be waged under the darkest shadows that ever hovered over...
...Here, indeed, is the toughest kind of common sense...
...The fact that Khrushchev seems to have lost his temper makes it all the more important that we not lose ours—or our heads...
...Here is the Democratic Party's best bet and the country's greatest hope...
...The enemy is the danger of war...
...In the days following the collapse of the Summit conference in Paris, when Washington echoed to the clamor for more billions for armaments, Adlai Stevenson made more sense and showed more courage and statesmanship than any other figure in public life as he sounded his eloquent warning against single-minded reliance on military containment to "stop Communism...
...It is both sad and ironic, he emphasized, that the Communists have so largely succeeded in preempting and exploiting the cry for peace...
...But, to compound the incredible, we postponed the announcement that the flights were terminated just long enough to make it seem we were yielding to pressure, but too long to prevent Mr...
...It was characteristic of Stevenson to go to the heart of the matter while some of his Democratic colleagues, notably Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, were demanding a "national unity" which could only mean sweeping the whole sorry mess under the rug...
...they proposed total disarmament...
...We shall have to talk and bargain with the Communist countries for years and years to come...
...But, Stevenson warned, even if we Americans come to understand the world crisis better than we do, even if our illusions about foreign policy are dispelled, even if we recognized our mistakes, even if fruitful negotiation becomes possible again, "it would not alter for many years the constantly aggressive Communist political activities, especially among the peoples of Asia, Africa, and South America who are seeking a new dignity in the modern world...
...There will be other campaign issues, of course, some of them of considerable importance, but none will command the attention and concern of an anxious nation so much as the debate on how to meet the world crisis generated by the recent worsening of Soviet-American relations...
...Next we evidently reconsidered and called off the espionage flights...
...Stevenson pleaded with the nation not to be stampeded by Republican spokesmen whose frenzied efforts to whitewash the Administration's handling of the U-2 espisode have led them to contend that it is impossible to negotiate with the Russians and that to do so is in the nature of appeasement...
...In speech after speech he has reminded us that we were born "dedicated to a proposition" but have strayed from its goals until today we tend to "confuse the free with the free and easy...
...Here, too, in Adlai Stevenson's summons to his fellow Americans to seek peace and build a better and more secure nation by understanding our shortcomings and learning from our mistakes, is the truest and most fruitful form of patriotism...
...But we believe that the extraordinary turn of events in the past few months makes it imperative for the Democrats to turn to the man whose creative and courageous stand on the issues of war and peace and whose unrivaled stature in the world clearly mark him as the American best qualified for leadership in a world of crisis and a time for greatness...
...Premier Khrushchev wrecked the conference at the Summit," Stevenson said...
...Let there be no mistake about that...
...Khrushchev would not have had a pretext for making his impossible demands and wild charges...
...We do it by competing with them as strenuously as we can on the economic and political fronts and by demonstrating with action rather than words that our system has more to offer mankind than theirs...
...We do not do it by just trying to stop or contain them...
...It is perhaps no exaggeration to suggest that, given a meaningful choice of candidates and policies, the people of the United States will be casting the most fateful vote of their lives when they go to the polls in November...
...A New York Times survey in ten major cities, for example, showed a "marked trend toward Adlai Stevenson" as the best man to represent the United States at a post-Eisenhower summit conference...
...These words, spoken by Adlai Stevenson a few days after the catastrophic collapse at the Summit, reflect the mood of millions of Americans who sense the unprecedented magnitude and urgency of the problems that will confront the next President of the United States...
...At a time of tension when the cry was great to "stand firm behind the President"—in other words, blame everything on the Russians, admit no error on our part—Stevenson dared risk the charge of appeasement, which was not long in coming, to tell Americans some tough truths about our own shortcomings in the quest for peace...
...We regard them as undilutedly ideological and constantly plotting world revolution...
...To those who will see nothing but Russian vice and American virtue, to those who will cry appeasement to any acknowledgment of our mistakes, I say that this is the toughest kind of common sense...
...Whatever the motives, cynical or sincere, they have constantly taken the initiative...
...So the question is: How do we live with the aggressive Communists in this revolutionary age without giving in to them or destroying each other in a nuclear war...
...Too often our approach has been 'yes, but' instead of 'why not?' Too often our uncertainty and quibbling have left the impression that the United States is looking for reasons not to reach an agreement...
...He has expressed deepening concern over the "air of disengagement and disinterest that hangs over the most powerful and affluent society the world has ever known...
...They have answered the cry for peace, while we have quibbled and hesitated and then finally given in...
...Of the avowed candidates for the Democratic nomination, Senator John F. Kennedy seems to us far and away the most appealing...
...In the realm of domestic affairs no voice in the land has been raised more eloquently than Adlai Stevenson's for the restoration of American government "as a positive instrument for the common weal" and no one has refuted more powerfully those who have sought to equate the Constitutional mandate to provide for the general welfare with "creeping socialism...
...Let us hope he proves it, and let the United States come into the United Nations not content with ordinary speeches, not content with the usual anti-Russian majority votes, but with constructive, positive, affirmative proposals to restore the hope of peace...
...But we handed Khrushchev the crowbar and the sledgehammer to wreck the meeting...
...I don't think they are—whatever may be their long-term objective of a world safe for Communism...
...For the past decade Stevenson has roamed the world, talking and listening to peasants and premiers, his brilliant, searching mind ever on the hunt for clearer understanding of the great revolution of our time and for the role America, herself a child of revolution, can play in channeling the new revolution along a hopeful and democratic course...
...For in Adlai Stevenson they have not only their ablest and most mature leader...
...Few Americans have a deeper awareness of the nature of the Soviet challenge and how to meet it than Adlai Stevenson, Few Americans, if any, command greater respect and admiration among peoples and leaders everywhere than Adlai Stevenson...
...That man is Adlai E. Stevenson...
...Without our series of blunders, Mr...
...Despite his hysterics, Mr...
...At this point if Khrushchev did not protest, he would be condoning our right to spy—and how long would he keep his job that way...
...Meanwhile, they stopped nuclear testing unilaterally...
...To succumb to this position, Stevenson said, "would compound the disaster...
...On top of that we intimated that such espionage flights over Russia would continue...
...But— If we are seeking a President who will stand up to the Russians by embarking on full-scale negotiations to test their intentions or call their bluff when they propose peace and disarmament— If we are searching for a President whose affirmative approach to the problems of peace will no longer permit Khrushchev to continue monopolizing the role of peacemaker and dictating the terms of the world's dialogue— If we are looking for a President who will stand up to the Russians by resisting, with positive programs, Soviet advances among the uncommitted peoples of the underdeveloped areas of the world who are caught up in a revolution of rising expectations— If the man we want to stand up to the Russians is one who understands and accepts the Soviet challenge of competitive coexistence and is committed to beating them at their own game— If this is what we mean when we express the need for a President who will stand up to Khrushchev and the Russians, Adlai Stevenson seems to us the towering choice among all the candidates, professsed or unavowed, in both parties...
...We Americans, he »aid, for example, have states of mind, as do the Russians, that make negotiation enormously difficult...
...Let there be no mistake about that either...
...For there is no future for any of us in a spiral-ing arms race propelled by mounting suspicion on both sides...
...Khrushchev gave the President an out by suggesting that he was not responsible for ordering the flight, the President proudly asserted that he was responsible...
...This terrible danger—and how to avert it— will and should overshadow every other issue...
...If by this it is meant that our next President must be a man who relies on saber-rattling bluster and bombast and who is committed to responding negatively to every Soviet proposal, Adlai Stevenson is not the man of the moment...
...Khrushchev from reaching the boiling point...
...Instead of always worrying about what the Russians will do next, let us concentrate on what we can do next...
...The Republican choice awaits only routine ratification—Richard M. Nixon, and with him, a cheerless continuation of the program, or lack of program, which has carried us to the rim of disaster...
...Then we admitted it...
...The people have sensed more quickly than the politicians that the Democrats must turn to Stevenson as the man best qualified to lead them in the decisive period ahead...
...And when Mr...
...they reduced their army unilaterally...
...It is significant, too, that the Times' random survey came immediately after Stevenson had made a series of statements and speeches in which he lashed out at the tragic bungling by the Eisenhower Administration, and, more importantly, dared to buck the winds of hysteria blowing out of Washington by counseling an early resumption of negotiations with the Soviets as the most hopeful road to peace...
...He has called for a vastly more vital effort on the home front—not only because specific ills clamor for treatment and our society generally needs to be sparked out of its sluggishness...
...Then we denied it...
...Speaking as a true patriot, in the best sense of that badly corrupted word, Stevenson warned his countrymen that America's performance in peacemaking is not altogether the bright and shining record they have been misled to believe...
...they have the man whose moral courage, progressive principles, and world stature make him the clearest-cut and most affirmative alternative to Nixon and his policies...
...Khrushchev says he still believes in peaceful progress by negotiation...
...I believe that many of our stereotypes about the Russians are mistaken...
...As a consequence, few Americans have a firmer grasp of the world crisis than Adlai Stevenson...
...He has called for a forward thrust at home also because "if we cannot recover an aspiring, forward-looking, creative attitude to the problems of our own community, there is little hope of our recovering a dynamic leadership in the world at large...
...PROGRESSIVE "Yk shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Stevenson for President "It appears this year's campaign will be waged under the darkest shadows that ever hovered over the world—the mushroom clouds of a nuclear war that no one wants...
...They have been able to do this because "we underestimated mankind's yearning for peace...
...It is a remarkable opportunity that awaits the Democrats in Los Angeles...
...In city after city, including Boston, where the count incredibly ran seven to one for Stevenson over Kennedy, the Times found that "the persistent mention of Stevenson by those who named a Democrat as the best qualified American leader next year was perhaps the clearest single 'straw' to emerge from the informal sampling...
...We have emphasized military containment, and for years it appeared that we didn't want to negotiate with the Russians, either to test their intentions or to call their bluff...
...We must defeat the enemy together...
...The next President of the United States, we have been told, must be a man who "can stand up to Khrushchev and the Russians...
...they proposed summit talks about reducing tensions and the dangers of war...
...Here, in these all too meager fragments of Stevenson's recent reflections on the crisis in world affairs, is the solid basis for a new and vastly more creative American foreign policy to replace the duel of diplomatic brinkmanship which has characterized our conduct for so long...
...Americans and Russians alike, he said, have one common enemy...
...Stevenson summed up the Eisenhower Administration's series of blunders in a few simple sentences: "We sent an espionage plane deep into the Soviet Union just before the Summit meeting...
Vol. 24 • September 2006 • No. 7
