Down to Business

Adlai* Stevenson made a good first impression, but with Chicago's initial enthusiasm past, he had to face some hard realities. He was virtually unprepared for the exacting business of running for the presidency. He had no personal campaign staff. He did not even have a headquarters with enough paper clips and typists. The telephone lines at the governor's mansion in Springfield were inadequate. Above all, Stevenson knew that if he permitted the impression that he was being run by the Democratic National Committee, by Harry Truman and the party bosses, he would lose votes. Last week he acted fast to dispel that impression.

He appointed as his campaign manager a complete outsider, Wilson Wyatt (see below). Stevenson furthermore announced that the campaign would be run by him and Wyatt alone. At any mention of Harry Truman's proposed whistle-stop tour on his behalf, Stevenson remained as chilly as a racquet club elder faced with the membership application of a nouveau riche garage owner.

"I Ask Your Prayers." While the beginnings of a campaign staff assembled in a hastily rented, nine-room, two-story red brick house in Springfield, Stevenson told state officials to carry on as much .as possible on their own, but he let it be known that for the time being he had no intention of resigning as governor. (He would have a much tighter grip on the state Democratic organization as long as he was in office.) He also announced his choice for a successor: Lieutenant Governor Sherwood Dixon, 56, no ball of fire but an amiable, honest administrator, backed by Jack Arvey's powerful Cook County machine.

Meanwhile, Stevenson continued to prove himself a charming campaigner. During his four-hour train ride back from Chicago, he stopped at station after station, talked to crowds in a broiling sun. At Bloomington, his home town, he introduced his old Negro nurse, said: "If there's anything wrong with me, blame her." Later he said: "I ask your prayers."

His press-conference technique made an interesting contrast with Eisenhower's. Actually, Stevenson said "I don't know" almost as often as Ike--but never in so many words. He had a nimble way of dodging questions or turning around and tossing a counter-question at the reporters. He was quick and witty. Asked whether he thought Lieutenant Governor Dixon would be reluctant to accept the nomination for governor, Stevenson said: "From my experience with reluctance, I think he could be persuaded." Asked what had persuaded Stevenson himself to be less reluctant, he answered simply: "Sleep." Throughout, Stevenson displayed almost too much intellectual elegance: some of his well-tailored sentences wore spats. Wrote one reporter who was at the conference: "Even when he was most amusing, it seemed almost as if some inner man were monitoring his performance for later re-examination."

In the Rocking Chair. His first evening back in Springfield, Stevenson called the custodian of Lincoln's house, where Lincoln had lived between 1844 and 1861, and from where he had gone to the White House. Stevenson said he just wanted to drop by for a visit. The door was unlocked for the governor. From 11 p.m. to midnight Adlai Stevenson stayed alone in the living room. No one is sure what he did there, but some say that for a time he sat in Abraham Lincoln's rocking chair, meditating.

* Stevenson offered further clarification on how to pronounce his name, quoted Mark Twain on the subject of his vice presidential grandfather: Philologists sweat and lexicographers bray, But the best they can do is to call him Adlay. But at longshoremen's picnics, where accents are high, Fair Harvard's not present, so they call him Ad-lie. Longshoremen notwithstanding, Princetonian Stevenson insists that the Harvards had it right.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.