Whose Adlai?

(See Cover)

He's the man that we need; We'll all follow his lead. He's our Adlai, our Adlai, our Adlai, our Adlai, Our Adlai's a wonderful guy.

According to George Gallup, about 45% of U.S. voters could now sing Our Adlai with something approaching full-throated conviction. That's a lot of voters--and a fraction more than the polls gave Harry Truman at a comparable time in 1948. But in some respects it is a wonder that anyone has a chance to sing Our Adlai at all. Ten months ago, Adlai Stevenson was not even a name in the national consciousness; his rise has been unmatched in U.S. politics since Wendell Willkie's star raced across the sky in 1940.

How did Stevenson get there? What turned him from a reluctant candidate into an aggressive campaigner? And what kind of sense is he making to the American people?

He and his opponent, two very dissimilar men, have a common problem: the problem of being the nominee of a loosely knit and fractious party. Each is the leader of his party, at least for the duration of the campaign; and each is, to some extent, his party's captive.

Days of Doubt. The requirements for the 1952 Democratic candidate were cheerfully laid down last May by Harry Truman. At the convention of the Americans for Democratic Action, a left-of-center group that generally lines up with the Democrats, Harry Truman said: "When a Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the Fair Deal . . . he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article every time. That is, they'll take the Republican ... I don't want any phony Democrats in this campaign."

At that time, Adlai Stevenson was certainly reluctant to be the Democratic nominee. His reluctance was based on three points: his disinclination to run against Eisenhower, his horror of a Truman endorsement and his desire to continue his promising career as governor of Illinois. At that time, Ike was thought to be invincible, Truman was regarded as ballot-box poison and Stevenson was sure of re-election as governor.

As convention time came nearer, and after Ike got the Republican nomination, the pressure on Stevenson to say yes or no became almost unbearable. In Minnesota, asked what he would do if he got the nomination, he gave a hoot of nervous laughter and said: "I guess I'd just shoot myself." Two days before the convention opened, in a more serious tone, he told his own Illinois delegates not to vote for him, saying that he did not aspire to the presidency and was "temperamentally, physically and mentally" unfitted for the job. Told of a Washington story that President Truman had decided to support him, he said: "Dear God, no!"

Yet, after the Young Turks had been put down at the convention and the South had been placated, he got the nomination. In his acceptance speech he coined his own campaign slogan. "Let's talk sense to the American people," he said. "Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions ... The people are wise--wiser than the Republicans think." The speech made listening newspapermen, jaded with the stale insincerities of convention orators, look at each other: here was something different. What kind of campaign would a man like that make?

Time to Refresh? Excitement, enthusiasm and confusion greeted him when he returned to Springfield. He picked his own personal campaign manager: Wilson Watkins Wyatt, onetime president of the A.D.A. and onetime Fair Deal Housing Expediter, and made it clear that his campaign would be run from Springfield, not from Washington. He named a new chairman of the Democratic National Committee: Stephen Mitchell, a little-known Chicago lawyer who had been, like Stevenson and Wyatt, a Washington operator (a Washington name for smart young lawyers in Government bureaus). Stevenson held several press conferences, some of them on a not-for-attribution basis, to permit reporters to become acquainted with his current views. Some of them: he hadn't the "faintest idea" whether or not he would drop Dean Acheson as Secretary of State; he foresaw the day when East-West power will come into some kind of balance and it may become possible to negotiate with the Kremlin; and he bespoke his determination to put his "own stamp" on the campaign but acknowledged that he was for a "refreshened Fair Deal."

Can Stevenson refreshen the Fair Deal? Democrats of course say he can; Republicans of course say he can't. Wrote Harvard Professor McGeorge Bundy, collaborator on Henry Stimson's autobiography and editor of Secretary Acheson's papers, in the October Foreign Affairs: "Fatigue-and stalemate beset the groups on which Stevenson must rely. However much he himself may be a symbol of refreshing change, his party, and even his part of his party, are symbols of the status quo. Except where, it has had Republican help, the Administration has been stalemated for several years, both at home & abroad. The much-debated Fair Deal is still a set of paper promises, and in foreign affairs the great achievements of the last four years are precisely those of which General Eisenhower is a symbol (except for the defense of Korea, which is surely not a one-party triumph). Moreover, in the sham battles over the past which have so often passed for Great Debating in the last two years, roles have been set and lines of contest fixed in a way which might make it hard for Mr. Stevenson to fulfill his promise of a change in tone. His friends say that this is an easy task for a determined man with the White House as his base; his opponents will assert that the inertia of the loyal partisan is a most formidable force."

On Aug. 12, Stevenson made his visit to the White House for an intelligence briefing; that same week he admitted in a letter to an Oregon editor that there is "a mess" in Washington. "It's been proved, hasn't it?" he said to questioning reporters. That might be "talking sense" to people at large, but politically it was a bad slip of the tongue.

Harry Truman lost no time in showing what he thought of it. Unblinking, he told his press conference that he knew of no mess, and added that he was the key figure of the campaign. The Democratic Party, he said, has to run on the record of the Roosevelt-Truman Administrations and that is all it can run on. As the campaign progressed, it became more & more clear that Truman was right.

The Aphorist. As he began to make speeches, the quality of mind Stevenson revealed was that of a man who feels that there are two sides to most questions, who is willing to give credit where credit is due, who believes that patience, hard work and understanding can solve most problems. But it was his sharp wit, directed at Republicans, which captured the imagination of his friendly audiences.

His ability as a wit, phrasemaker and aphorist gave him a reputation in the first month of the campaign. The Republican Party's slogan, he said, was to "throw the rascals in," and "as to their platform, well, nobody can stand on a bushel of eels." Discussing social security at Flint, Mich., he remarked: "Now as far as Republican leaders are concerned, this desire for a change is understandable. I suppose if I had been sewn up in the same underwear for 20 years I'd want a change too."

He not only had his own jokes and aphorisms, he quoted aptly from Shaw, Disraeli, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Robert Browning and the London Times Literary Supplement. He also sprinkled his speeches with stories. Sample: about the couple who went to a justice of the peace to be married but were told they would have to wait three days. "Can't you just say a few words," asked the man, "to tide us over the weekend?"

Republicans were quick to say that he was just a funny man. But he also discussed the dry issues of the party platforms, sometimes dryly; and he also frequently spoke with eloquence rarely heard in a political campaign: "We have become guardians of a civilization built in pain, in anguish and in heroic hope ... If we creak, the world will groan. If we slip, the world will fall. But if we use our right of initiative and of decision without bombast or bluster, if we use it with clear heads and steady nerves, we shall rise in strength and grow in majesty and the world will rise and grow with us."

The Egghead Vote. At first, crowds were small, far smaller than Eisenhower's, far smaller than Harry Truman drew in 1948. In his first attempt as a whistle-stopper he was a flop. He got better, by dint of practice, but his best performances were in set speeches, to big audiences.

Many of his speeches had the quality of an after-dinner address; they did not rouse his audience as Eisenhower's incandescent personality could. What effect, if any, were Stevenson's speeches having? Was he making any sense--or talking over people's heads? Correspondents began to report a frequent phenomenon: the listener who thought Stevenson was probably too abstruse for most people--though, of course he understood him. With one segment of the population--joyfully dubbed "the Shakespeare vote"--Stevenson certainly hits the mark.*

Columnist Stewart Alsop quoted a young Connecticut Republican: "Sure, all the eggheads love Stevenson. But how many eggheads do you think there are?" The term "egghead" (meaning "highbrow" or "double-dome") immediately got into political circulation.

Not all the eggheads are for Stevenson. Last winter and spring, three figures dominated the political horizon: Truman, Taft and Eisenhower. To intellectuals and other "opinion makers," Eisenhower was infinitely preferable to the other two. Taft warned the Republicans that many of this group would revert to their habit of supporting the Democrats, no matter which Republican or which Democrat was nominated. In this, Taft was partly right, and the egghead switch was intensified by the Stevenson eloquence.

Harry's Boy? In the early days of the campaign, Stevenson tried desperately--and with considerable success--to demonstrate the fact that he was not Truman's hand-picked and amenable follower. But Harry Truman soon showed that you cannot teach your political grandmother to suck eggs. Sooner or later, Stevenson would have to face the facts of life and support the whole Democratic record--including Harry Truman's. In the next few weeks Stevenson swallowed manfully and changed his views on three important issues:

P: He called for repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. Previously, he had said that some parts of the law had "advanced the cause of good labor relations" and that "anyone who says flatly that he is either for or against that law is indulging in our common weakness for oversimplification." But in Detroit Stevenson said, "I don't say that everything in the Taft-Hartley Act is wrong: it isn't. And moreover, I'll say frankly that I don't think it's a slave-labor law, either. But I do say that it was biased and politically inspired and has not improved labor relations in a single plant . . . What should be retained from the old law can best be written into the new law after the political symbolism of the Taft-Hartley Act is behind us." Stevenson recognized that repeal of the law would deprive the Government of the power to deal with nationwide strikes; he had "no miracle-drug solution for this problem," but said a new law should give the President "a choice of procedures."

P: He came out for federal control of the offshore tidelands. Previously, he had said he was not sure whether the tidelands were part of the national domain and asked whether this was a question of "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" or whether the question was "Who is Caesar?"

P: He said that, as President, "he could and would" use his influence to change the Senate's rules so that a majority (instead of two-thirds) of the membership could shut off a filibuster--and thus make possible passage of an FEPC law. Previously, he had expressed "doubts" that a President should interfere with Senate rules; while he had not opposed FEPC, he had taken the general position that the states should be encouraged to tackle the problem (as he had done in Illinois).

In his formal speeches, Stevenson has supported, or defended, the record of the Truman Administration, domestic and foreign--though some of his defensive remarks (e.g., on corruption) admit by implication far more than Truman ever has. Some of his own elaborations:

Communism Abroad: "The answer to Communism is, in the old-fashioned phrase, good works--good works inspired by love and dedicated to the whole man."

Communism at Home: After saying early in the campaign that the hunt for Communists was a hunt for "phantoms," and that U.S. Communists "aren't, on the whole, very important," he said that "as far as I'm concerned this fight will be continued until the Communist conspiracy in our land is smashed beyond repair," and that the job of tracking them down should be turned over to the FBI. "Our police work is aimed at a conspiracy, and not ideas or opinion. Our country was built on unpopular ideas, on unorthodox opinions. My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."

Corruption: "Whose fault is it that we get what we deserve in Government and that the honor and nobility of politics at most levels are empty phrases? It is not the lower order of the.genus pol, but it is the fault of you the people. Your public servants serve you right. Indeed, often they serve you better than your apathy and your indifference deserve, but I suggest that there is always time to repent and amend your ways."

Inflation: "The cause of inflation can, I believe, be made plain. Let's stay in the kitchen a moment. It is as though we were making bread and while we answered the phone a malicious neighbor [i.e., Russia] dumped a whole cup of yeast into the bowl. That's the inflation story. In fact, that is inflation."

Lawyers & Poets. The legend has grown up that Stevenson writes all his own speeches. No human being could do that, and Stevenson didn't try, even at the start of the campaign. His Liberal Party speech drew, in part, on a memorandum written by James Wechsler, editor of the far-to-the-left New York Post. The Detroit labor speech, in which Stevenson called for repeal of Taft-Hartley, was written by Willard Wirtz, onetime member of the War Labor Board.

His main group of speech writers is quartered in Springfield (on the third floor of the Elks Club). Head of the speech writers is Arthur Schlesinger Jr., historian, Harvard professor, onetime vice president of the A.D.A., and apologist for Dean Acheson. All speeches, in fact almost all information intended for Stevenson, clear through Carl McGowan, Northwestern University law professor, who is Stevenson's closest adviser. Stevenson headquarters also receives memoranda and phrases from such professionals as Poet Archibald MacLeish, Playwright Robert E. Sherwood, Samuel I. Rosenman, Authors Eric Hodgins and Bernard De Voto.

However, Stevenson's is the guiding and the finishing hand in the composition of his speeches. None of his staff doubts that Stevenson is a better speechwriter than any of his writers.

Good Governor. Stevenson's record as governor has hardly entered the campaign. It was, in most respects, an excellent record. He improved highways, got additional millions for schools, improved social-welfare services (especially in state mental institutions) and put the state-highway police on a nonpartisan basis. The record was marred by two scandals: the counterfeiting of cigarette stamps in the state revenue department and the bribery of state officials who permitted horse meat to be sold for hamburger ("Adlaiburgers," the Chicago Tribune hastened to call them). Six state employees were indicted for bribery and malfeasance in the horsemeat scandal; in the counterfeiting case there were no indictments, but three state employees were dismissed because they refused to take a lie-detector test.

He has himself cited his record as governor to support his argument that he can deal with corruption; he tells audiences that he knows about corruption because he followed "eight years of magnificent Republican rascality." He has never so much as slapped the wrist of the Cook County Democratic organization, the most corrupt and powerful of existing big-city machines, but he was not, like Truman, a machine-made man.

The Hiss Case. One other act of Stevenson's as governor was lugged into the campaign last fortnight by Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate for Vice President: Stevenson's deposition as a character witness for Alger Hiss. Stevenson first met Hiss in 1933 as a young lawyer in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in Washington, where, as he has said, "our contact was frequent but not close." He was with Hiss again at the first United Nations conference in San Francisco in 1945, at a U.N. session in London early in 1946, when he and Hiss had "offices near by each other and met frequently at delegation meetings and staff conferences," and at the U.N. session in New York in 1947. On June 2, 1949, two days after the first Hiss trial began in New York, Stevenson testified before a United States commissioner in Springfield that Hiss's reputation for integrity, loyalty and veracity "is good."

Stevenson has defended his testimony by saying that it would be "a sad day for Anglo-Saxon justice when any man, especially a lawyer, will refuse to give honest evidence in criminal trial for fear the defendant may eventually be found guilty." Last week 22 lawyers, some of them Republicans and Eisenhower supporters, came to his defense. So did the pro-Eisenhower New York Times. Said the lawyers: "The governor . . . did what any good citizen should have done . . ." The Democrats pointed out that Republican John Foster Dulles had endorsed Hiss for the presidency of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

As the campaign's flame waxed and tempers shortened, Stevenson's tongue grew sharper. In the early days of the campaign, he often referred to Eisenhower as his "great" and "esteemed" opponent. But he tried to give the impression that Ike wasn't very definitely there at all, that his real opponents were Senators Taft, McCarthy and Jenner.

But of late, Stevenson's tactics have changed. Both reluctant candidates now want very much to win. Stevenson has begun to hammer Ike. The phrases used for this at Democratic headquarters are that Ike "must be cut down to size" and that Stevenson must "destroy the Eisenhower symbol."

He began to refer to Eisenhower as the "honorary Republican candidate" and the "Eager General." He said that Eisenhower was conducting a campaign of "ugly, twisted, demagogic distortion." And he implied that Eisenhower's election would lead not only to isolationism but to World War III.

Other Stevenson cracks:

P: "You can have the Old Guard Republicans who have said no to everything for 20 years--and to whom the General of the Army has now said yes."

P: "There are some who say that the general intends to doublecross his new friends after the election. I do not believe either that the general is so unscrupulous or that they are so stupid."

This was the tenor of his campaign last week and will apparently be his line of attack during the last ten days of the campaign, when Stevenson, who has already traveled almost 30,000 miles and made about 100 speeches,* will make his final swing through the industrial East. Some time ago, Stevenson was asked just what kind of Democrat he was. His reply: " 'What kind of Democrat I am' makes me feel a little like the old lady who said she didn't know what she thought until she heard what she said. I'm not sure what kind of Democrat I am, but I am sure what kind of Democrat I'm not. I'm not one of those who believe we should have a Democratic regime because it is good for the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party is not good for the nation, it is not good for me or for Democrats."

Does Adlai Stevenson, and what he stands for, make sense to the American people? The people, who know but aren't saying yet, will answer on Nov. 4.

* To Ike's 40,000 miles and about 125 speeches.

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