Home Again

For the first few months after a U.S. presidential election, the defeated candidate is like a girl whose date has failed to appear--all dressed up and nowhere to go. He has to do something, but to find a course of action that is both safe and satisfying is far from easy. Five and a half months ago Adlai Stevenson decided to solve the problem by gratifying his desire to see more of the world. Last week, bouncing out of a DC-6B at New York's Idlewild Airport, Stevenson was home again, tanned, a bit more rotund, and apparently still very eligible.

In the 30-odd nations he had visited, Stevenson had conducted himself with a nonpartisan sense of responsibility, wisdom and tact. What had he been called on to explain most often? "McCarthyism," said Stevenson with no pause at all. He was cautiously optimistic about the state of the world. "We have been winning the cold war, step by step," he said. "In consequence, the danger of world war has diminished ... for the present." But the picture also had its dark side--which Democrat Stevenson by implication laid at the door of the Eisenhower Administration. Said he: "Just now, unhappily, [U.S.] prestige and moral influence have declined, together with faith in our judgment and our leadership . . . There is an impression that we are inflexible and erratic."

From New York Adlai flew on to Chicago, where he was greeted by a handful of Democratic notables and Stevenson "volunteers"--including a girl fan who kicked off her shoes so that she wouldn't look taller than her hero. Chicago newsmen, tying Stevenson down to domestic politics, found him still the old quipster.

Q. Do you still consider yourself the head of the Democratic Party?

A. Did I ever?

Q. Do you intend to move to California and run for the Senate?

A. No. Hollywood hasn't asked for me, either.

Q. Will you run for Democratic Senator in Illinois?

A. Against Paul Douglas? Under no circumstances.

Q. Do you agree that Senator Douglas was right in saying that President Eisenhower is deservedly popular with the people?

A. I'm sure the President is trying to do his best . . .

Stevenson's first day at home in Libertyville, Ill. was thoroughly political. He got a fill-in on recent Democratic developments from National Committee Chairman Steve Mitchell, and made a pair of well-publicized phone calls to tell Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Minority Leader Sam Rayburn that he was "mighty proud" of the party's record in the 83rd Congress. (One of his first acts on arriving in New York had been to call up Harry Truman in Independence. ) Mostly Adlai planned to spend his time resting, until Sept. 14-15, when Democratic bigwigs will officially welcome him home at a nationally televised rally in Chicago.

To the prime question about his political future Adlai Stevenson last week replied: "I don't know whether I'm going to run for President in 1956, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you." It was a true Stevensonian statement--one which, in the light of past history, made it possible to say that Stevenson was behaving mighty like a man who was thinking about a certain date all over again.

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