Stevenson Comes Ashore

Absence not long enough to root out

quite

All love, increases love at second sight.

--Thomas May, Henry II

Back from a nine-week swing through South America came a thinner, tanner, more relaxed Adlai Stevenson last week, and seldom have loyal troops given a more resounding cheer to a general splashing ashore. Enthusiastic correspondents dogged his footsteps. Columnist Marquis Childs hailed him as a "brilliant, complex, resilient individual" torn "between dread and desire." Prestigious Pundit Walter Lippmann urged Candidate Jack Kennedy to solve the problem posed by his Roman Catholicism by accepting second place on a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket. Across the U.S., the scattered but sizable and zealous band of supporters who had given up Stevenson for lost suddenly began finding reasons why he could be found again--in the White House.

Split in the Party. What had changed? Not Stevenson. He was still disclaiming any real desire for the nomination, and many thought that his hopes were now centered on becoming Secretary of State. But the situation had changed. After Wisconsin, the stormy issue of religion threatened to shake the Democratic boat (TIME, April 18), sink the two presidential aspirants whom Stevenson supporters might find acceptable--Massachusetts' Kennedy and Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey--and buoy up those whom they like least, Texas' Lyndon Johnson and Missouri's Stuart Symington. And Stevenson, who long ago had planned to be away during the Wisconsin battle, was unscarred and obviously available.

"I neither seek the nomination nor hope for it nor expect it," said he at a jampacked, hour-long homecoming press conference in Manhattan. Would he accept a draft? Cracked Stevenson: "If I seemed to reject it, I'd be a draft evader."

Thorns in the Ivy. At midweek, in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson at the ivy-colonnaded University of Virginia's decidedly nonpartisan Founder's Day, Stevenson launched a thoroughly partisan attack on the President. (Such is his prestige in academic circles that he is probably the only politician who would try and not be condemned for such daring.) In his text, sent ahead by special delivery to Washington correspondents, Stevenson also made three barbed references to his prime personal and political foe, Richard Nixon. But at the last moment he edited out Nixon's name, referred to him instead as "the Vice President." He also cut such tough lines as "Our leadership has been hesitant and half-hearted," and "Our leaders talk of freedom and embrace dictators."

But he left in plenty. "The people have a right to know," said he in the passage that drew the loudest applause from the capacity audience of 3,300, "why we have lost our unquestioned military superiority; why we have repeatedly allowed the Soviets to seize the diplomatic initiative; why we have faltered in the fight for disarmament; why we are not providing our children with education . . . why we spend billions of dollars storing surplus food when one-third of humanity goes to bed hungry . . . why millions of Americans lead blighted lives in our spreading urban slums."

Holes in the Road. Stevenson plans to continue his speechmaking at selected forums. This week in Washington, he will go before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on a three-man panel to diagnose "the role of the opposition" (co-panelists: British Labor Party Chief Hugh Gaitskell, Canada's ex-Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester Pearson). At week's end he will Meet the Press.

The turning point--and Stevenson's major decision--hinges on the West Virginia primary May 10. If Jack Kennedy sweeps the state, some of Stevenson's closest advisers will urge him to endorse Kennedy. They argue that support from Stevenson might be enough to put Kennedy well ahead of the pack, soften the feud over religion. Then, if Kennedy should falter at the convention, Stevenson could not be blamed as a holdout, and Kennedy, in turn, might throw his votes to Stevenson.

On the other hand, if Kennedy loses West Virginia, Stevenson's chances would surge. But so would those of the other hopefuls. Stevenson well knows the odds would be against him. Gone are some of his biggest assets and best supporters of yesteryear. He has no functioning organization. He has no support among labor chiefs, scant support among organization Democrats. In his home state of Illinois, Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, state Democratic boss, opposes him because he carried the state ticket to defeat in 1956. And Harry Truman, for whatever it is worth, snorted in Manhattan last week that it would be "difficult" for Stevenson to be "offered again."*

But hardheaded calculations do not necessarily apply to Stevenson.

* At week's end Truman added Jack Kennedy to his unfit list, said, "The Republican newspapers" want to nominate Kennedy or Stevenson, "but our party is going to nominate someone who can win." Other Truman political pronouncements: "This draft business is hooey. There never was a man drafted for President in the history of the country. A draft is created by the fellow who wants it and is willing to fight for it." On primaries: "I hope that people have had a bellyfull of these primaries. They are outrageously expensive and exhausting."

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