Living for Two

By Edwin Warner

ADLAI STEVENSON OF ILLINOIS by JOHN BARTLOW MARTIN 828 pages. Doubleday. $15.

Harry Truman had just announced that he would not seek re-election in 1952. Democrats anxiously converged on Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and pressured him to make the race. His head buried in his hands, almost on the verge of tears, Adlai blurted: "This will probably shock you, but at the moment, I don't give a damn what happens to the country."

By the standards of 1976, when a clutch of candidates are lusting for the presidency, that anomie seems as remote as the Age of Jefferson. But it was typically Stevensonian. The candidate's constantly expressed reluctance endeared him to his followers, who considered him too good for politics, a man of rare sensibility and cultivated aloofness. There is much to support such a view of Stevenson in this first major biography, which carries him through his defeat in the 1952 presidential election.

But John Bartlow Martin, a journalist who was an occasional Stevenson speechwriter, reveals another, more driven side to the Democratic standardbearer. He was, in fact, a practical politician who played the game as skillfully as the next man. His fastidious grumbling about the demands of politics was something of a pose. Martin suggests that the candidate deliberately contrived a diffident persona to appeal to the civic-minded, rather snobbish liberals who came to adore him.

Stevenson's biographer traces his ambition--as well as his self-doubts--to an obscure boyhood tragedy. At 13 he accidentally shot and killed another child. Stevenson never mentioned the episode in later life, but Martin discerns veiled references to it in letters and conversations. A sense of guilt never entirely left the boy or the man; his life was to be an atonement for that death. Stevenson once wrote a woman whose son had a similar experience: "Tell him he must live for two."

Oscillating Campaigner. For all the admiration of Stevenson's intellect, he was rather indifferent to abstract thought. He finished in the middle of his class at Princeton, then flunked out of Harvard Law School. That embarrassing event was not brought up in two presidential campaigns because the dean, a Stevenson admirer, kept the proof locked in his personal safe. But after earning a law degree from Northwestern University, Stevenson embarked with gusto on a career of public service.

Prior to World War II, he became one of the nation's leading interventionists, attempting to swing the U.S. as soon as possible to Great Britain's cause.

When America entered the war, Steven son joined the Navy Department in Washington. Later he helped draw up the Charter of the United Nations. With this activist background, he was tapped to run for Governor in 1948 by Chicago's Cook County Democratic politicians. Then as now, the machine was concerned with cleaning up its image.

Stevenson proved an adroit campaigner, oscillating between high-toned liberals and tough party regulars: he won the election with the biggest plurality in the history of Illinois. In office he turned out to be a surprisingly effective Governor. He may have vacillated over what party to attend or what tie to wear, but he was decisive enough on crucial is sues. A man who was always zealous about finding jobs for people, Stevenson did not give the machine politicians any thing to worry about. He kept them more than content with shrewdly distributed patronage.

In the power vacuum created by Truman's withdrawal, Stevenson was pushed toward the presidential nomination he never wanted. He was not ready to run. He knew he had little chance of defeating the popular war hero Dwight Eisenhower. But he made a gallant try and left an indelible impression. As Martin's striking, thoroughly detailed biography demonstrates, Stevenson's fervently polished speeches, his candor and forthrightness elevated the tone of American politics. He set a standard that later presidential aspirants have yet to match.

Edwin Warner

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