|
|
ADLAI STEVENSON, II, 1900-1965
 Democrat, Illinois
1952, 1956 Electoral College Result:
Dwight D. Eisenhower (W) 442 – Adlai Stevenson (L) 89 (1952)
Dwight D. Eisenhower (W) – Adlai Stevenson (L) 73 (1956)
A scion of the Illinois political elite, Adlai Stevenson, a Harvard Law School flunk-out, later resurfaced as a successful student at Northwestern Law School, and went on to become an early shaper of the United Nations. As governor of Illinois, he was known as a civil libertarian. He suffered brutal defeats to Eisenhower, but was later known for paving the way for John Kennedy’s success with his infusion of idealism into the Democratic Party.
I thought of bread and circuses not long ago when I read about great Republican bandwagons that were going out all over the country, complete with movies, jeeps, girls, and gadgets of all kinds—to sell Eisenhower and Nixon again to a docile, complacent, carefree people all happily chanting, 'Peace, Prosperity, and Progress – ain’t it wonderful!’ The whole aim of all the ballyhoo and thirty-foot balloons, those streamers and bands, is not to excite thought or provoke discussion. It is, in the finest advertising tradition, to get at our electoral subconscious and persuade us to vote, blissfully and blindly, for things as they are. -Stevenson
I have read my epitaph so many times that I thought I was dead…and then, when I wake up in the morning and find I am alive, it is a mater of delight, I must confess. -Stevenson
There was the gentleman, a high-class civilized intelligent intellectually minded man. The other was the desire to hold public office in a particular country where the candidate has to comply with the ground rules. They were always in conflict. -Newton Minow
|
