Anyone else feel oddly compelled and interested in Adlai Stevenson?

Question

Thanks for some of the answers. He certainly seems to be one of the more intriguing politicians of the latter part of the 20th century.

Answer 1

Yes, because he was an interesting, but a very odd, person who rose to the the Democratic Party candidate twice despite not exactly having the image of an aggressive he-man. It is little known that he was a very tough governor of Illinois, lesser known that, as a child, he accidentally killed a sibling with a gun. Truman is said to have despised Stevenson as a sissy, and to have told people privately to put their support behind Eisenhower. His flaw as a politician was became clear to Eleanor Roosevelt-- who previously had regarded him as a possible replacement for her late husband-- when she was riding with him in a car during one of his presidential campaigns. A jubilant crowd of supporters surrounded the car wanting him to speak. "What shall I tell them?" he asked her haplessly. She reported saying nothing in response. "If he didn't know," she explained, "there was no way I could tell him." And yet, as the U.S. delegate to the U.N., Stevenson icily confronted the Russian delegate with aerial photos of missile bases in Cuba, and when told they could be explained, said, "I am prepared to wait for an explanation until Hell freezes over!" A man very difficult to analyse and evaluate, who seemed somehow to wear politics like an ill-fitting suit and, though a competent and successful governor, was pathetically out-leagued by Eisenhower in the presidential race.

Answer 2

Stevenson is rather an interesting figure given that so much that is said about him is seriously misleading.

First, one should note that as a politician he was a toady of the corrupt Chicago Democrat machine. for all the blather about being a "new politician" he was anything but.

Second, the drivel about his being an "intellectual" is particularly amusing. Stevenson, later in life, admitted to a reporter that after graduating from college he had never once read a non-fiction book outside of a law book. What makes this particularly outrageous is that his sycophants at the same time ridiculed Eisenhower, former President of Columbia University and author of a weighty and well respected history of the Second World War, as a drooling moron.

Third, his "electrifying" speeches (that term is frequently used to describe them) are almost embarrassing in their mawkishness and hubris (as when he tacitly compared himself to Jesus Christ).

Fourth, for even a moderately intelligent man to have appeared as a character witness for traitor and communist spy, Alger Hiss, betrays, at best, very poor judgment.

Stevenson's reputation is, as we say here in Texas, all hat and no cattle.

Answer 3

More interested in the great Millard Fillmore.

Answer 4

No , why should we be interested is he some magnanimous person

Answer 5

No, not particularly.