Stevenson : the Saddest Story

From MURRAY KEMPTON

NEW YORK

ALt. of us were young then, young and gay, and so for a while was he. That was thirteen years ago and it lasted only a few months. So the sad thoughts about Adlai Steven- son began a long way back. Last week's were the saddest of all, but they were not sadder enough than so many of the others. He died, of course, in a public place. So many times, when the worst thing had happened, he had to endure it in a public place. He seemed to be always lonely and never to be given the release of being alone.

Most of us saw him first at the 1952 conven- tion which nominated him, with the band playing 'Chicago, that toddling town'—the wild, tawdry, demented scene at which the Democrats are used to winding up their business. Yet even that night he made us listen, for the quiet voice in the noisy room was the only one he trusted. 'Let's face it,' he said that night. 'Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains.' He went on from there to the only American political cam- paign in the memory where to stand with a candi- date was not for one moment to risk your pride in him. He told the Polish-Americans in Ham- tramck, Michigan, that he would not tell them that he would free Poland. He told the South in Richmond that he would carry out the civil rights plan in the Democratic platform. He chose a convention of the American Legion to talk about freedom of the mind. At the end of this journey, he looked back and said that he thought he had kept faith with himself and that he thanked all Americans for their infinite courtesy and their heartening friendliness.

We can remember that campaign now and see that it saved the Democrats, and that Adlai Stevenson was the only politician in his party who was the loser for it. For the quiet voice in the noisy room spoke to the young who had not before thought of politics with hope. Through eight years, his memory and his presence sus- tained them; he gave them faith even though his own faith had been terribly damaged. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson could hardly have been possible without Adlai Stevenson. He found the Democratic Party in 1952 tattered with age and sick in morale. We can see now that the Democrats were likely to lose to Robert A. Taft and certain to lose to Dwight Eisenhower that year; what was important was the way they lost. And Adlai Stevenson gave them the only kind of campaign which could carry them from the past of Roosevelt and Truman to the future of Ken- nedy. He set the perfect tone in defeat.

This is not a time to make comparisons among men. But every politician could stand instructed in the difference between the candidacies of Adlai Stevenson and of Senator Goldwater. Goldwater was also a doomed candidate; but he insisted on running against Franklin D. Roosevelt; he got only the bottom Republican vote and it is un- likely that anyone not already familiar with and

committed, to him was won over by his campaign.

But the Stevenson of 1952 flatly refused to run against Herbert Hoover. He made his fight for

a future for the Democratic party which could never realistically be his future but which would be absolutely commanding when its time came. Since he was almost unknown when he was nominated, any hearts he won were gained in that campaign and thus belonged to the future and not the past. He did not recruit enough voters, but he raised up the crop any party needs

before it can have enough voters; his followers became candidates of the class and style the Democrats had almost lost before he came along.

Yet the shadow of the 1952 election hung over him for the rest of his life, and he would never be gay again. The Republicans had asked us to trust a man; he had asked us to trust ourselves. And he had not merely been defeated; he had been overwhelmed. He ran again in 1956; but it could never again be the pure and simple faith the first time had been for him. He had been wounded in his dignity and the scar would always show. In '1960, the young came to Los Angeles with the illusion that they need only cry out their dreams to capture the Democratic convention for him again. But it was too late and the young were never to see him as we had in that far-off time when he was absolutely his own man and honour and courage had no limits.

'Do not reject this man who has made us all proud to be Democrats,' Senator Eugene McCarthy called out that last time Adlai Steven- soh's name was put before a convention of the party he had saved. For it had been Stevenson's special contribution to make his followers proud not just of him but of his party, and by his example, to teach them to keep their heads high and their hearts free of that bitterness which is the one habit in a political party which makes

defeat permanent. And then 1960 came and every Democrat except Adlai Stevenson was triumphant; and, then and only then, his real task performed and its fruits available to every- one else, he seems to have permitted himself, ill a few private moments, to feel a little bitter. And that is a pity, because he may have died ith- out knowing what he had really done.

The remainder was the United Nations. Ther will continue to be stories that he was unhapp at the end; there is already a story that he though,

That what Mr. Johnson had done in Sant Domingo was a fearful, mistake. I do not kno what use such revelations can have now. Are w to think of Adlai Stevenson at the last as only lawyer for a client? There was talk that he migh resign. His private response seems to have been that he had been there when the United Nations began, that he had returned when it was healthy, and that he would not leave when it was sick.

That first campaign had laid upon Adkii Stevenson a burden which he could never put down. For all of us who remembered him from the moment of our capture, he was not a public man but a personal possession, the embodiment of our own honour. He was the only public man of whom we demanded that, when he was ordered to lie, he must refuse. But he did not belong to us: he belonged to his country. He would have stayed the course. 'Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion.' he once instruc- ted the American Legion, 'but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.' We have lost long-distance runner.