Adlai Stevenson Recordings

Adlai Stevenson
(1900 – 1965)

When you look at Adlai Stevenson it is hard to think of a man whose family business was politics trice ran for president of the United States; twice being the nominee could never get to the White House. Politics was part of the Stevenson family DNA. His great-grandfather, Jesse W. Fell was a friend and 1858 campaign manager to Abraham Lincoln. His grandfather and namesake; Adlai Stevenson I was the nation's vice president under the second Grover Cleveland term from 1893 to 1897 and ran unsuccessfully for that same position in 1900 with William Jennings Bryan. Lewis Stevenson, his father never held elective office but did hold the position of Secretary of State in Illinois from 1914 to 1917 and Al Smith had considered him as a running mate in 1928.

He grew up in Bloomington, Illinois, a city made famous on the old TV M*A*S*H by Stevenson's second cousin, McLean Stevenson who played Col. Henry Blake. After his junior year of high school, Stevenson left high school to attend University High School and then off to the Choate School, a preparatory school in Wallingford, Connecticut. This would be the same prep school that that Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. and John F. Kennedy attended. After graduation and his stint in the Navy Reserves; Stevenson attended college at Princeton where he earned a degree in literature and history. His father had pressured him to attend law school at Harvard, but finding the law to be uninteresting and having several failing grades Stevenson returned to Bloomington to write for the family newspaper. After speaking with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Stevenson found the idea of law interesting and attended classes at Northwestern where he earned his juris doctorate in 1926.

As the Great Depression was in full swing and Franklin D. Roosevelt being elected President, Stevenson took a job with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which was part of FDR's New Deal. He then took a job as chief attorney at the Federal Alcohol Control Administration after Prohibition was passed. The FACA was a subsidiary to the AAA where the activities of the alcohol industry were regulated. He would later, in 1945 be a delegate to the UN Charter meeting for President Harry S Truman.

Stevenson would be elected governor of Illinois in 1948, but unfortunately just weeks after the election he would divorce his wife. At the time, Illinois was a pretty politically corrupt state. As governor, Stevenson promoted police reforms. In addition he promoted less politically motivated hiring and made it so people were hired based on their merit and not how well connected they were. He would also crackdown on state gambling. During the Cold War, the state of Illinois was going to make a law stating that in order to get a government job, you would have to pledge a loyalty oath. As governor, Stevenson voted the bill.

In 1952, Stevenson had not sought the presidency, but President Truman insisted on he having the nomination. Adlai Stevenson and his running mate, Senator John Sparkman of Alabama went up against General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Richard M. Nixon. Stevenson and Sparkman were not just defeated by Eisenhower and Nixon, they were buried by them.

All of that said, Stevenson was renominated by the Democrats in 1956 for a rematch, but rather than picking his running mate, he decided to let the delegates at the Democratic National Convention decide who would run with him. It came down to four US senators: Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee. For a while and at the discouragement of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., it looked like Jack Kennedy could win the nomination. But in the end it was Stevenson's Chief Primary challenger, Estes Kefauver who won the contest. Robert F. Kennedy was so angry at the Democratic Party for not nominating his brother that he voted for Eisenhower and Nixon in November.
That loss was the best thing to happen to JFK. Not only did it introduce him to a national audience, but his being Catholic religion could not be blamed for another crushing loss for Stevenson to Eisenhower and paving the way for a run for the presidency in 1960.

After failing to get the nomination for a third time and after Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, Jack Kennedy nominated him to be his Ambassador to the United Nations. Stevenson's finest hour came in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when he went head to head with Russia's UN Ambassador Valerian Zorin where he was prepared to wait for his answer about Soviet missiles in Cuba "until hell freezes over."

Adlai Stevenson would collapse and die on July 14, 1965. He was 65 years old.

In life, Adlai Stevenson had a reputation for being an egghead. Harry Truman said that his biggest problem was that Stevenson spent too much time thinking about what he was going to say before saying it. He spent more time in Truman's opinion talking to college presidents than to cab drivers. But whatever your opinion is of Adlai Stevenson, if not for his off the cuff exchange in 1962, we might not be alive today to enjoy this collection.