But after observing the Democratic presidential primaries to date, I’m starting to wonder if Hillary R. Clinton is the politico who ultimately will fill the Stevenson niche.
It’s not a perfect match of stories. After all, Stevenson twice won the Democratic nomination to run for president – losing both general elections to Dwight Eisenhower.
By comparison, Hillary may fail to even get her political party’s presidential nomination, as Obama is turning out to be a much more competitive campaigner than she originally anticipated.
Both Clinton and Stevenson are lawyers who come from political families. Hillary is a former first lady of both the United States and of Arkansas, and some people say she was the intellectual support system for her husband, Bill, when he held those elective posts. Stevenson is the grandson of the original Adlai E. Stevenson – who served as vice president during the second presidential term of Grover Cleveland.
Not enough people were willing to reject the ideals of Herbert Hoover to take a chance on Adlai E. Stevenson II as president.
Hillary is using her husband’s knowledge and experience in the ways of campaigning to boost her campaign, and much of the support she gets is from people who are hoping that a second Clinton as president will help rehabilitate the way history remembers the first Clinton.
Adlai II also had help in getting ahead politically, although he didn’t use just his grandfather’s knowledge. Living in what was then the rural community of Libertyville (it’s now ridiculously suburban in character), Stevenson was a product of the regular Democratic organization in Cook County (the dreaded “Chicago Machine” that plays a significant role in the nightmares of many a Republican).
Back in the 1940s, Stevenson was a Chicago attorney with political aspirations who ultimately got ahead in local politics because, despite his liberal convictions on many social issues, he was willing to go along with the Chicago Democratic politicos.
Machine pols supported Stevenson when he ran for Illinois governor in 1948 because his liberal talk on the electoral ticket made them look good. His credentials made it appear as though the organization cared about social issues and the welfare of the public, but he wasn’t so obnoxious as to push too hard to achieve liberal goals.
As an example, it’s not like Stevenson was willing to pressure Southern Democrats to end “Jim Crow” practices against African-American people. He took the line of many Northern Democrats (including Franklin D. Roosevelt) in accepting segregation as “the way things are” in the South.
Similar things can be said about Hillary, who talks liberal at times but is trying to downplay the liberal ties of her youth while portraying herself as the candidate of organized labor and rural Democrats who might not care much about the social issues.
Stevenson was a man with a liberal aura who was never able to translate it into electoral votes. He couldn’t win the vote majority in his home state of Illinois in either of his presidential campaigns.
Hillary is the woman who wants to be the first female president. But the liberal elements who would normally eat up such a storyline can’t get enthused about her campaign (largely because many of them are too busy chanting “Oh-bah-mah”).
Stevenson was the original politico for whom the phrase, “you’ll always be the future of the Democratic party,” was used. Hillary will be the latest.
I find it ironic that Caro
line Kennedy Schlossberg (Who can believe such a lovely woman can inspire such a vapid Neil Diamond pop song?) says Obama is the candidate who gives her a sense of inspiration in the same way an older generation has told her that her father, John F. Kennedy, inspired them in the early 1960s.
It was Caroline who swayed the Kennedy family (including all-powerful family head Uncle Teddy) to give the Obama campaign their support and a sense of historic aura that ’08 Obama may be the follow-up to ’60 Kennedy.
If Obama beats Clinton in the Democratic primaries, it will put to rest her dreams of being president – unless she becomes some sort of renegade candidate of the future who runs outspoken, token campaigns for the sake of slashing at front-runners.
It was also Kennedy with his inspiring aura that killed off once-and-for-all any dreams Stevenson had of someday becoming president of the United States.
In early 1960, Stevenson hedged his bets and did not actively campaign. However, he eventually changed his mind and for a time considered going to the Democratic convention in Los Angeles with hopes of swaying enough people to give him a third crack at running for president.
By then, the original Mayor Daley had given his support to fellow Irish-American Kennedy. Richard J. Daley let Stevenson know he would not get another presidential run, even though Daley was influential at getting Adlai a second crack at running for president in 1956 (Daley’s predecessors in the Chicago “machine” got Adlai his first nomination in 1952).
Should Obama manage to defeat Clinton, then go on to win the November general election, it would be wise for him to take a lesson from history and find a significant role for Hillary Clinton in his administration. I realize she will not be Obama’s nominee for vice president. But someone of her knowledge, skills and experience should be put to use.
Kennedy had enough sense to look past any previous confrontations between the two, and he made Stevenson his choice for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
It was in that role that the one-time Illinois governor had his greatest moment in public service, when he stood his ground with the Soviets and Cubans when the former tried in 1962 to install missiles on the Caribbean island nation just 120 miles from Miami and within reach of many U.S. cities.
It was because of Stevenson’s tough talk and determination that the United States gained the moral high ground among the nations of the world in what most of us now remember as the Cuban Missile Crisis – the closest our civilization to date has ever come to nuclear annihilation.
I can’t help but wonder if Hillary is destined for comparable greatness in some role of negotiating peace out of the bungled mess in the Middle East that has been exacerbated by the presidency of George Bush the younger.
There may even be one more parallel, although it will be years before we learn for sure whether there is a similarity.
Stevenson’s son, Adlai E. III, also went into politics, ultimately serving three six-year terms as a United States senator from Illinois, and coming incredibly close in 1982 to following in his father’s footsteps as governor.
Chelsea Clinton is still a bit young (she’s not yet 28) to be running for office. But she has always had a more serious demeanor that most people her age, even those who are related to political people. Can anyone seriously envision Chelsea doing anything comparable to Ron Reagan Jr. when he danced in his underwear on national television as a parody of Tom Cruise in “Risky Business?”
Chelsea in Congress some day could very well complete the political comparisons between Hillary and Adlai.
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EDITOR’S NOTES: Here is just one of the 58,500 entries that turn up on Google (http://www.slate.com/id/2178075) when one searches for the phrase, “Barack Obama Adlai Stevenson.”
Obama is not opposed to citing the memory of his home state’s former (1949-52) governor (http://obama.senate.gov/speech/050411-opening_statement_of_senator_b/) when it serves his purposes.
Stevenson’s son, himself a former U.S. senator from Illinois, reminisces (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E7DD143BF934A35751C0A9659C8B63) about his father’s accomplishments.
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