IP: Adlai Stevenson The last of the beautiful losers.

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

http://slate.msn.com/Assessment/00-06-30/Assessment.asp

Adlai Stevenson
The last of the beautiful losers.

By David Greenberg
David Greenberg writes Slate's "History Lesson" column and is working on a 
book about Richard Nixon's place in American politics and culture. Posted 
Friday, June 30, 2000, at 10:30 a.m. PT



Today we're quick to banish presidential losers—anyone got a forwarding 
address for Michael Dukakis? We exiled Walter Mondale to Japan and sighed 
in relief when Bill Bradley went into hiding. Even John McCain, who 
promised to evince some staying power in defeat, has faded with the onset 
of another critic of the system, Ralph Nader.

Yet one White House loser—a serial loser, at that—still haunts the 
political landscape: Adlai Stevenson. Every political season the pundits 
find some reason to resurrect him, invariably in a flattering light. (This 
week it was columnist William Raspberry's turn in the Washington Post.) 
Stevenson not only lost nobly; he made losing seem noble in and of itself.

Stevenson took two of the worst drubbings any presidential candidate has 
ever endured, by Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, yet the defeats didn't 
taint him. On the contrary, they enveloped him in a lasting mystique. In 
the hearts of liberals, intellectuals in particular, Stevenson became—and 
in our political mythology he remains—a hero who went down fighting the 
good fight.

But why did liberal intellectuals lionize Stevenson? He wasn't all that 
much of a liberal, nor really an intellectual. Harry Truman and John F. 
Kennedy, winners both, stood to the left of him (click here, if you don't 
believe it), and JFK was a more avid reader and a superior thinker. Could 
it be that Stevenson's loserdom is what earned him his halo?