Flashback Friday: Adlai Again!

Dismissing the Democratic primaries as “meaningless popularity contests” and suggesting that John F. Kennedy wasn’t necessarily the first choice of most Democrats, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a beloved figure in her party’s liberal wing, emerged as the leading spokesperson for a movement to draft Adlai E. Stevenson for the presidency at the 1960 Democratic national convention, which was held at the Los Angeles Sports Memorial Arena fifty years ago this week.

Remaining aloof from the primaries and most of the pre-convention jockeying that spring and summer, the erudite former governor of Illinois had stated repeatedly that he personally liked all of the Democratic candidates for president that year, but had never completely closed the door on the possibility of being drafted at the party’s national convention that summer.

To the delight of his supporters, many of whom had claimed a “groundswell” for their candidate — an outpouring of support which simply wasn’t visible to most detached observers in the weeks and months prior to the convention — the witty and high-minded Stevenson finally gave his supporters the “green light” in a telegram to Eleanor Roosevelt in early June, telling the 75-year-old former First Lady that he was ready and willing to mount a third campaign for the White House.

That’s all the encouragement they needed.

Most pundits believed Stevenson would have difficulty garnering 75 votes on the first ballot — 761 votes were needed for the nomination — and the most his supporters could hope for would be a deadlocked convention in which the Illinoisan could eventually emerge victorious on a later ballot, but even that possibility seemed remote.

Inside and outside the convention hall was a different story. It was clearly Stevenson Country, as a steady stream of his followers marched outside the Memorial Sports Arena throughout the proceedings, while the galleries were literally packed with his supporters who cheered wildly at every mention of his name. Handmade Stevenson signs appeared everywhere.

Stevenson’s moment came when Eugene J. McCarthy, Minnesota’s junior senator who later toppled a sitting President of his own party as an antiwar candidate in 1968, gave his nominating speech — one of the greatest convention speeches of all time.

“Do not turn away from this man,” McCarthy urged the delegates, reminding them that Adlai Stevenson had always talked sense to the American people — and would do so again as the party’s standard-bearer in 1960:

“Do not reject this man. He has fought gallantly. He has fought courageously. He has fought honorably. In 1952 in the great battle. In 1956 he fought bravely. And between those years and since, he has stood off the guerilla attacks of his enemies and the sniping attacks of those who should have been his friends. Do not reject this man who, his enemies said, spoke above the heads of the people, but they said it only because they didn’t want the people to listen. He spoke to the people. He moved their minds and stirred their hearts, and this was what was objected to. Do not leave this prophet without honor in his own party. Do not reject his man.

“I submit to you a man who is not the favorite son of any one state. I submit to you the man who is the favorite son of fifty states.

“And not of fifty states but the favorite son of every country in the world in which he is known — the favorite son in every country in which he is unknown but in which some spark, even though unexpressed, of desire for liberty and freedom still lives.

“This favorite son I submit to you: Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois.”

Bedlam ensued as Stevenson’s supporters swarmed the convention floor, marching through the aisles and shouting for their candidate. It was a stampede rarely seen in American politics — and nearly caught hold.

McCarthy’s dazzling nominating speech had obviously triggered something much deeper than mere nostalgia for the party’s two-time champion. He hit a chord that rang true to everybody inside the convention hall — and beyond.

“The frenzied scene was reminiscent of the gallery drive that roared Wendell L. Willkie into the Republican presidential nomination in 1940,” observed a reporter for the New York Times.

The chants of “We Want Adlai” mirrored the raucous “We Want Willkie” demonstration that reverberated throughout Philadelphia’s Convention Hall twenty years earlier, but sadly there would be no miracle in Los Angeles as there had been in the City of Brotherly Love in the summer of Willkie‘s astonishing nomination.

There was, however, a narrow window of opportunity for Stevenson and he might — just might — have prevailed if the balloting had started immediately after McCarthy’s eloquent and moving nominating speech. Even some of Kennedy supporters put down their signs and joined in the wildly emotional twenty-five minute demonstration — the second prolonged and frenzied outburst for Stevenson in as many days.

Pandemonium erupted on the convention floor a day earlier when Stevenson first entered the hall to take his seat with the Illinois delegation.

“I know whom you are going to nominate,” he told the convention after fighting his way past unruly delegates, pushing and tugging at him, to reach the podium. “It will be the last survivor.”

The man who was twice defeated by Eisenhower said that he was “deeply touched” by the outpouring of affection.

In both instances, it took Florida Gov. LeRoy Collins, the convention’s permanent chair, seemingly forever to bring the tumultuous demonstrations to a halt.

Alas, the nominating speeches dragged on for another hour and a half as the names of New Jersey Gov. Robert B. Meyner, U.S. Sen. George Smathers of Florida and several other favorite-son candidates were placed in nomination.

Norman Mailer, writing in Esquire a few months later, described the ninety-minute interval as “a fatal lapse of time because Stevenson had perhaps a chance to stop Kennedy if the voting had begun on the echo of the last cry for him, but in an hour and a half depression crept in again and emotions spent, the delegates who had wavered were rounded into line.”

Despite the best efforts of Eugene McCarthy and Eleanor Roosevelt, who gave a spirited seconding speech, ninety minutes proved to be a lifetime for Adlai Stevenson and his dream of occupying the Oval Office.

Kennedy was nominated on the first ballot, receiving 806 votes to 409 for Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson and 86 and Missouri’s Stuart Symington. Stevenson received 79 ½ votes.

Hubert H. Humphrey, who lost hard-fought primaries to Kennedy in Wisconsin and West Virginia before making a last-second sentimental switch to Stevenson, received 41 ½ votes.

Stevenson, who yearned for the role of Secretary of State in the Kennedy Administration — a post for which he was more than amply qualified — served faithfully as JFK’s ambassador to the UN before succumbing to a massive heart attack on July 14, 1965, while in London. He was sixty-five.