Posted on 04/12/2004 6:33:42 PM PDT by Punditstar
Adlai Stevenson
From America and Americans by John Steinbeck:
When I first met Mr. Roosevelt he had been President for some time. I said, "Mr. President, I'm the one American who doesn't want a Government job."
He laughed and said, "In my experience you're the only one."
Mr. Stevenson, I still don't want a Government job.
A year and a half ago, I had never heard of Mr. Stevenson. A year ago I knew his name and only remembered it because of the unusual first name. Until the convention I had never heard nor read a Stevensonian word. And now we hurry through dinner to hear him on radio or to see him on television. We fight over the morning paper with the "full text." And I can't remember ever hearing a political speech with pleasure- sometimes with admiration, yes, but never with pleasure.
I was in Europe at the convention time. Europe was, as nearly as we could tell, pretty solidly behind Eisenhower (* Of course, they should've been--Ike saved them). So was I, as solid as possible. Then gradually the newspapers in France and England and Italy began to print remarks by a man named Stevenson, first a phrase, then a sentence, then a paragraph. When I left England very recently nearly ever newspaper was printing a daily Stevenson box on the front page. Europe has switched to Stevenson. So have I. And I have been drawn only by his speeches. They are unique in my experience and from the reaction of the audiences- and I have only seen them on television- the speeches are a new experience to everyone. The listeners set up no hullabaloo. The speaker is never canceled out by emotional roars of inattentive applause. People seem to resent applause because in the applause they might miss something. I've read that the meetings are quiet because the audiences are not moved. then I've watched them leaning forward, their eyes never leaving the speaker's face and turning irritably toward any distraction. They're listening, all right, listening as an audience does to fine theater or fine music or fine thinking.
It is one of our less admirable traits that we always underrate the intelligence of the "people." The speaker never includes himself as one of the "people." It is always those others, The story is told of a movie producer who argued that people would not understand a part of a film he was previewing. His nine-year- old boy spoke up, saying," Dad, I understand it."
The producer whirled on him and shouted, "We are not making pictures for nine-year-old boys."
Now I read in the opposition press that Stevenson is talking over the heads of the people. I have read the speeches not once but several times. The words are small and direct, the ideas are clear. I can understand them and I don't think I am more intelligent than the so-called "people." I have come to the conclusion that the fear in Stevenson's opponents is not that the people don't understand him, but that they do.
Throughout our whole history we have been in favor of humor. To be against humor is to be against mother love. But I read now that humor has been made an official sin. Anything effective is a sin to your opponent. Traditionally, political humor has followed a pattern. The speaker made a joke which had been carefully inspected to see that it had nothing whatever to do with the subject he intended to discuss. The flat little joke got a titter of laughter and the speaker knew that his audience was warmed up. He flopped without transition into the body of his speech, hoping that for a few sentences his listeners would still be listening for another joke. Audiences are pretty clever, though, and they rarely fall for this method.
Stevenson has changed the technique. he draws his humor from his subject. His jokes, far from obscuring his message, enlighten it. This makes him doubly dangerous to an opponent, for his listeners not only listen, they remember and they repeat. I don't recall any other speeches that have made people unsatisfied with a digest. We want the thing in the man's own words.
Being a writer, I have had a bit of trouble here and there, and it has been my experience that when I get accused of some particularly gaudy sin, my accuser has felt some kind of knife and is striking back. I can understand why the opposition hates Mr. Stevenson's humor. They are very busy licking their own wounds. In our whole political history I can recall only one man who used humor effectively. That was Abraham Lincoln and he, too, was excoriated by his opponents. In his time also humor was a sin.
There is a further devastating effect of the Stevensonian speech, which his opponents cannot admit. He makes their efforts sound so ill-conceived, clumsily thought-out and dull. The weighty sarcasms, moral indignations, the flaggy patriotisms and dingy platitudes which have perfectly good in other elections are covered with gray dust in this year. It is very hard to follow a great act with a Minsky blackout.
Now and then a question arises, Does Stevenson write his own speeches? I don't know, but as a writer I know that only one man writes those speeches. There may be people working on ideas and organization and so forth, but I am sure that either Stevenson writes every word of the speeches or some other man writes every word of them. Individuality is in every line. I don't think it could be imitated.
I have dwelt only on Mr. Stevenson's speeches because that is all I know about the man. There are only four approaches in knowing a man. What does he look like? What has he done? what does he say- in other words think- and last, and most important, as a conditioner- what has he done for me?
I know Mr. Stevenson only from pictures of him, from reading his history and from his speeches. I was for Eisenhower, knew about him and liked him. I did not switch to Stevenson because of physical appearance, surely. Neither candidate is any great shucks in that department. I could not have changed on a basis of past achievements because Eisenhower's contribution is second to none in the world and certainly overshadows the record of the Governor of Illinois, no matter how good it may have been. I have switched entirely because of the speeches.
A man cannot think muddled and write clear. Day by day it has seemed to me that Eisenhower's speeches have become formless and mixed up and uncertain. I don't know why this is. Maybe he is being worried and mauled by too many dissident advisers who in fighting each other are destroying their candidate. Eisenhower seems like a punch drunk fighter who comes out of his corner on wavery legs and throws his first punch at the referee. Again, Eisenhower seems to have lost his ability to take any kind of stand on any subject. We're pretty sure that he still favors children or dogs but that maybe he would like the states to take them over, too- anything to avoid making a decision. He is rather firm on those issues which are still handled by the Deity and he has a sense of relief that this is so. (* This sounds very familair.)
Stevenson, on the other hand, has touched no political, economic or moral subject on which he has not taken a clear and open stand even to the point of bearding selfish groups to their face.
I do not know, but I can imagine the pressures on candidates for the Presidency.(* More than planning D-Day??) They must be dreadful, but they must be equally dreadful for both candidates. With equal pressures we have seen in a pitiful few months the Eisenhower mind crumble into uncertainty, retire into generalities, fumble with friendships and juggle alliances. At the same time Stevenson has moved serenely on, clarifying his position, holding to his line and never being drawn nor driven from his nongeneralized ideals.
And if the pressures on a candidate are powerful, how much more so must they be on a President? (* Ike was the SAC in Europe during WWII, it's laughable that Steinbeck could suggest that he couldn't handle the pressure.) I find I am for the man I think can take the pressures best and can handle them without split loyalties, expedient friendships or dead animals- cats or albatrosses. In a word I think Stevenson is more durable, socially politically and morally. Neither candidate has or is likely to do anything to or for me personally. And I can't hurt or help either of them. As a writer I love the clear, clean writing of Stevenson. As a man I like his intelligent, humorous, logical, civilized mind. (* He's no Deity worshipping guy.) And I strongly suspect what we can't possibly know until November. Americans are real mean when they go behind that voting-booth curtain. But I suspect there are millions just like me who have switched to Stevenson as the greater man and as potentially the greater President.
** This explains why Leftist intellectuals and Hollywoodistas are in the cult of Fidel. Castro's six hour speeches off the top of his cabeza are just too fabulous.
Ike could wage and win the Crusade in Europe, but ,to the Left, that's small stuff compared to the speech giving wizardry of Adlai.
The Left still loves Kennedy because he was so good at delivering Sorenson's speeches. It is odd that they would hate the Great Communicator so much, but they did.
Bush isn't a good speaker and the Left hate him for it. Luckily for Bush, Kerry is no Adlai or Kennedy--Kerry is lousy on the stump and all of his speeches were already given by Gore in 2000. Unfortunately for Bush, the Leftists at least gave Ike a hearing in 1952.
Today's Left are still self described anti-fascists, they just have forgotten what fascism is. The Left is only in the business of opposing Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Halliburton.
The barbarians of Fallujah aren't considered fascists in the minds of today's Left-- they're "insurgents." If the Mujahadeen of Fallujah, or whatever that group of killers calls itself, is savvy enough to have a leader who has public speaking chops, they should get him on global media at once. The Left loves a good performance. With politics being globalized, I suspect the ABB rule applies to him as well.
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