I remember an anecdote from someone pointing out his intellectual elitism: “Vote for Stevenson. He’s better than you.”
Another one showed Stevenson onstage with a notable hole in the bottom of his shoe. “See, he’s just like the working class.” Someone else saw it and said, “Don’t let this happen to you.”
As you know, I have a poor opinion of Eisenhower as President. He had 20 years of destructive Dem policies to roll back and he did nothing. The confiscatory tax rates alone (which had to wait for JFK). The Communist infiltration of the government and institutions, et al. Ike could’ve been a Dem and differed little in his governance, only that it left the GOP so weak that it would take until 1980 for the Senate to come back and 4 decades for the House. I’d have rather risked Stevenson to have prevented a ghastly decades of uncontested Dem legislative and state control.
IIRC, Stevenson had probably the second most dramatic death not involving an assassination of Presidential candidates or VPs (behind Rockefeller’s dying in delicto flagrante with his newly-installed penis pump keeping him saluting his mistress after he shuffled off our mortal coil). He dropped dead in the street of a massive heart attack supposedly after nights of passionate sex with Katherine Graham. Well, at least Rocky had better taste in girls.
There was suspicion that Stevenson was assassinated via drug.
A lot of people associate the 1950s with peace and prosperity, before everything went to hell in the 1960s. It would seem like the public shouldn’t have a reason to turn against the Republicans in that decade if times were so good. What do you think explains it? Perhaps the 1950s weren’t as peaceful as they are portrayed? How did Ike screw things up?