California Crucible. Jonathan Bell

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СКАЧАТЬ Stevenson campaign of ‘52 brought in this large number of idealistic people who were just crazy about Stevenson…. Then they had to go out and create [the party] themselves, which they did, and started the Stevenson clubs and everything else.”¹⁴ There was no doubt that the “surge” for Stevenson's nomination was national in scope and born in part of a large amount of favorable coverage in the national print media, including Time and the Atlantic Monthly. To prominent ADA supporter Arthur Schlesinger, the Stevenson movement “indicates the extent to which the Stevenson candidacy is filling a political vacuum. The vacuum exists for professional politicians and liberals alike; and Stevenson combines geographical desirability, political strength and moral courage in a package which appeals equally to northern city bosses and to members of Americans for Democratic Action.”¹⁵ Stevenson had impressed the machine politicians and liberal intellectuals alike with his massive win in the 1948 governor's race in Illinois against a corrupt, reactionary incumbent Republican, and his record in the governor's mansion had been at least in the tradition of the New Deal, if not exactly radical. His campaign's eighteen-page report detailing his accomplishments in Springfield pointed to his support for increased public assistance grants, together with the fact that his “four-year public aid program has made available $128 million more for old age pensions, blind pensions, and aid to dependent children than was spent in the previous four years, but it is also a program of getting rid of the ‘cheaters' and of conserving public funds for those legitimately in need.”¹⁶ He had gained national attention for his controversial and widely admired veto of a hysterical loyalty oath bill passed in the Illinois State Legislature, memorably stating that in attempting to protect the nation against communist subversion Americans “must not burn down the house to kill the rats.”¹⁷ He cast himself as a morally upright crusader for standards in public life and as an arbiter of fairness in his oversight of public affairs. He supported a fair employment practices law for Illinois. He possessed a gift for rhetorical flamboyance that served him well in his political career. At a time when McCarthyism and the horrors of the day filled political headlines, he seemed the perfect antidote for American liberals: calmly rational, articulate in his defense of democracy and freedom in American life.

      Yet it is difficult to understand at first his massive appeal to the liberal movement in California. As his roll call of achievements, claiming a purge of “chiselers” from the relief rolls among them, demonstrated, Stevenson was hardly a typical standard bearer of the leftist tradition in American politics. He gathered round him during the campaign a distinguished group of political and intellectual advisers, among them economist John K. Galbraith, law professor Willard Wirtz, Harper's editor Jack Fischer, and David E. Bell, who would subsequently serve, as would Wirtz, in the Kennedy administration and philanthropic organizations such as the Ford Foundation. Yet he remained distrustful of the political left, worrying, as Galbraith recalled, “lest he had been taken over by radicals. We felt that he was insufficiently committed to the constituency and the policies that had brought the magnificent string of Democratic victories all the way from 1932 to 1948…. Stevenson's fear…was that he would be thought automatic in his political responses, a predictable voice for the liberal clichés of the New Deal and Fair Deal years.” Galbraith also noted Stevenson's social background and his affluent Chicago friends and neighbors. “They were not enamored of the Roosevelt or especially the Truman oratory, and they didn't wish to see their friend seduced…. Stevenson never fully escaped their hand.”¹⁸

      More seriously, his campaign's desire to hold the Democratic Party together nationwide, leading to his choosing Alabama senator John Sparkman as his running mate, suggested that the thorny question of race would loom large in 1950s Democratic politics. Stevenson would find that this fact would cause problems in California, where a civil rights movement was rapidly gathering steam in the early 1950s. New York representative Adam Clayton Powell was forthright in his attack on both main parties for retreating from their 1948 civil rights planks, noting that the Republicans had mentioned FEPC by name in their 1948 platform but had not in 1952, while the Democrats had also toned down their support for the civil rights of all. “I think the best description of it is the one that Clifton Utley, of NBC, gave me,” said Powell in an interview in the summer of 1952. “'Well,' he said, ‘this is a little bit to the left of the Republicans and a little bit to the right of the 1948 Democrats.'…. In this changing world, unless we keep pace, ethically with our material progress, all is lost. 1952 demands stronger planks than 1948.”¹⁹ Prominent Los Angeles African American newspaperwoman Charlotta Bass publicly abandoned mainstream party politics to embrace the by now moribund Progressive Party as their vice presidential candidate over the question of civil rights and her opposition to the shrill, politically debilitating rhetoric of the Cold War that dominated political debate. It was, she claimed, “my government that supports the segregation by violence practiced by a Malan in South Africa, sends guns to maintain a bloody French rule in Indo-China, gives money to help the Dutch repress Indonesia, props up Churchill's rule in the Middle East and over the colored people of Africa and Malaya…. I have fought and will continue to fight unceasingly for the rights and privileges of all people who are oppressed and who are denied their just share of the world's goods their labor produces.”²⁰ To Bass, like many African Americans a Republican until the New Deal shook the political certainties of the progressive era in California from their moorings, mainstream party politics had a long way to go on the civil rights question globally if Eisenhower and Stevenson represented the best choice available to people of color.²¹

      Stevenson may not have been the perfect standard-bearer for a revitalized left in places like California, but he benefited there from the state's intensely media-driven, celebrity politics that thrived on candidates, like Stevenson, who were able effortlessly to court the support of the national liberal press and to establish a media personality for themselves. As Thurman Arnold observed, California had grown so rapidly and was so vast that candidates who wanted the statewide vote had to rely on “personal campaigning, radio, and advertising,” all of which the Stevenson movement used with skill and ease.²² The boosting of Stevenson in publications such as the New Republic as the great hope for those disgusted by the erosion of civil liberties and the Republican Party's anti-New Deal cries of socialism and communism was attractive to the demoralized and poorly organized political left in California. In February the New Republic described his record as Governor of Illinois as “outstanding in reorganizing state government, increasing aid to schools, overhauling roads and road financing, improving welfare services, attacking gambling and corruption, working deftly to get the most from a Republican legislature.”²³ This media portrayal of Stevenson as a crusader for fairness and civil liberties chimed with the political zeitgeist for a political left reeling from the defeats of the previous few years.

      The use of California's media-driven, style-obsessed political world to create a groundswell of popular support for Stevenson was carefully orchestrated. The strategy of promoting a spectacle of massive crowds and enthusiastic volunteers provided much needed excitement for a demoralized liberal movement. Stevenson's publicity director carefully groomed the mushrooming Volunteer for Stevenson groups, ordering them to “augment in every possible way work being done by regular party organizations to create crowds along motorcade route and at speaking places. Use sound trucks, newspaper ads, radio and TV spots to the absolute limit of your budget. Handbills announcing [the] Governor's schedule should be printed and distributed on strategic street corners. Banners should be strung at every intersection along route. Placards and signs should be placed in store windows and telephone poles and lamp posts along the route of the motorcade.”²⁴ An officer of the “Hollywood for Stevenson-Sparkman Committee” told members they must attend “all political rallies and speeches in person. Remember that most major political meetings are televised and nationwide. Be in the audience. Recruit as many more people as you can…. Wear your button and display your Stevenson stickers.”²⁵ Stevenson's public appearances were carefully choreographed for television as well as live audiences, including a press meeting in San Francisco at which Stevenson was flanked by several actors, including Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. As the flash bulbs lit up the room local Stevenson club president Allen Rivkin was on hand “to see that the press doesn't murder our actors by throwing framed questions at them.”²⁶ If a СКАЧАТЬ