Book Review                                                      

Adlai Stevenson II was governor of Illinois from 1949 to 1953.

Stevenson II: A bridge between Democratic eras

By CECILIA CORNELL

Jeff Broadwater. Adlai Stevenson and American Politics: The Odyssey of a Cold War Liberal. New York: Twayne, 1994. Pp. 291 with illustrations, chronology, notes, bibliographic essay and index. $27.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Even in Illinois, one might be forgiven for asking if the world needs another biography of Adlai E. Stevenson II, former governor. Democratic presidential candidate and United States ambassador to the United Nations. Historian Jeff Broadwater convincingly argues that "Now, almost 50 years after Stevenson entered public life, it is time for a reassessment." His new book, Adlai Stevenson and American Politics: The Odyssey of a Cold War Liberal, provides a useful addition to the literature on this important contemporary leader.

Broadwater's biography is concise and analytical. He is less interested in chronicling Stevenson's day-to-day activities than in examining the forces that shaped him, the sources of his successes and failures, and the nature of his legacy. He elucidates these issues in a crisp and readable narrative of Stevenson's personal and public life, with emphasis upon the latter. Broadwater is better able than past biographers both to place Stevenson's career within the historical context of the post-World War II era and to define his place within the liberal political tradition. Furthermore, the end of the Cold War offers a new perspective on Stevenson's role in such controversies as the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War.

Broadwater attempts to correct excesses he sees in other studies. He finds most earlier biographies unduly influenced by their authors' affection for Stevenson. Broadwater likes his subject, but offers a balanced approach, highlighting Stevenson's weaknesses as well as his strengths. He also argues that previous studies exaggerated the importance of certain factors in shaping the governor's life, such as his having "neurotic, eccentric parents," his accidental and fatal shooting of his cousin when Stevenson was 12 and his losing his Libertyville home to fire in 1937. In some cases, the author's assessments are so well-tempered that one wonders if anything truly affected Stevenson.

Broadwater returns to the enduring questions about "the best president America never had." Why did a one-term governor who failed in two presidential races and who was "markedly out of touch with the cares and values of ordinary Americans" continue to capture the imagination of so many? The answer, he posits, lies in Stevenson's basic decency. Decency and integrity characterized his public life, particularly his campaign for good government and his opposition to McCarthyism. Those terms, however, appear less applicable to his private life, given his distance from his family, his extramarital affairs and his relationships with women after his 1949 divorce.

Stevenson is remembered as an intellectual, a reputation that, the author notes, grew more from his "literate, poetic speeches" than the originality of his political thought. He emerges as surprisingly superficial, neither reading nor thinking deeply. Broadwater also challenges the traditional view that Stevenson was paralyzed by indecision. His apparent indecisiveness was usually the result of an exaggerated perfectionism, a determination to get his own way and a desire "to conceal

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his very real ambition from others, and perhaps from himself."

The book's most important contribution is its effort to portray Stevenson as a bridge within the Democratic Party between the eras of Franklin D. Roosevelt and of George McGovern. "Normally frugal in matters of public finance, clearly hostile to communism, yet committed to the Democratic Party as the great instrument of reform in American history, Stevenson came to embody the Cold War liberalism of his day," Broadwater writes. He embraced "a liberalism that stressed honest government and individual liberty over fundamental social reform." He refused to appeal to special interests. He was unwilling to test his intellectual commitment to civil rights, the most pressing issue of his time, in the political arena. Broadwater concludes that "however conservative he may seem in retrospect, Stevenson probably leaned about as far left as a politician with national ambitions could in post-World War II America." That statement begs the question of whether Stevenson was willing to move farther left. Evidence indicates he was not.

Professor Broadwater refutes those who have viewed the governor as a tragic figure. Yet, in the end, one is struck by Stevenson's disappointments: an unhappy marriage, a distant relationship with his children, a mother and a wife who suffered with mental illnesses, a legal career he found unfulfilling. The only elective office he held, governor of Illinois, forced him to focus on domestic policy rather than foreign policy, which he strongly preferred. His ambitions for national office proved fruitless. The book concludes that he was the successful governor of an important state, one of only a dozen men in the 20th century to be twice nominated for president by a major party, the voice of the mainstream liberal opinion of his day, and the most widely respected emissary ever sent by the United States to the United Nations. That is his legacy. That should be enough. One wonders if it was enough for Adlai Stevenson.

Cecilia Cornell is assistant professor of history at Sangamon State University, where she offers courses and conducts research on U.S. foreign policy, particularly the origins of the Cold War.