TLIAW: Camelot Lost

[Enigma-Conundrum]

*****​

When it comes to the men on white horses who dot American history, John Fitzgerald Kennedy ranks highly among them. There’s plenty of reasons why this might be the case. Maybe it’s the seminal moments of his presidency: his steady leadership through the Cuban Missile Crisis, his advocacy for civil rights for Black Americans despite the perception of confronting the “Solid South” as political suicide, and his throwing down the gauntlet in the Space Race. Maybe it’s the cultural shorthand for his image. “Kennedyesque” is practically every politico’s byword for exuberance, youth, and charisma; John himself the inevitable comparison for any would-be leader with these qualities. Maybe it’s the mythology that’s followed in his wake. His assassination was a sore trauma for many, a moment that lived on in countless minds at the time. A combination of glowing histories of his unfinished term like Arthur Schlesinger’s “A Thousand Days” and the strife that followed throughout the sixties has led many, especially those who were young at the time, to view that first wound on the national psyche as the inciting incident. Maybe it’s all of these feeding an intense nostalgia. Things were better when President Kennedy was in office, they say. It was Camelot.

This is precisely where @Oliveia and I’s interests come in. Alternate history surrounding John F. Kennedy is hardly a trail left unblazed. It’s perhaps one of the most common America-centric bits of the genre, and so much focuses on how he’d handle the cruelties of the decade he promised new leadership for. Here, we’re not particularly focused on a longer life for Kennedy. Many words have been spilled on this, ranging from depressing realism to pure escapism. In their own way, all of these are influenced by the myth. We chose to take the moment of idealized perfection that an entire generation views the Kennedy years as and strip it away entirely. This isn’t a world where Camelot survived, nor will it be one where that interminable villain of American history Kennedy is often contrasted with, Richard Milhous Nixon, wins the first battle on behalf of the Orthogonians. The Kennedy machinations in this world will have collapsed a year before the convention. This is a world where, come 1961, Camelot was little more than the dream of a bitter old patriarch in Hyannisport. That is our goal.

Or, if that justification for this overindulgence doesn’t satisfy, I offer you the words of Graham Chapman: “On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”

 

[Oliveia]

And with my friend’s very flowery and beautiful introduction out of the way, let me provide a bit more of a technical question-and-answer.

Q: So, how is this going to work?
A: This is not going to be too dissimilar from “All Along the Watchtower” or “What It Took” by Vidal and Enigma—in fact, this was first pitched by Vidal as a three-way, but he got too busy with work-stuff. Essentially, we alternate presidents, never knowing the direction our co-author is going*

Q: What’s with that asterisk?
A: Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that—well, more lax anyways. You’re about to get the backlog. We started this project a month or two back and finally have enough of a backlog to start posting this for-realsies. We also might have, eh, collaborated a little bit. We’re not going into each-other’s turns entirely blind, that’s all. Sorry Enigma, I had to ruin the mystique a little.

Q: Is there a POD?
A: This was initially pitched as “WI JFK was Stevenson’s VP in 1956 instead of Kefauver?” by Vidal, but Enigma and I are perfectionists and the idea that there’d even be a little variance from IRL and TTL was enough for us to avoid mentioning it. If you want a concrete POD, that’s what you can work off of—I edited my first post to be vague on purpose!

Q: How often are you going to update?
A: Because of the backlog, we can pretty reliably say around twice a week presuming we keep the momentum up -- Saturday/Sunday and then Wednesday! We might not be able to wholly keep up once we're out of backlog but we're gonna try like hell!

Q: And who are you, by the way?
A: Oh, right, I’m a bit of a lurker on the site. Just wait until January—oops! That’s my cue, gotta get this all up and tidy. See you on the other end! Be ready for The Election of 1960 and make sure to have fun! Here we go!

 

[Taunay]

Can't wait to see more!

 

[Oliveia]

35. Adlai Stevenson II (Democratic-IL)
January 20, 1961 - July 14, 1964

“Eggheads of the World arise — I was even going to add that you have nothing to lose but your yolks.” [1]​

Publicly, Adlai Stevenson was insistent that he was not interested in running a third time—although he would gladly accept the nominee if he were drafted. Nobody bought the story, and they knew he wanted it. Wanted it badly.

When he called Chicago mayor and political operator Richard Daley asking if the Illinois selection were willing and able to pledge their support behind him, Daley begrudgingly agreed to whip the votes. Who else was there, really? The Democratic Party had had two rising stars looking towards the race in 1960, both of them having duked it out for the vice presidential slot just four years prior: Estes Kefauver and John F. Kennedy.

Kefauver wanted to be in the running, and had prepared a bill in ‘57 that would draw the press’ attention and act as the perfect vehicle towards finally—finally—securing the nomination. This bill, a federal switchblade ban, died almost immediately. His Senate colleagues had long grown tired of presidential grandstanding and what was supposed to be an explosive entrance into the new decade ended up the weak sputtering of a dying engine. In 1959, Kefauver backed out of a bid, and spent the remaining four years of his life in the Senate. Finally content with his political career, the Tennessee senator was finally able to attract the admiration of his coworkers, and his final years before passing away at the age of 60 were spent developing a fruitful legislative agenda.

Kennedy, too, wanted to be in the running, but unlike his one-time vice presidential rival, chose to drum up support with a tour of Western Europe in ‘59, in the hope of cementing himself as the internationally recognized frontrunner. It was, initially, a successful operation, the charismatic young senator shaking hands with Prime Ministers MacMillan and Debré, Presidents Valera and De Gaulle. It all seemed like it was going perfectly, until the rumors started to drift out. Apparently, while touring France, the frontrunner had had a run-in with a French lady. A very pretty French lady. Indeed, the senator’s scheduling showed him to be elusive a fair few nights. The idea of John F. Kennedy shacking up with a French mistress immediately caught the public’s attention, and already the façade of the everyman John Doe had cracked and the public began seeing him as a womanizing King John. It was damaging, although not necessarily unrecoverable, until Bobby Kennedy spoke to the press. The bullish Kennedy brother was recorded as shouting “It’s all lies! Fabricated by the machines of Stevenson or—or [Lyndon] Johnson to try to discredit us!” Future historians would note that this startling outburst was a rather calm accusation, as behind closed doors he promised to “destroy” who was behind these lies. When the alleged mistress came forward and revealed that she was pregnant, Kennedy the Candidate finally broke his silence on the matter and revealed that the accusations were true, and in a speech famously gaffed that it was a “crime of passion.” Despite apocrypha to the contrary, the public did not in fact think that John F. Kennedy had committed murder, but the poor wording and walking back of flippant denials by the Kennedy campaign sunk the Massachusetts dynast’s prospects, and John F. Kennedy never lived up to his father’s lofty vision of a President Kennedy.

There were other bids, of course, but most of them were relatively subdued. Lyndon Johnson, the Senate Majority Leader, made a weak bid for the nomination. He refused to spend too much time campaigning nor too much time hunting for the bid, with some postulating that this stemmed from a fearful recognition of a potential political loss. He was popular with the party establishment but had a tough time channeling that support into delegates. He was distant and imposing, nowhere near as charismatic as the fading stars of Kennedy and Kefauver. That base of starry-eyed dreamers would not find a candidate to flock to. There was Hubert Humphrey, the Minnesota senator, but his campaign apparatus was too underfunded, his style too rustic. He had a few impressive primary wins under his belt, but not enough to secure the nomination. There were others, too, like Stuart Symington, Al Gore, and Wayne Morse, who had potential but nonetheless never broke through.

By the time the Convention met in Los Angeles, nobody was quite sure how it would go. Humphrey had performed admirably in the primaries, but the dejected dreamers of Camelot didn’t turn out and favorite sons were able to win out in a few of the Great Lakes states. Likewise, Johnson had the support of the establishment, but he was not approachable by any measure. There were, too, the drafted candidates and the favorite sons—Governor Brown in California, Senator Smathers in Florida, and of course Governor Stevenson of Illinois. The Convention floor was divided amongst these candidates. Humphrey was too pro-civil rights for the Southern delegates, who flocked to Johnson; Johnson was too unfriendly with labor for the Northern delegates, who stuck by Humphrey. The first ballot was a draw, and who would end up the winner was anyone’s guess.

That was when Mayor Daley got the call. Illinoian delegates had mostly voted in line with Humphrey, but between the ballots it had become clear that a compromise candidate was needed. Some floated Symington, who had netted the endorsement of President Truman, but he was too pro-civil rights for the Southern delegates; others proposed Al Gore, who was widely seen as too much of a flip-flopper on the issue of civil rights for either faction of the party. Therefore, all eyes settled on the elephant in the room: Adlai Stevenson. The Southern party bosses practically saw him as one of their own, the past two elections seeing the Illinoian solidly entrench himself in the Solid South; the Catholic party bosses of the big Northern cities felt much the same, especially as he resecured the tepid approval of Boss Daley. Thus, the inoffensive compromise known as Adlai Stevenson II was successfully launched into his third bid for the White House.

The press made the obvious historical comparison: William Jennings Bryan, another perennial Democratic candidate who, the press hypothesized, would similarly never ascend into the White House. A few cartoonists took to revamping Harper's Weekly’s “One Hundred Years Hence” cartoon, replacing the long-bearded populist Democrat with a spoiled egg, a grinning facsimile of the Illinois governor’s face impressed upon it, swarming with flies, a billboard reading “STEVENSON FOR PRESIDENT—2060!” as Uncle Sam looked on in bemusement. Democrats similarly had some fun with the repetition—blue and yellow buttons declaring “THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM!” sprouted from the chests of Democratic voters nearly the moment the 1960 Convention drew to a close.

Republicans returned in kind, with slogans like “I’M FOR NIXON” and “NIXON NOW!” The vice president had been nominated in a cakewalk, only facing token opposition from New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller from the moderate wing. The oddball maverick senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, did not challenge Nixon’s nomination but did cry out at the Republican Convention at Chicago that it was high time for the conservative wing to “take back” the party. Nixon did consider placating the radical wing by nominating conservative Walter Judd, but decided to follow President Eisenhower’s advice and choose a member of the Boston Brahmin, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

The election of 1960 was not one of particular glamor. The promise of radically new politics to start the new decade had failed, and neither candidate seemed particularly exciting. Nixon was younger, sure, but he lacked some of the charisma that people wanted (“The Republican party makes even its young men seem old,” quipped Adlai). The year saw the first televised debates in American history, utilizing the explosively popular medium that had taken over America over the past decade. In that first debate, famously, Richard Nixon appeared haggard and tired, while Adlai—not quite the looker either—appeared stoic and inquisitive. Neither had the charisma that had attached itself to the bygone John Kennedy, but Stevenson simply seemed more presidential. He stood tall, spoke eloquently. However, that wasn’t enough to win.

In truth, Stevenson’s victory in 1960 was less about his victory so much as it was about Richard Nixon’s failing. Both Nixon and Stevenson embarked on cross-country campaigning (technically, Nixon was aping Stevenson’s style here, as the candidate from Illinois had trekked across the country in 1956), but only Nixon got an injury-turned-infection that pulled him off the campaign trail for two weeks. Stevenson was mocked as a perennial candidate by the press, who seemed allergic to not combining the word “bid” with the adjective “quixotic.” Nixon, however, was not mocked by the press so much as he fought with the press, and President Eisenhower wasn’t helping things. Likable Ike had spent most of his administration apathetic towards his vice president. The General was not a party man, and Nixon was. A famous quip about this from the President circulated through the airwaves, as after being asked by a reporter if he “could give… an example of a major idea [from Nixon] that you had adopted,” Eisenhower replied “If you give me a week, I might think of one.” Before Nixon—or even Eisenhower—could clarify that this statement was taken out of context (which both of them eventually did), the damage had been done. Political ads aired the soundbite to the American public, and soon the Stevenson campaign had adopted a new slogan—”Experience counts!” Additionally, the Democratic campaign began recirculating articles from Stevenson’s world tour in ‘53, and buying out ads showing crowds gathering to him in celebration in South Korea—some even included his famous quotation from that event, “Don’t they know I lost the election?” The message was clear: Stevenson had the experience, he had the international acclaim, and he would soon be the President of the United States.

And he was. The blunders of the Republican campaign, although they did not sink it, definitely leveled the playing field. By the end of the election, when the voting booths closed the night of November 8, and after the votes had all been tallied, Adlai Stevenson II was the next president of the United States. He had won by slim margins, and a couple of his wins—especially in the vicinity of the Great Lakes—were won by margins so thin that some Republicans cried foul play. Nixon, however, did not. He didn’t want a long debacle over ballot recounts to ruin America’s prestige internationally, and as such Richard Nixon receded into the Californian wilderness for awhile.

Besides, said the Republicans, ruining America’s international prestige would be Adlai Stevenson’s job.

​

Rhyming with Roosevelt’s New Deal and Truman’s New Look, the coalition that chose him in ‘52 and ‘56 (and, with depressed turnout, ‘60) was ordained “New Politics.” The crowd behind New Politics was seen as part of the vibrant youth counterculture of the day, with heavy associations tying the movement to the beatniks. Despite the fact that most of the beat generation were altogether uninterested with electoral politics, the two became inseparable in the popular culture, with many magazines in the early months of the Stevenson presidency nicknaming Adlai Stevenson “The Beat President.” And while Stevenson was not a beatnik, he did share some of their beliefs—he definitely was not entirely opposed to the countercultural connotation of “free love,” seeing that his girlfriend, Marietta Tree, was a married woman. The fact was no secret, but it never really was deemed important to the public eye. Perhaps it was the fact that Stevenson was a divorcee, or perhaps that Ronald and Marietta Tree had divorced each-other in everything but name. The most likely explanation is just that Stevenson was an old, bald guy. He didn’t have the sexual charisma of John and Jackie Kennedy, so his peculiar relationship never captured the public imagination in an era where politics was becoming more superficial.

Stevenson himself famously resented this new superficiality. In 1956, he vented about how “The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal—that you can gather votes like box tops—is… the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.” He only occasionally partook in the practice of retail politicking, as most people agreed that he was less of an “of the people” politician as he was a “for the people” politician. Supporters and detractors alike would often compare him to the philosopher-kings of Plato’s imagination. Those beatnik-adjacent countercultural tendencies extended to his feelings towards consumerism writ large—he often spoke of the American concepts of freedom being bastardized to mean “the freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.” The decrying of the superficiality of the Television Age was echoed by Stevenson’s Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, in a speech most often remembered as the Wasteland speech. A defining moment of the Television Age, Minow asserted that if you were to “sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”

Although the movement that rallied around Stevenson was described as New Politics, the President’s self-described title for his platform—again styling itself like Wilson’s “New Freedom,” T.R.’s “New Nationalism,” F.D.R.’s “New Deal”—was “New America,” a name that was both deeply generic and deeply radical, befitting the policy planks that it entailed. Adlai Stevenson’s administration—and New America by extension—is today mostly associated with its foreign policy, remembered as either naive or forward-thinking depending on who you ask. However, Stevenson still had a domestic agenda. Most of his agenda was aided with the collaboration with Majority Leader Johnson, who although definitely harbored some resentment towards Stevenson for what happened in Los Angeles, maintained a polite and professional relationship with him while he was President. It was a platform that wasn’t altogether unexpected for a Democrat, mostly based in singing the praises of FDR’s New Deal. However, he pledged both in ‘56 and ‘60 to expand the New Deal agenda to the areas of education, health, and poverty.

Stevenson’s agenda was popular among many Democrats—Lyndon Johnson in particular was a fan of Adlai’s promise to fight poverty. However, there was one thorn in his side in the House of Representatives—Congressman Adam Powell. The two had bad blood, Stevenson describing him as one of the “wild men” threatening the country with his combative rhetoric on race relations; Powell returned in kind, famously crossing the aisle to endorse Eisenhower in 1956 and Nixon in 1960, going so far as to state that any black person who voted for Stevenson was a “traitor to their race.” At the inauguration of the 87th United States Congress, Powell secured the chairmanship of the Education and Labor Committee, which immediately put the two at odds. On paper, Powell and Stevenson were in agreement on many things—the President proposed a bill that would create a government-sponsored program for teacher education; Congressman Powell was a proponent for vocational training. The President proposed a bill that would make the government responsible for the construction of new schools to combat school overpopulation; Congressman Powell was a proponent of aid programs for schools and school libraries. The crux of the problem circled around civil rights.

As the civil rights war continued to grow louder and louder, sucking up more and more oxygen in the national conversation, Stevenson held tightly to the rapidly-shrinking middle. He was not antagonistic towards the plights of African-Americans, however he advocated for the duration of the ‘50s and into the ‘60s a sort of well-meaning moderation that, in the words of biographer Jean Baker, “asked more sacrifices of blacks than of whites.” He saw Northern opinions of the South as hypocritical, several times reciting the Christian trope of “he who is without sin, cast the first stone.” His girlfriend, Marietta Tree, expressed that he struggled to “understand the urgency” of the movement, that for most of his life “he thought of all Negroes as being loveable old family retainers and not as individuals like you and me who were longing to get educated and who had aspirations and dreams just like the rest of us.” He supported the desegregation of schools, absolutely, but he thought that the use of force and governmental might would only inflame tensions—as would the ceaseless picketing of the rambunctious NAACP. Instead, he preferred a gradual desegregation, specifically pointing towards school desegregation by 1963 (the hundred-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation), and not by military might as Eisenhower had done, but rather through the wishy-washy process of schooling, understanding, and “sociological resources.”

Naturally, none of this appealed to Powell—or the many Northern Democrats who became more vocally supportive of the plights of Black America as the ‘60s marched on. A senator once told him, in the midst of conversation, that his stance made him no better than the segregationists he allegedly disliked so. He replied with a curt “No” and changed the topic. In April of 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. wrote of the “white moderate… who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season’” while in a Birmingham jail, many assumed that he was making a thinly-veiled allusion to President Stevenson. Like most things pertaining to the civil rights movement, if President Stevenson had any thoughts about the letter and the implied insult contained therein, he never expressed it and actively avoided doing so—in one occurrence cutting off a reporter who was about to ask about it.

Despite the boisterous infighting between Stevenson and Powell, many of the New America policy planks were popular enough that they were able to pass over Powell’s objections. At every turn, though, the chairman would use his position to further condemn the President—at one point going so far as to say that “his white, round head might as well be a white, pointed cap!” Stevenson’s bald head—often referred to both pejoratively and affectionately as an “egghead”—soon became the source of a nickname used by civil rights protestors to make fun of a complacent Democratic government—”Humpty Dumpty.” In fact, the nursery rhyme was often sung by protestors across the country, but particularly in the many cases where their protests passed the White House.

The remarks from Chairman Powell had a definitive effect on the presidency of Adlai Stevenson. His chief of staff famously relented once that “Every time we pass popular legislation, we just become more unpopular!” Indeed, while the Stevenson Administration passed the twin acts that redefined the education system, the Assisted Training in Education Act of 1962 and the Scholastic Infrastructure Act of 1962—the former creating the aforementioned government program for teacher education and the latter the aforementioned promise for government assistance in the construction of new schoolhouses in overcrowded districts—the public opinion of President Egghead continued to lower. Adlai Stevenson experienced a shellacking on the airwaves, predominantly from the American Medical Association that rattled on about the President’s plot to install “socialized medicine” onto the American public, meanwhile Congress fought over his proposals to decrease the age of retirement to 62 (a decrease of 3 years). He lost the healthcare fight and won the retirement fight, but the damage was done. The 1962 midterms saw the Republicans regain the House for the first time in a decade, while the retained Senate’s majorities shrunk. Speaker of the House Charles Halleck stonewalled any of the remaining legislative agenda of the Stevenson administration

At least Halleck was still on speaking terms with Stevenson. J. Edgar Hoover refused to talk to the President, and left the Presidency in the dark as often as he could. The disagreement dated back to Adlai Stevenson’s time as Governor of Illinois, where his stark defiance against McCarthyism and a minor quarrel about denying an FBI man a place in the Illinois government made the Director and the future President lifelong enemies. Throughout the Fifties, the FBI spread rumors of Adlai Stevenson being a sexual deviant—a homosexual, a lavender, a transsexual or transvestite. FBI agents let the rumors slip—”Adlai Stevenson went to Peru to look at the genitalia of statues,” one agent would whisper. Another would add that “He likes to go by Adeleine at gay bars.” When Stevenson had done the impossible and beaten Richard Nixon, Hoover allegedly was furious. One agent would later recall that “He was damn near like one of those cartoons, where the face goes all red and you see steam out the ears. He was callin’ damn near everyone he could think of, just screaming about it. He had to be talked out of black bagging him, or worse.”

Adlai Stevenson was tired of more than a year of silence, and in the early months of 1963 relieved Hoover from duty. The Director did not take kindly to that, and almost immediately began rattling off every insult he could think of to everyone who would listen. He had hundreds of pages of misinformation and he rattled them off everywhere he could. He was a notorious homosexual, he frequented gay bars so frequently in Chicago that they could recognize his footsteps or the knock on the door, he wore wigs and lisped his voice to sound like a girl.

For his part, Stevenson never gave the accusations the time of day. He’d dodge questions from the press, and when he mentioned the Director only discussed him briefly and curtly. The longest responses would be some brief Biblical sermon which implied a certain ghoulishness to the former Director. The process of finding a replacement was a tough one, and in the interim the acting director, Clyde Tolson, continued his predecessor’s refusal to cooperate with the White House. Sensing the weakening grip of the Hoover machine, however, a new rumor began to leak out of the cracks alleging that Tolson and Hoover slept with one-another, were homosexual lovers. Some Republicans expressed concern at this “lavender infiltration” into the upper echelons of Washington. And on and on the fighting went. Ironically, firing Hoover had done very little to the White House approval ratings—the public seemed apathetic towards the issue, seeing the mudslinging as annoying at best and dangerous at worse: Keep in mind, they seemed to think, the world is watching!

Foreign policy is what the Stevenson Presidency is most remembered for in the present day. The revealing of FBI muckraking and Hooverite mudslinging also spring to mind, naturally, and maybe the judicial nerds could recall the two judicial appointments Stevenson was allotted during his presidential stint (thus adding to the Warren Court the Illinois Supreme Court Justice Walter Schaefer and the D.C. Circuit Judge George Thomas Washington), but Stevenson is largely remembered for his oddly pacifistic foreign policy.

Bucking the trend that most presidents followed, Adlai Stevenson was always internationally interested, and most of his key foreign policy decisions came incredibly early on in his presidency. Staffing his State department ended up being one of the most important. His close friend, George Ball, received the exalted position of Secretary of State, meanwhile the lower echelons of the State Department went to diplomats that he was less personally friendly with but proved to be stalwart allies—Harland Cleveland and Charles Yost among the most important. The former was appointed the representative to the United Nations, whereas the latter was shuffled through a couple of embassies over the years, but predominantly was Stevenson’s go-to guy on everything ongoing in Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia’s affairs would prove deeply important—and controversial—but the first major flashpoint was close to home, in the Caribbean. In 1959, Fidel Castro and his band of rebels had successfully ousted the antidemocratic Batista, and for a brief moment in time Washington was friendly to this new development. As Castro began enforcing his vision of post-Batista Cuba, Americans grew more and more concerned. As Eisenhower’s Secretary of State described succinctly in 1960, Cuba had begun “following faithfully the Bolshevik pattern,” and had immediately entered the Soviet sphere. Despite it being a major debate in the 1960 election, Adlai Stevenson never explicitly addressed his opinions, allowing his party’s colleagues to take to the attacks—that Eisenhower was weak on communism, that Nixon would continue the lax enforcement, that the Republican proposal of embargoes would do nothing to stop the spread of devilish Stalinism.

A Cold Warrior Stevenson was not. He called the ‘50s, and with his election, the ‘60s, an Age of Rising Standards—particularly in Asia, but pretty much all parts of the world still sore from the pains of imperialism. As standards rose unilaterally, “the future belongs to those who understand the hopes and fears of masses in ferment,” for better or for worse. His policy, therefore, was one of compassion and understanding. He was anticommunist, despite what his critics would say, describing it as a “corruption of the dream of justice.” Above all else, though, he was a dreamer. He dreamed and prayed for a world free of the nuclear fear that, to borrow a Marxist phrase, weighed like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

Naturally, when he heard of the CIA’s plot to invade Cuba under the pretense of helping rebels that scarcely existed, he scuttled it. There was some support sent the way of those anticommunist partisans—mostly some weaponry—but it scarcely whetted the appetites of a war-hungry public. The Adlai Administration tried to sell the sending of munitions and the passing of a Cuban embargo as a reasonable retaliation, but nobody was buying it.

And then the nukes showed up. In 1962, reconnaissance showed an increase in Russian presence on the island republic, and with that some began to worry about missiles being brought with. In October, the missiles were confirmed and the White House was in a frenzy. What few war hawks Stevenson had allowed to sneak into State and Defense were apoplectic, and their list of responses included—Invasions, air strikes, and blockades. Fence-sitters proposed doing nothing, seeing as the threat of nuclear war would still be existent with or without missiles in Cuba. Even among the ranks of Stevenson’s inner circle there was indecision. Secretary Ball supported the calls for a blockade, saying it was the most reasonable solution proposed, wincing at the calls of direct invasion and comparing such an offensive to the attacks on Pearl Harbor. President Stevenson, however, had an even bolder idea. Leaving the room after he made his proposal—and made up his mind on the effectiveness of said proposal—he confided in his body of advisors as he headed for the door that “I suspect you all will consider me a coward for the rest of my days, but perhaps we need a coward in the room when we are talking about nuclear war.” A few days later, Stevenson delivered his address to the American public and the world at large. It is considered one of the most important—and in equal measures controversial—speeches in the 20th century:

“I speak to you all,” it begins, “not as Democrats and Republicans, nor even as Americans, but instead as humans. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on the island of Cuba… As our understanding of the situation grew clearer, only one avenue remained sufficiently open: Diplomacy. Our nation currently sits—or, at least, in the eyes of the world it ought to sit—at the head of the struggle for peace. For in this nuclear age peace is no longer a visionary ideal. It has become an absolute, imperative, practical necessity—the condition for survival. On this shrunken globe men can no longer live as strangers. Men can war against each other as hostile neighbors, as some are determined we must do; or they can co-exist in frigid isolation, as we are currently doing. But our prayer is that men everywhere will learn, finally, to live as brothers, to respect each other's differences, to heal each other's wounds, to promote each other's progress, and to benefit from each other's knowledge. Humanity's long struggle against war has to be won and won now, for the sake of life itself. I believe deeply that we are able to finally vanquish this ancient foe, and that it is our God-given right to do so. It is the patriotic duty of every American to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the threat of nuclear war jeopardizes all three. There can be no true happiness in the shadow of the nuclear missile, there can be no life in the shadow of death, and we cannot secure liberty under the threat of war. With all of this in mind, over the past days I have been in long discussion with Mr. Khrushchev of Soviet Russia, and Mr. Castro of Cuba, and with the end goal of peace in mind, we have created a compromise that benefits all parties.” [2]

The speech continued from there, but the fallout from the speech could not be overestimated, nor could it easily be explained. Many Americans were horrified to know that nuclear warheads sat so close to American shores, targets locked on every major city in reach, but also were relieved to know they would soon be gone. Many others were upset at the President for kowtowing to the Communist hegemons of the Second World, for not even attempting to resist. One anonymous quote that would haunt Stevenson for the rest of his life—often assumed to come from Senator John Kennedy—read that “The President’s peace makes him fast friends with [Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain,” further comparing his proposals as being “his Munich.”

To Stevenson, though, diplomacy was the only satisfactory option. He was horrified of accidentally starting a nuclear apocalypse, and likewise felt that the missiles stationed in Cuba were not dissimilar to American missiles in Turkey and Italy. That was all part of the negotiations between the three leaders. The United Nations (an organization that the peacenik Stevenson loved dearly, and utilized greatly in his years in office) would oversee the inspection and removal of the nuclear warheads from Cuba, Italy, and Turkey—all on television. It didn’t just end there, as Stevenson was able to leverage for the “neutralization” of Cuba—in exchange for that promise, the island nation was returned the United States exclave at Guantanamo Bay and Washington pledged to both the Soviets and the Cubans that the United States would not invade Cuba unless if it was directly and undeniably attacked first. As he explained to George Ball, “The neutralization and demilitarization will immediately and drastically remove the troublemaking capability of the Cuban regime, and will probably result in its early overthrow.” This assumption was based on his reading of what occurred in postwar Austria. These intentions, due to obviously being kept classified from the general public for decades, were unknown at the time and in their absence many war-hawks continued to yell about this utmost betrayal.

The second major foreign policy flashpoint that began to rear its head in the ‘60s was Vietnam. Its splitting into two in the ‘50s was a major rallying point for Stevenson and the Democrats at the time, with Stevenson going so far as to say that for many of the North Vietnamese, the choice had been between White colonialism (represented by the France and the United States) and communism—and that in their rejection of colonialism they embraced a misguided and corrupt ideology. By the 1960s, however, Stevenson’s tone on American involvement had become softer (and, in the eyes of many Vietnamese people, incorrect). He held a firm belief in the beliefs of what many in the foreign policy field called the policy of containment, but as the situation in Vietnam worsened the voice of dissent from one actor in particular influenced him above all others—George Ball. As he fretted to Stevenson in ‘61, if America sent troops to the Southeast Asian nation, then “within five years we'll have 300,000 men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again. That was the French experience. Vietnam is the worst possible terrain both from a physical and political point of view.” Neither man was pro-communist by any means, but instead together they elected to continue the Eisenhower Administration’s policy of distant support for the South Vietnamese.

In 1963, the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam boiled over. The presidential administration of South Vietnam, headed by President Diem, was Catholic, a scant minority in the predominantly Buddhist country, and over the years the anti-Buddhist government sentiment had strained relations between South Vietnam and the United States. In the late days of August, under the orders of the President of South Vietnam’s brother, a massive campaign was set out to demolish countless Buddhist temples. Thousands of monks were arrested and hundreds of Buddhist citizens across the country were beaten and killed. This proved the final straw, and when two generals approached the American embassy in South Vietnam asking for American support of a coup against the Diem government, the Stevenson administration discussed it at length. Defying his otherwise anti-Vietnam escalation posturing, Secretary Ball was an avid supporter of the coup. Stevenson, however, was less than sure. Recalled Ambassador Yost, “[Stevenson] feared, very deeply, that we were getting too involved with Vietnam. Of course he supported trying to stem a Communist take-over of the south, but only up to a point. He was adamant against any bombing campaigns [that had been proposed by the more hawkish members of the Administration].” Ball, however, was eventually able to convince Stevenson into supplying the basics to the anti-Diem military coalition, mostly some weaponry and a few strategizers. In the subsequent two-day coup at the start of November, the military was able to effectively oust the Diem government, in a divisive yet decisive moment for the Stevenson Administration.

It only got more divisive when the former government officials—including President Diem—were executed. However, within South Vietnam there was much jubilation—American nationals compared the festivities to a New Orleans Mardi Gras. When Secretary Ball (correctly recognized as the leading voice of American support in the coup) arrived to talk to the new military junta and its new chairman, “Big” Minh, he was met in the streets with cheers and celebration. However, the response from the junta was lethargic.

This would form the backbone of the Vietnam foreign policy headache for Americans for the remainder of Stevenson’s term. The new military junta was ineffective and uninterested in governmental affairs, and rapidly the North Vietnamese ravaged the countryside. From there, the South Vietnamese government was wracked with corruption, cronyism, and coups. Deemed inefficient, the government junta would be overthrown by a new coalition of upset military men, who would then replace the old political infrastructure and cease up government functions again, making them again ineffective and inefficient. “Q: Did you hear what the Chairman said today? A: Which Chairman?” was a common joke in South Vietnam. The foreign affairs wing of the Stevenson Presidency would repeat the joke and laugh.

Adlai Stevenson II was a massive proponent of the United Nations, often praising it as one of the most important missions in human existence—the ultimate harbinger of peace and the organization that could successfully trumpet in the final annihilation of war. He made fast friends with the Secretary-General who was sworn in ten months after Stevenson was, U Thant of Burma. Thant had been the one who helped organize the behind-closed-doors meeting between the United States, Soviet Union, and Cuba during the missile tensions, and as the Vietnamese crisis rolled into 1964 he proposed a similar measure—talks between North and South Vietnam. Stevenson enthusiastically agreed, but negotiations would drag on a long while.

First, was the matter of if the parties would agree. Through the Soviets, Thant was able to confirm North Vietnamese interest. Through the Americans, he was able to confirm South Vietnamese interest (primarily through newly-reinstated Chairman Big Minh). South Vietnamese instability necessitated the United States also be present, as a surrogate—but then the North Vietnamese requested a Soviet statesman be present, too. The United Nations reached out and the Soviets signaled that they would be on board. Then came the venue. Thant proposed his native home of Burma, due to its neutrality but proximity. All parties agreed. But then came the curious arrangement of seating—the North Vietnamese demanded a roundtable, so that all parties present were treated equally. By the time all that had been settled, Big Minh had been ousted from power in an internal coup, and the new Chairman of South Vietnam was unfriendly to negotiations. By the time they were again persuaded to join the table, the Soviets got cold feet and almost walked out—only for North Vietnam to ask for them to stay. Reluctantly, they did. By this point, the South Vietnamese intended diplomat to be in attendance was deemed too inhospitable for the North Vietnamese delegation, so he was sent back. They were okay with the next choice, but another internal coup deemed the new diplomat “too Catholic” and he was fired from the government. The next diplomat was deemed alright, but now the South Vietnamese opposed the circular table idea, claiming it to be communist grandstanding—no, they insisted, it should be a normal rectangular table. The North Vietnamese refused to even pretend to entertain the idea. The United Nations’ delegate halfheartedly suggested several square tables arranged in a circle, to which everyone agreed to—other than the American delegate, who thought the whole arrangement was patently absurd. He strong-armed the South Vietnamese into accepting the round table proposal, which they reluctantly did. And on and on it went.

This whole diplomatic episode—unrivaled in its pettiness for decades to come—happened simultaneously to a third foreign policy flashpoint, this time in Africa. The Congo Crisis, however, is nowadays scantly remembered as an episode of American history, in no small part because of Stevenson’s ability to utilize the United Nations’ mission statement so well.

The Belgian Congo was a prime example of Stevenson’s model of the “Era of Rising Standards” where, spurred on by rising Africanist sentiments, the long-suffering people of the Congo rioted for independence from Belgium. The Belgian government accepted this, with the King proclaiming proudly that this was the natural outcome of Leopold II’s mission of spreading civilization to the people of Africa. One of the leading men of this Congolese independence movement, Patrice Lumumba, followed this royal proclamation by delivering a passionate and incendiary speech decrying colonialism in all its forms. The stark divide in worldview only grew worse from there—black soldiers mutinied when their Belgian commanders refused to treat them as equals; Lumumba backed the black soldiers, promoting many of them through the ranks. From there came ethnic violence and a mass-exodus of Belgian soldiers and citizenry, which prompted a military response from Belgium. Things only devolved from there, as Belgian mining companies sponsored the secession of two countries in mineral-rich parts of the Congo: Katanga and Kasai. As things continued to fall apart, the United Nations decided to become involved. Lumumba, the leader of the newly-independent Republic of the Congo, first attempted to to acquire assistance from the United States, before he was swiftly rebuffed; he then turned to the Soviet Union who were more than happy to help. Due to this, the Eisenhower Administration soon saw it pertinent to deal with this “African Castro,” as many of the more hawkish types started labeling the first Prime Minister—by any means necessary. Time and resources were spent trying to concoct a precise method by which to get rid of the headache-inducing Soviet sympathizer: poisons synthesized, timings considered. However, before long President Kasa-Vubu took the hint and booted out Lumumba and his supporters out of power. Naturally, this only made things worse as the Lumumbists fled out east and set up a claimant regime in Stanleyville. When the ex-prime minister fled to join them, he was promptly arrested.

While under arrest, he was planned to be executed. Internal documents declassified decades later would support this. It was not, despite previous attempts, the United States’ plan—although they did heartily endorse it. Some later historians posit that, indeed, they endorsed it too heavily, and in the process made the guards who tortured and beat the former Prime Minister fear some sort of set-up. The reason for the CIA being so heavily invested in his death was the ascendant Adlai Stevenson II, who seemed poised to adopt a more lenient position on Lumumba and advocate for his release. President Stevenson did just that, and pressured the Washington-friendly Kasa-Vubu to release him—which he reluctantly did. As expected, the tortured ex-P.M. fled to the Stanleyville government and was welcomed with open arms.

The United Nations’ role to play in this whole crisis was prevalent from the start. It was widely seen as an opportunity for the peacekeeping organization to keep the peace, and soon a mission was established and blue-helmeted troops popped up. They were not to engage militarily, simply encourage a maintenance of order in what was largely seen as an internal squabble. “The only way to keep the cold war out of the Congo is to keep the United Nations in the Congo,” President Stevenson said in a speech shortly thereafter. He was proven both correct and incorrect in a baffling turn of events. The Soviets had pledged recognition to the government in Stanleyville, and a whole slew of communist-supporting governments did the same. Despite this, the United Nations had overwhelmingly supported the government in Leópoldville. This was a source of major tension, as the Soviet Union seemed keen to call the United Nations a tool to secure Western interests, and were even planning on refusing to pay the organization—thereby threatening to bankrupt the United Nations and forcing its dissolution.

And then Stevenson publicly criticized President Kasa-Vubu. In a speech, delivered to the United Nations like so many of his speeches were, he proudly proclaimed that to him, “The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum,” that “a free society is one in which it is safe to be unpopular.” He further discussed the difficulties of democracy—reprising an old line from 1952, that “to citizens of democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end. Democracy is a high privilege, but it is also a heavy responsibility.” Although he never even mentioned the crisis in the Congo—not the split government, nor the question of federalism or confederalism that defined the split governments—his messaging was clearly that the current government in Leópoldville was acting in defiance to those most admirable and important standards.

Future speeches would advocate for the United States’ new position, one of compromise and consensus uniting the divided country—a new constitution, a remerging of the two dissonant factions, and the promise of a stronger Congolese future. Although the Soviets much preferred the Stanleyville government, the shift in messaging was well-appreciated. There was still the matter of secessionist entities to attend to, however, and it was a mission that the United Nations lost men in the attempt to attend to it peacefully. The bottom line under the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was that these pesky rebels were, too, an internal matter. Unfortunately for him, a plane trip to Rhodesia to meet with the Katanga rebel organization crashed and killed all United Nations officials on board. His replacement, the aforementioned Thant, was much less amicable to Katanga, and considered it an external threat that needed the United Nations to pacify.

Adlai Stevenson would not live to see the resolution of the crisis, or even the Vietnamese crisis. He was walking through the Rose Garden with Marietta Tree. They had been talking about finally getting married—after all, Adlai quipped, it would help him keep the White House. They shared a laugh about it, and then as the two admired the bushes, Adlai grew pale and fell over, a loud crack emanating as he collided with the ground. He had died, ten days after Independence Day, of a heart attack. He was declared dead at the scene, with Marietta only able to write in her diary that “Adlai is dead. We were together.” And the nation mourned.

The legacy of Adlai Stevenson II is forever one impressed by controversy. He was the face of the Democratic party for over a decade. His foreign policy, deemed “soft” to the people of the time, meant that his reelection had always been unlikely. However, it precipitated a period of the Cold War known generally as the “Stevenson-Khrushchev Thaw” as the two countries’ relationships warmed for the first time since the collapse of the Nazi regime two decades earlier. His domestic policy has also been praised and reviled in equal measure—of the schools in America named after U.S. Presidents, Adlai Stevenson II is overwhelmingly the one most named after; meanwhile in the raising tensions of an America divided over civil rights, his apathy brought out many liberal critiques. While his New America improved schools and health, the President never was able to figure out what to do about poverty besides vague platitudes, and indeed his New America left many behind. “Little attention,” wrote Jean Baker, “went to blacks, women, migratory workers, Native Americans, or the poor” in Stevenson’s agenda. Conspiracies likewise maintain Adlai Stevenson’s legacy far after death—rumors of an assassination taking Stevenson’s life were circulated for decades, with the long list of potential culprits including the FBI, the CIA, Cuban spies, Soviet spies, the Mafia, etc. Additionally, the belief that the Cubans still held W.M.D.s was a fringe yet pervasive belief among stalwart conservatives and cold warriors.

There are many quotes one could choose to put a bookend to the eventful life of Adlai Stevenson II. Critics could point to his quote of “It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse” to describe his foreign policy, or “Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one” by those who disliked his waffling domestic policy. Perhaps the most fitting, wrapping up nicely his wit (both in humor and in intellect) is the phrase Via ovum cranium difficilis est—”The way of the egghead is hard.”

— — —​

[1] I cannot stress enough that this is a real quote from Adlai Stevenson II, a joke during a speech in Oakland, California in 1956.
[2] Parts of this speech are stitched-together from Kennedy’s real-life speech on the situation in Cuba, as well as various other quotes and speech excerpts from Stevenson’s long career.

 

[Tempered Zen]

been waiting for this for ages, cannot wait

 

[Vidal]

Let's goo!!!! <3 you both and can't wait to see the rest of the board enjoy this TL

 

[Sweet Basil]

Turtledove-worthy just from the intro alone! Incredibly excited to see this wonderful TL finally revealed.

 

[Ambusher11]

The 1962 midterms saw the Republicans regain the House for the first time in a decade, while the retained Senate’s majorities shrunk. Speaker of the House Charles Halleck stonewalled any of the remaining legislative agenda of the Stevenson administration

Wow, that's quite a big change compared to the OTL House election, where the Republicans only gained 1 seat.

 

[calvim]

LETS FUCKING GOOOOO

 

[kodak]

Off to an incredible start!

 

[Oliveia]

Wow, that's quite a big change compared to the OTL House election, where the Republicans only gained 1 seat.

Without the successes of visibly halting Armageddon the calculus changes a bit. I think the number we settled on was the Republicans getting only a bare majority of a seat or three (similar to the current House structure, if you will)

 

[Oppo]

This reminds me of the time I met this old-school Maryland Democratic Party official and he fondly remembered the first campaign he worked on (which was helping his mom put Adlai Stevenson 1956 leaflets in people's mailboxes). His heart warmed so much when I called Adlai the Eggman.

 

[Ambusher11]

Without the successes of visibly halting Armageddon the calculus changes a bit. I think the number we settled on was the Republicans getting only a bare majority of a seat or three (similar to the current House structure, if you will)

Yes, but would that allow the Republicans to gain 43-45 seats (assuming they gained the same amount of seats that they gained in 1960 OTL)? I dunno, IOTL the Republicans were only expecting to get 15-20 seats in 1962 anyways.

 

[ExtremeMouse]

Yes, but would that allow the Republicans to gain 43-45 seats (assuming they gained the same amount of seats that they gained in 1960 OTL)? I dunno, IOTL the Republicans were only expecting to get 15-20 seats in 1962 anyways.

well I mean Stevenson seems way more unpopular than Kennedy was

 

[Enigma-Conundrum]

Yes, but would that allow the Republicans to gain 43-45 seats (assuming they gained the same amount of seats that they gained in 1960 OTL)? I dunno, IOTL the Republicans were only expecting to get 15-20 seats in 1962 anyways.

The main thing we went for was that trying Carterite human rights foreign policy at the height of the Cold War is deeply controversial and Stevenson mostly won 1960 due to sheer underestimation anyways. He’s not willing to accept the latter half of the Cold War consensus of New Deal hawkery and he pays for it.

 

[The Ghost of Danton]

Well at least Hoover got shitcanned. Now we wait for the ascended Veep. I'll hope for Humphery but I won't count on it.

 

[Retiarius]

Surprising that Nixon did worse against Stevenson than against Kennedy IOTL, even taking unpledged electors into account.

 

[shearsforest]

Missed opportunity to have the title as Camelost.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

The main thing we went for was that trying Carterite human rights foreign policy at the height of the Cold War is deeply controversial and Stevenson mostly won 1960 due to sheer underestimation anyways. He’s not willing to accept the latter half of the Cold War consensus of New Deal hawkery and he pays for it.

Huh. Not going for Hawk!Stevenson like John Reilly did in his WW3 in 1957 world? My initial guess for most likely path for Stevenson in 57/60 was strong cold warrior, big on moralistic stuff but interesting to see where you go with it,

 

[Oliveia]

Surprising that Nixon did worse against Stevenson than against Kennedy IOTL, even taking unpledged electors into account.

Stevenson was, for all intents and purposes, an Honorary Southerner. He does better in the South than Kennedy, which is where the margins come from. Oregon flipping is just for some added dynamism (plus it was one of the closer states in '52 and '56 -- granted that's a margin of like 10%)

Huh. Not going for Hawk!Stevenson like John Reilly did in his WW3 in 1957 world? My initial guess for most likely path for Stevenson in 57/60 was strong cold warrior, big on moralistic stuff but interesting to see where you go with it,

I did a decent bit of research into Adlai for this post and I really can't imagine him as a hawk. He spoke glowingly about the United Nations, he was consistently the only dove of any notoriety in the Kennedy Administration, and he hated the idea of changing his opinions to be more "politically viable." He was a huge peacenik and I can't see him ever being a true Cold Warrior