The Election of 1952
It was almost a foregone conclusion that the architect of D-Day, General Dwight Eisenhower, would be president someday. Nobody knew which party he would be at the head of the ticket for. In 1948, incumbent President had even offered to move to the number two spot if Ike would take first spot on the Democratic ticket, but the General refused. Four years later, after pulling off an incredible upset victory in the previous election, Truman knew his days in the White House were numbered. Once again he approached Eisenhower about running at the top of the Democratic ticket in the 1952 election, and once again Eisenhower refused.
The Republican party was divided between its moderate wing, led by New York Governor Thomas Dewey, and the conservative wing, led by Ohio Senator Robert Taft (son of former President William Howard Taft). Dewey had been the party's candidate for President in 1944 and 1948 and his two consecutive defeats made his candidacy a non-starter. Eisenhower became the candidate of the moderates while Taft was the candidate of the conservatives. Other candidates seeking the nomination were Governor Earl Warren of California, who appealed to Western delegates and independents, and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota, who still had a base of support in the Midwest.
The moderates believed that the United States needed to fight the Cold War and resist Soviet aggression in Europe and Asia, but they were willing to accept most aspects of the social programs created by the New Deal in the 1930s. The conservative Republicans wanted to abolish many of the New Deal welfare programs. When it came to foreign policy they were non-interventionists who believed that America should avoid alliances with foreign powers.
The moderates persuaded Eisenhower to run for their party's nomination. Eisenhower scored a major victory in the New Hampshire primary, when his supporters wrote his name onto the ballot, giving him an upset victory over Taft. The rest of the primaries were divided fairly evenly between the two men, and by the time the convention opened the race for the nomination was still too close to call. Taft won the Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois, and South Dakota primaries, while Eisenhower won the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Oregon primaries. Stassen and Warren only won their home states of Minnesota and California respectively. General Douglas MacArthur also received a few delegates, but he made it clear from early on that he had no interest in being nominated.
When the 1952 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago on July 7, the race looked close. Delegate fights ensured with Eisenhower's campaign managers accusing Taft of stealing delegate positions in southern states by unfairly denied delegate spots to Eisenhower supporters. Taft denied this charge, but in a convention vote Taft lost many Southern delegates. Later, Stassen released his delegates and asked them to support Eisenhower, whose moderate policies he much preferred to those of Taft. The convention was one of the most bitter and emotional in American history. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, a Taft supporter, pointed at Dewey on the convention floor during a speech and accused him of leading the Republicans "down the road to defeat". There were fistfights between some Taft and Eisenhower delegates.
Eisenhower narrowly defeated Taft on the first ballot. After the vote Eisenhower went to Taft's hotel suite and met with him and Taft issued a brief statement congratulating Eisenhower on his victory, but he was bitter about the accusations of stealing delegates and he withheld his active support for Eisenhower for several weeks after the convention.
In September 1952 Taft and Eisenhower met again at Morningside Heights in New York City, there Taft promised to support Eisenhower actively in exchange for a number of concessions. These included a demand that Eisenhower give Taft's supporters a fair share of patronage positions if he won the election, and that Eisenhower agree to balance the federal budget. Eisenhower agreed and Taft campaigned hard for the Republican ticket.
Eisenhower wanted to give the second spot on the ticket to Stassen, who had endorsed Eisenhower, but the managers of Eisenhower's campaign persuaded him to find a running mate who could attract some of Taft's supporters and ease the schism between the moderate and conservative. There was even concern about Taft running as a third-party candidate and splitting the Republican vote. The convention chose young Senator Richard Nixon of California as Eisenhower's running mate. Nixon's credentials as an anti-Communist helped his selection. Nixon also had ties to both moderates and conservatives.
Although Truman was eligible to run for the Democrats (the newly passed 22nd Amendment did not apply to him) his popularity was plummeting badly according to the polls. The bloody and indecisive Korean War was dragging into its third year and the disclosure of widespread corruption among federal employees (including some high-level members of Truman's administration) left Truman at a low political ebb. Polls showed that he had a 66% disapproval rating. A leading candidate for the nomination was Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. He had chaired a nationally-televised investigation of organized crime in 1951 and was known as a crusader against crime and corruption. In the New Hampshire primary, Kefauver upset Truman, winning 19,800 votes to Truman's 15,927 and capturing all eight delegates. Stung by this loss, Truman soon announced that he would not seek re-election. In his memoirs Truman insisted that he had decided not to run for reelection well before this defeat.
Kefauver became the front-runner for the nomination. He had won most of the primaries. But at the time most states chose their delegates to the Democratic Convention at state conventions, where party bosses, especially the mayors and governors, held a lot of power. Many of these people strongly disliked Kefauver because his investigations of organized crime had revealed connections between Mafia figures and many of the big-city Democratic political organizations. They began to search for other, more acceptable, candidates.
The candidate they settled upon was Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. He was the grandson of former Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson, and was a gifted orator, intellectual, and political moderate. The 1952 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago beginning on July 21st. It was held in the same coliseum the Republicans had gathered in two weeks earlier. Since the convention was being held in his home state, Governor Stevenson was asked to give the welcoming address to the delegates. He gave a very good address that led his supporters to begin a renewed round of efforts to nominate him. Stevenson finally agreed to enter his name as a candidate for the nomination. The party bosses from other large Northern and Midwestern states quickly joined in support. Kefauver led on the first ballot, but Stevenson gradually gained strength until he was nominated on the third ballot.
The delegates chose Senators John Sparkman, a conservative and segregationist from Alabama, as Stevenson's running mate. Sparkman was chosen because of his Southern identity and conservative record.
This was a time when Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was escalating. In the Senate, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had become a national figure after chairing congressional investigations into the issue of Communist spies within the U.S. government. McCarthy's so-called "witch hunt", combined with nervousness about potential war with the Soviet Union after two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War, the Communist Revolution in China, the 1949 Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons, and the early-1950s recession, set the stage for a hotly fought presidential contest.
Eisenhower campaigned on a platform of "Korea, Communism and Corruption", subjects that the Republicans considered to be the failures of the outgoing Truman administration. Eisenhower accused the Truman administration of neglecting Latin America and thus leading the nations in that region into the arms of Communist agents waiting to exploit the locals and spread communism to the western hemisphere. Charges that Soviet spies had infiltrated the government plagued the Truman Administration and was also a major campaign issue for Eisenhower. The Republicans blamed the Democrats for the military's failure to be fully prepared to fight in Korea.
In return, the Democrats criticized Senator McCarthy and other Republican conservatives as "fearmongers" who were recklessly trampling on the civil liberties of government employees. Democrats expressed outrage when Eisenhower, on a scheduled campaign swing through Wisconsin, decided not to give a speech he had written criticizing McCarthy's methods, and then allowed himself to be photographed shaking hands with McCarthy. Truman was especially upset with Eisenhower over the incident.
Eisenhower had retained his enormous personal popularity and credibility from his leading role in World War II. Huge crowds turned out to see him around the nation. His campaign slogan, "I Like Ike", was one of the most popular in American history. Stevenson concentrated on giving a series of policy driven speeches across the nation. He also drew large crowds. While his style thrilled intellectuals and academics, many believed that he was taking over the heads of most of his listeners, and his critics called him an "egghead". Eisenhower maintained a comfortable lead in the polls throughout most of the campaign.
A memorable event of the 1952 campaign concerned a scandal that emerged when Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's running mate, was accused by several newspapers of receiving $18,000 in undeclared "gifts" from wealthy donors. Nixon was able to disprove the allegations, but found himself on the defensive. Eisenhower and his aides considered dropping Nixon from the ticket and picking another running mate. Nixon saved his political career with a dramatic half-hour speech on live television. In the speech Nixon denied the charges against him and gave a detailed account of his modest financial assets. Nixon mentioned that a supporter had given his daughters a gift: a dog named "Checkers" and that he would not return it, because his daughters loved the dog. The speech became known as the "Checkers" speech and it caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to wire the Republican National Committee urging the GOP to keep Nixon on the ticket.
Both campaigns made use of television ads. A notable ad for "Ike" Eisenhower was an issue-free, feel-good animated cartoon with a soundtrack song by Irving Berlin called I Like Ike. For the first time the candidates' personal medical history was released publicly, as were partial versions of the candidates' financial histories, because of the issues raised in Nixon's speech. Near the end of the campaign Eisenhower, in a major speech, announced that if he won the election he would go to Korea to see if he could end the war. His great military prestige, combined with the public's weariness with the conflict, gave Eisenhower the final boost he needed to win.
On September 3, 1952, while speaking in Baltimore, Eisenhower warned white southerners that they could lose their rights by not protecting the rights of African-Americans in their states. Eisenhower's rhetoric called for increased civil rights. Conversely his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson was silent on the issue, likely believing that such a strategy would lose him votes in the deep south.
On election day – November 4, 1952 – Eisenhower won a decisive victory. He won 55.2% of the popular vote (compared to 44.3% for Stevenson) and won 39 of the 48 states. He took three Southern states that the Republicans had won only once since Reconstruction: Virginia, Florida, and Texas. The electoral vote count was 442 to 89 for Eisenhower. This election was the first in which a computer (the UNIVAC I) was used to predict the results.
Eisenhower, at 62, was the oldest man to become President since James Buchanan in 1856. This election was the first since 1928 in which the Republican presidential nominee was elected. It was also the last election until 2008 in which neither the incumbent president nor the incumbent vice president was his party's general election candidate.
Following are YouTube videos of the TV ads of the day from the respective campaigns:
Stevenson:
Eisenhower:
The Republican party was divided between its moderate wing, led by New York Governor Thomas Dewey, and the conservative wing, led by Ohio Senator Robert Taft (son of former President William Howard Taft). Dewey had been the party's candidate for President in 1944 and 1948 and his two consecutive defeats made his candidacy a non-starter. Eisenhower became the candidate of the moderates while Taft was the candidate of the conservatives. Other candidates seeking the nomination were Governor Earl Warren of California, who appealed to Western delegates and independents, and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota, who still had a base of support in the Midwest.
The moderates believed that the United States needed to fight the Cold War and resist Soviet aggression in Europe and Asia, but they were willing to accept most aspects of the social programs created by the New Deal in the 1930s. The conservative Republicans wanted to abolish many of the New Deal welfare programs. When it came to foreign policy they were non-interventionists who believed that America should avoid alliances with foreign powers.
The moderates persuaded Eisenhower to run for their party's nomination. Eisenhower scored a major victory in the New Hampshire primary, when his supporters wrote his name onto the ballot, giving him an upset victory over Taft. The rest of the primaries were divided fairly evenly between the two men, and by the time the convention opened the race for the nomination was still too close to call. Taft won the Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois, and South Dakota primaries, while Eisenhower won the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Oregon primaries. Stassen and Warren only won their home states of Minnesota and California respectively. General Douglas MacArthur also received a few delegates, but he made it clear from early on that he had no interest in being nominated.
When the 1952 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago on July 7, the race looked close. Delegate fights ensured with Eisenhower's campaign managers accusing Taft of stealing delegate positions in southern states by unfairly denied delegate spots to Eisenhower supporters. Taft denied this charge, but in a convention vote Taft lost many Southern delegates. Later, Stassen released his delegates and asked them to support Eisenhower, whose moderate policies he much preferred to those of Taft. The convention was one of the most bitter and emotional in American history. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, a Taft supporter, pointed at Dewey on the convention floor during a speech and accused him of leading the Republicans "down the road to defeat". There were fistfights between some Taft and Eisenhower delegates.
Eisenhower narrowly defeated Taft on the first ballot. After the vote Eisenhower went to Taft's hotel suite and met with him and Taft issued a brief statement congratulating Eisenhower on his victory, but he was bitter about the accusations of stealing delegates and he withheld his active support for Eisenhower for several weeks after the convention.
In September 1952 Taft and Eisenhower met again at Morningside Heights in New York City, there Taft promised to support Eisenhower actively in exchange for a number of concessions. These included a demand that Eisenhower give Taft's supporters a fair share of patronage positions if he won the election, and that Eisenhower agree to balance the federal budget. Eisenhower agreed and Taft campaigned hard for the Republican ticket.
Eisenhower wanted to give the second spot on the ticket to Stassen, who had endorsed Eisenhower, but the managers of Eisenhower's campaign persuaded him to find a running mate who could attract some of Taft's supporters and ease the schism between the moderate and conservative. There was even concern about Taft running as a third-party candidate and splitting the Republican vote. The convention chose young Senator Richard Nixon of California as Eisenhower's running mate. Nixon's credentials as an anti-Communist helped his selection. Nixon also had ties to both moderates and conservatives.
Although Truman was eligible to run for the Democrats (the newly passed 22nd Amendment did not apply to him) his popularity was plummeting badly according to the polls. The bloody and indecisive Korean War was dragging into its third year and the disclosure of widespread corruption among federal employees (including some high-level members of Truman's administration) left Truman at a low political ebb. Polls showed that he had a 66% disapproval rating. A leading candidate for the nomination was Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. He had chaired a nationally-televised investigation of organized crime in 1951 and was known as a crusader against crime and corruption. In the New Hampshire primary, Kefauver upset Truman, winning 19,800 votes to Truman's 15,927 and capturing all eight delegates. Stung by this loss, Truman soon announced that he would not seek re-election. In his memoirs Truman insisted that he had decided not to run for reelection well before this defeat.
Kefauver became the front-runner for the nomination. He had won most of the primaries. But at the time most states chose their delegates to the Democratic Convention at state conventions, where party bosses, especially the mayors and governors, held a lot of power. Many of these people strongly disliked Kefauver because his investigations of organized crime had revealed connections between Mafia figures and many of the big-city Democratic political organizations. They began to search for other, more acceptable, candidates.
The candidate they settled upon was Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. He was the grandson of former Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson, and was a gifted orator, intellectual, and political moderate. The 1952 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago beginning on July 21st. It was held in the same coliseum the Republicans had gathered in two weeks earlier. Since the convention was being held in his home state, Governor Stevenson was asked to give the welcoming address to the delegates. He gave a very good address that led his supporters to begin a renewed round of efforts to nominate him. Stevenson finally agreed to enter his name as a candidate for the nomination. The party bosses from other large Northern and Midwestern states quickly joined in support. Kefauver led on the first ballot, but Stevenson gradually gained strength until he was nominated on the third ballot.
The delegates chose Senators John Sparkman, a conservative and segregationist from Alabama, as Stevenson's running mate. Sparkman was chosen because of his Southern identity and conservative record.
This was a time when Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was escalating. In the Senate, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had become a national figure after chairing congressional investigations into the issue of Communist spies within the U.S. government. McCarthy's so-called "witch hunt", combined with nervousness about potential war with the Soviet Union after two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War, the Communist Revolution in China, the 1949 Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons, and the early-1950s recession, set the stage for a hotly fought presidential contest.
Eisenhower campaigned on a platform of "Korea, Communism and Corruption", subjects that the Republicans considered to be the failures of the outgoing Truman administration. Eisenhower accused the Truman administration of neglecting Latin America and thus leading the nations in that region into the arms of Communist agents waiting to exploit the locals and spread communism to the western hemisphere. Charges that Soviet spies had infiltrated the government plagued the Truman Administration and was also a major campaign issue for Eisenhower. The Republicans blamed the Democrats for the military's failure to be fully prepared to fight in Korea.
In return, the Democrats criticized Senator McCarthy and other Republican conservatives as "fearmongers" who were recklessly trampling on the civil liberties of government employees. Democrats expressed outrage when Eisenhower, on a scheduled campaign swing through Wisconsin, decided not to give a speech he had written criticizing McCarthy's methods, and then allowed himself to be photographed shaking hands with McCarthy. Truman was especially upset with Eisenhower over the incident.
Eisenhower had retained his enormous personal popularity and credibility from his leading role in World War II. Huge crowds turned out to see him around the nation. His campaign slogan, "I Like Ike", was one of the most popular in American history. Stevenson concentrated on giving a series of policy driven speeches across the nation. He also drew large crowds. While his style thrilled intellectuals and academics, many believed that he was taking over the heads of most of his listeners, and his critics called him an "egghead". Eisenhower maintained a comfortable lead in the polls throughout most of the campaign.
A memorable event of the 1952 campaign concerned a scandal that emerged when Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's running mate, was accused by several newspapers of receiving $18,000 in undeclared "gifts" from wealthy donors. Nixon was able to disprove the allegations, but found himself on the defensive. Eisenhower and his aides considered dropping Nixon from the ticket and picking another running mate. Nixon saved his political career with a dramatic half-hour speech on live television. In the speech Nixon denied the charges against him and gave a detailed account of his modest financial assets. Nixon mentioned that a supporter had given his daughters a gift: a dog named "Checkers" and that he would not return it, because his daughters loved the dog. The speech became known as the "Checkers" speech and it caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to wire the Republican National Committee urging the GOP to keep Nixon on the ticket.
Both campaigns made use of television ads. A notable ad for "Ike" Eisenhower was an issue-free, feel-good animated cartoon with a soundtrack song by Irving Berlin called I Like Ike. For the first time the candidates' personal medical history was released publicly, as were partial versions of the candidates' financial histories, because of the issues raised in Nixon's speech. Near the end of the campaign Eisenhower, in a major speech, announced that if he won the election he would go to Korea to see if he could end the war. His great military prestige, combined with the public's weariness with the conflict, gave Eisenhower the final boost he needed to win.
On September 3, 1952, while speaking in Baltimore, Eisenhower warned white southerners that they could lose their rights by not protecting the rights of African-Americans in their states. Eisenhower's rhetoric called for increased civil rights. Conversely his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson was silent on the issue, likely believing that such a strategy would lose him votes in the deep south.
On election day – November 4, 1952 – Eisenhower won a decisive victory. He won 55.2% of the popular vote (compared to 44.3% for Stevenson) and won 39 of the 48 states. He took three Southern states that the Republicans had won only once since Reconstruction: Virginia, Florida, and Texas. The electoral vote count was 442 to 89 for Eisenhower. This election was the first in which a computer (the UNIVAC I) was used to predict the results.
Eisenhower, at 62, was the oldest man to become President since James Buchanan in 1856. This election was the first since 1928 in which the Republican presidential nominee was elected. It was also the last election until 2008 in which neither the incumbent president nor the incumbent vice president was his party's general election candidate.
Following are YouTube videos of the TV ads of the day from the respective campaigns:
Stevenson:
Eisenhower: