POLITICAL NOTES: My Deepest Secret

If Adlai Stevenson was not interested in another try for the presidency—as he still insisted—he managed last week to look more, talk more and walk more like a candidate than those on the active lists.

When Iowa Farmer Roswell Garst invited him to meet Nikita Khrushchev at his Coon Rapids farm, Stevenson accepted with pleasure. Under the protecting shade of a canvas canopy, the Soviet Premier and the two-time Democratic presidential candidate chatted amiably through lunch. Inevitably, their conversation turned from cold war to hot politics. Afterward, recounting it to the press and TV, Khrushchev turned to Stevenson. “Can I repeat that little conversation?” he asked. “It won’t reveal any secret?” Replied Adlai, with a big grin: “You are at liberty to reveal my deepest secret.” Said Khrushchev: “Mr. Stevenson said that he was a politician in retirement. But in politics it often happens that a person retires today and tomorrow he may be in the first rank. It all depends on the people.” Added Stevenson: “It depends on how many times you can retire.”

“Give Him a Welcome.” In their discussion of U.S.-Soviet problems, Stevenson thought he detected a softening of the Russian position. “Maybe it’s not so much a matter of ‘give,’ ” he said, “as of education.” Khrushchev himself “has changed a little since I saw him last summer. I feel better about him now.” Such informed talk could not help enhancing Stevenson’s stature as an authority on foreign relations—a reputation every candidate in the 1960 race eagerly seeks.

From Coon Rapids, Stevenson’s trail led to Wisconsin, where he had agreed to speak to the nonpolitical Madison Chapter of the Civil War Round Table. Once more he walked confidently into the political limelight. Without much coaxing he agreed to attend a press conference and a meeting of the Dane County Democratic Club. When Stevenson strode into the Democratic meeting in the Park Hotel, Club President Elizabeth Tarkow shouted, “Let’s really give him a welcome!” The place went wild. Old Stevenson buttons magically appeared, the old nostalgia flowed, and tears brimmed in Adlai’s eyes. But he quickly recovered his usual aplomb. “I wish I had something to give you in return,” he told his eager listeners. “You have, Adlai, you have!” shouted someone in the audience. “But please leave me where I am,” he replied.

Without Trying. At a press conference, Stevenson reiterated his “no candidate” stand—with a notable escape clause. “Time and time and time again I have said that I am not a candidate. If you ask about a draft and things of that sort—these things I have not yet contemplated.” After a call on Stevenson and Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Gaylord Nelson at the executive mansion, Publisher William Evjue of the Madison Capital Times wrote an endorsement of a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket. And when a reporter told Stevenson that a Wisconsin poll gave him 30% of the Democratic vote without even trying, Stevenson listened in rapt attention. Momentarily dropping his faraway look, he said: “Will you please find [Administrative Secretary] Bill Blair and tell him about that? He keeps track of that sort of thing for me.”