1952 - Eisenhower vs. Stevenson
Eisenhower campaigns in 1952; Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library
Incumbent President Harry Truman is exempt from the two-term, 10-year limit imposed by the 22nd Amendment since he already was in office when the amendment was passed by Congress in 1947. But Truman, whose popularity has been hurt by economic woes and a bloody stalemate in the Korean War, opts not to run. In his place, the Democrats nominate Governor Adlai E. Stevenson II of Illinois. On the GOP side, retired General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the Allies to victory in Europe in World War II, edges out Ohio Governor Robert Taft for the nomination.
The presidential campaign is the first to feature extensive polling, costly multimedia blitzes, nationally coordinated publicity and get-out-the-vote efforts, and professional political consultants. All this, of course, costs a lot of money, and both parties employ multiple fundraising organizations to get around the $3 million legal limit on what the Democratic and Republican national committees can spend.
Eisenhower’s campaign collects $6.6 million. Much of the money is raised through the efforts of businessmen such as William F. Hufstader, a General Motors vice president who telephones GM dealers in the Detroit area and asks them to solicit contributions to the GOP. At Ford Motor Company, Allen W. Merrell, Henry Ford II’s personal assistant and a member of the GOP national finance committee, meets with Ford dealers from Illinois, California, and elsewhere in a similar effort.
Beardsley Rumi, the finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee, opts for the opposite approach, aiming to persuade large numbers of people to make $5 donations to Stevenson. Rumi hopes to raise $1.5 to $2 million in this fashion, but the $5-donation drive raises a disappointing $600,000, and in the end, the Democrats are forced to rely on large donors to reach their total of $5.3 million.
Once again, political contributions become an issue in the campaign. The Democrats try to get political mileage out of revelations that, as a U.S. senator, GOP vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon had drawn some $18,000 from an expense fund set up by political supporters, and they demand that Nixon give up his spot on the ticket. Nixon manages to defuse the issue with his televised “Checkers speech,” in which he charms the public with the story of his family’s pet cocker spaniel, who was given to them by a political contributor. Unfortunately for the Democrats, Stevenson is beset by a similar scandal, when the story breaks that as governor of Illinois, he used $18,000 in political contributions to give bonuses to eight officials in his administration.
In November, Eisenhower wins a comfortable victory, beating Stevenson in the popular vote by 55.2 percent to 44.3 percent, and taking 442 electoral votes to 89 for Stevenson.
SOURCES: “The Campaign and Election of 1952,” Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia; Mark Green, Selling Out: How Big Corporate Money Buys Election, Rams Through Legislation, and Betrays Our Democracy (New York: William Morrow), 2002; Clayton Knowles, “An $80 Million Campaign Is Prospect for This Year,” The New York Times, October 12, 1952; Alexander Heard, The Costs of Democracy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 1960; “Common Practices,” Time, September 29, 1952; “Checkers,” American Rhetoric, September 23, 1952; “Glass House,” Time, October 6, 1952; “1952 Presidential Election Results,” David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.
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