1952 Presidential Election
The Presidential Election of 1952 in the United States saw Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower defeating Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower's military background and promise to end the Korean War contributed to his victory. This election marked a shift in American politics, as Eisenhower's landslide win ended 20 years of Democratic control of the White House.
6 Key excerpts on "1952 Presidential Election"
eBook - ePub- Gary A. Donaldson(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- The University Press of Kentucky(Publisher)
...Seeing the volatility of the postwar political world, groups in the Democratic party struggled for power, and they all seemed to move toward 1948 with a “succeed or destroy” attitude toward the party. One important theme of the 1948 election is always the deep splits in the Democratic party, but it was in the Republican party that the split was the most disastrous. The Democrats healed their wounds for one brief moment, just long enough to vote Truman into office, but the Republican left-right split produced for Truman the issue of the Eightieth Congress, and that issue carried the president right into his November victory. The election of 1948 shaped postwar politics in both parties. For the Democrats, at least through Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976, the goal would be to maintain the coalition—pacify the various groups—by holding on to the party’s political center as Truman did. For the Republicans, the answer would be to heal the wounds between the left and the right—as Eisenhower would do through the 1950s—and to expand the party’s voter base, particularly into the South. The election reaffirmed the strength of the American party system, the strength of both parties, and the strength of the American electorate. The impact was great....
eBook - ePubThe American Century
A History of the United States Since 1941: Volume 2
- Walter LaFeber, Richard Polenberg, Nancy Woloch(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The book went through five printings in the first six months of publication. REPUBLICANS ON THE POTOMAC In Dwight Eisenhower the American people found a figure who perfectly suited their mood. In the 1952 campaign Eisenhower exploited the issues identified by the formula “K^”—Korea, communism, and corruption. Of the three, Korea was the most critical. By the fall of 1952 slightly more than half the electorate regarded the war—or, more accurately, how it might be ended—as the single most important issue. Democratic candidate Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois fully endorsed Truman’s war policies, even suggesting that the nation brace itself for years of additional sacrifice. “The ordeal of the twentieth century is far from over,” Stevenson said in accepting the nomination. Eisenhower, who also had backed the decision to wage a limited war in Korea, nevertheless seemed to offer a way out of the quagmire. Two weeks before the election he said, “I shall go to Korea,” and though he did not say what he would do when he got there, his pledge, coming from a man identified with victory in World War II, was a masterful stroke. Popularly regarded as the candidate best able to end the war, Eisenhower was politically irresistible. It was appropriate that the last word of his last campaign address was “peace.” The two other issues also worked to Eisenhower’s benefit. Republican charges that the Truman administration was infested with communists and that Stevenson was himself dangerously “soft” came not only from Joseph McCarthy but also from Eisenhower’s running mate. Richard Nixon spoke of “Adlai the Appeaser,” who lacked “backbone training” because he was a “Ph.D. graduate of Dean Acheson’s cowardly college of Communist containment.” Stevenson was vulnerable because he had once given a deposition attesting to Alger Hiss’s good reputation...
eBook - ePubRonald Reagan
The American Presidency
- David Mervin(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...To be an effective leader, to get bureaucrats and legislators to do what he wants them to do a president must retain the support of the public and, in the modern age, that is hardly possible without consistent command of television. THE 1980 GENERAL ELECTION Reagan’s victory in the 1980 General Election was of landslide proportions. He won 51 per cent of the popular vote against 41 per cent for Jimmy Carter and in the Electoral College led by 489 to 49. At the same election the Republicans gained twelve seats in the Senate and won control of that chamber for the first time in twenty-five years. In elections to the House of Representatives the Republicans made a gain of 33 seats and managed to defeat four incumbent committee chairmen. For Republicans this was a particularly rewarding set of results; in recent decades they had enjoyed considerable success in presidential elections, but the victories of Eisenhower and Nixon had not, with the fleeting exception of 1953–55, been flanked by success in Congressional elections. However 1980, it seemed, just might represent a genuine national shift towards conservatism thereby providing the underpinning for a new alignment of electoral forces to replace the Democratic coalition founded by Franklin Roosevelt. There are no simple explanations for complicated events like general elections, but we shall take as our starting point V. O. Key’s learned view that elections are determined largely by retrospective considerations. 37 The 1980 election, in other words, is to be seen primarily as a referendum on Jimmy Carter’s stewardship during the previous four years. For most voters, evaluations of Carter’s record turned primarily on economic matters. For many years prior to 1976, foreign policy questions had headed Gallup polls as the most important issues in presidential campaigns, but all this had changed by 1980...
eBook - ePubThe American Century
A History of the United States Since the 1890s
- Walter LaFeber, Richard Polenberg, Nancy Woloch(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Professors who did not wish to teach those values, of course, had the right to seek employment elsewhere. The book went through five printings in the first six months of publication. Republicans on the Potomac In Dwight Eisenhower the American people found a figure who perfectly suited their mood. In the 1952 campaign Eisenhower exploited the issues identified by the formula "K 1.C 2 "—Korea, communism, and corruption. Of the three, Korea was the most critical. By the fall of 1952 slightly more than half the electorate regarded the war—or, more accurately, how it might be ended—as the single most important issue. Democratic candidate Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois fully endorsed Truman's war policies, even suggesting that the nation brace itself for years of additional sacrifice. "The ordeal of the twentieth century is far from over," Stevenson said in accepting the nomination. Eisenhower, who also had backed the decision to wage a limited war in Korea, nevertheless seemed to offer a way out of the quagmire. Two weeks before the election he said, "I shall go to Korea," and though he did not say what he would do when he got there, his pledge, coming from a man identified with victory in World War II, was a masterful stroke. Popularly regarded as the candidate best able to end the war, Eisenhower was politically irresistible. It was appropriate that the last word of his last campaign address was "peace." The two other issues also worked to Eisenhower's benefit. Republican charges that the Truman administration was infested with communists and that Stevenson was himself dangerously "soft" came not only from Joseph McCarthy but also from Eisenhower's running mate. Richard Nixon spoke of "Adlai the Appeaser," who lacked "backbone training" because he was a "Ph.D. graduate of Dean Acheson's cowardly college of Communist containment" Stevenson was vulnerable because he had once given a deposition attesting to Alger Hiss's good reputation...
eBook - ePub- Peter Ling(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Stevenson in particular denied any wish for a third nomination, yet still hoped to be drafted by his convention supporters. The auguries for Democrats in 1960 were promising. First and foremost, the hugely popular Eisenhower was prevented from running for a third term by the Twenty-second Amendment, ratified in 1951. Ironically, it had been championed by the Republicans after the four consecutive terms of Franklin Roosevelt. But in 1960 it promised to benefit their opponents, since no Republican could match Ike's appeal. Four years earlier, in spite of Eisenhower's landslide victory, the Democrats had gained ground in Congress—two further seats in the House for a majority of 33, and one Senate seat for a majority of two in the upper chamber. The midterm elections saw further Democratic gains. Richard Nixon recalled election night in 1958 as one of the most depressing he had ever known. The statistics, he wrote later, “still make me wince” (Nixon 1978: 220). The Democratic majority swelled to 130 in the House and to 28 in the Senate. Admission of Hawaii and Alaska as full states of the union in 1959 confirmed Democratic dominance. Hawaii had one Republican and one Democrat in the Senate, but its sole congressman was a Democrat. Both of Alaska's senators and its solitary representative in the House were Democrats. A series of setbacks for the Republican administration, on both foreign and domestic fronts, strengthened the positive tide for the Democrats. The 1956 Suez Crisis sowed discord among the NATO powers and gave the Soviets scope for influence in Nasser's Egypt. It also made the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt easier, and the inability of the US to respond gave the lie to Secretary of State J. Foster Dulles' lofty words about “rolling back” the Iron Curtain...
...Since 1928, when the great Al Smith was overwhelmingly defeated by Herbert Hoover, Democratic leaders had been resolved never again to nominate a Catholic for president. 3 But times were changing, and Kennedy was smart enough (perhaps because he was young enough) to know it. His father’s money, shrewdness and influence were no handicaps, and his own youth might be a precious asset. America was very comfortable under President Eisenhower, but even among those who had twice voted for him, and would have done so again had he not been debarred by the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution from running for a third term, there was a feeling that the country had somehow lost its way under this elderly, prudent rule; was perhaps too comfortable, too somnolent; had lost its sense of purpose and was letting the dreaded Soviet communists overtake it; to meet this anxiety Eisenhower had set up a committee to suggest ‘Goals For Americans’. Eisenhower’s economic policy might reasonably be judged too timidly conservative: three recessions in eight years were surely too many in an age brimming with Keynesian skills and insights. And even Eisenhower himself felt that in a sense America had passed its peak: the devastation in Europe and Asia caused by the Second World War was now largely a thing of the past, and the unique position of the United States, as the only country to have done well out of that war, was at an end. There was a growing number of effective economic competitors, and the piles of gold stored in Fort Knox were beginning to dwindle. It was time for a change; youthful energy might bring it about...
