And how they changed president ial campaigns. The Kansas City Public Library hosted this event. It is a little over an hour. Good evening print welcome to the Kansas City Public Library. Perhaps befitting my new parttime status as a visiting fellow at the whole center for the humanities at the university of kansas director of public affairs, emeritus. Me,ever you want to call im off the payroll here, but i cant stay away from this place, im afraid. Kind of addicted to it. As one of my former colleague said an hour ago, i cant go cold turkey. For thely tonight, when fourth time in four years, we are hosting president ial historian extraordinaire john robert greene, a professor of intory and humanities cazenovia, new york, where yes taught for the past 36 years. He also serves as the college archivist. As i just adjusted, since 2012 bob greene has been making annual appearances at the Kansas City Public Library. In 2012 he spoke on president george h w bush. In 2013 he was back for a talk about first lady betty ford. To the day ofost the 40th anniversary of richard , bob wasesignation here to give a presentation about the administration of gerald ford. These three programs, part of our beyond the gamut series were held in conjunction with our good friend at the Truman Library institute. But of course, we have another president ial library in the neighborhood, more or less just down i70 in abilene, kansas. This year, which happens to be 125th anniversary year of eisenhowers birth, we have launched a series with the Dwight Eisenhower president ial Library Museum and boyhood home to examine the eisenhower era. Thanks to the tremendous support from the foundation, commerzbank trustees. Tonight, which marks the , bobint of that series greene, the librarys good friend and someone who is become my good friend over the last four years is back. Hes back to give us a review of president ial election pitting Republican Party nominee eisenhower against democratic candidate idly stephenson. Its no exaggeration to say that this talk has been in the making for more than 35 years. Wrote his doctoral dissertation about it, which was shortly published thereafter as his first book, the first of 17 yes either written or edited. A seriously revised version of that first book, the dissertation on the 1952 campaign, is forthcoming. It wont be available tonight, but you will be able to order it on amazon soon enough. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome bob greene. [applause] mr. Greene you are not going to be able to quit this place. Thank you so much, henry. Good evening, everybody. How are you . Wonderful kansas city weather out there. I was worried about you people with snow and how i have to be worried about you with torrential downpours. It is so good to be back. It is so good to be back. It is always a lot of fun to come back from casanovia college, in upstate new york, where the snow comes and comes and comes. It is wonderful to come from here to here. This is one of the best venues to speak in the entire country y. The truman forum room has the wonderful ability to be scholarly and intimate at the same time. Coming here to the truman forum is something i look forward to every single year. We started talking about this talk, henry and i, six or seven months ago. For anybody in the pr business, you know when you get invited someplace, they immediately want a blurb about what you will talk about. This is six months before. I came up with this concept, talking about the myths that persist about the 1952 president ial race. I had no idea what i was going to say about them six months ago, but i kept this idea of myths as the basis for my talk tonight. When you get involved in academics, as a young scholar and i was young once, a hell of a long time ago. You get your doctoral dissertation and you get the opportunity to Say Something. The opportunity to give back to the academy. The opportunity to make a historical case to the public for the first time. You want to say some thing important. That is what books are supposed to be. You want to Say Something important, something lasting. You dont want to say the same thing over and over again. You dont want to just latch onto the myths of the past that may or may not be correct, but as people say, if it is not true, it should be. And you dont want to repeat over and over again about what people have said about a specific event. You are immediately drawn as a young person to write something new. To revise history. Not to make it untrue, but to Say Something that people have not said before about the elections, about president ial scholarship, about history in general. You want to reinterpret what was an orthodox view. That is what i did with my first really bad book, that was published in 1985, as henry said, it was my dissertation. I didnt even revise it. I was in a hurry to get it in print. It was on the president ial election of 1952 entitled the crusade. I wanted it to Say Something different about the election than it had said before. So i tackled the myths of the president ial election. What i centered on was the myth of the draft. You know what it is, Dwight Eisenhower was drafted. He didnt want to run. He was drafted by a group fronted by the citizens for eisenhower. Organized by tom dewey, whom i will talk about later. He was drafted against his will. And Adlai Stevenson, who didnt want to run, was drafted by a group of people fronted by Walter Johnson from the university of chicago, leo learners in illinois. He was drafted against his will. What did i say in the first book . None of this happened. And i said, neither one of them were drafted. That it was a myth. I thought it was great. The reviews were pretty good. Then i went to a conference in 1992. This is wheres waldo. You have to find me in this picture. I am the guy, fifth from the left, with black hair. Standing next to mr. And mrs. John minor wisdom. For a good three hours, they beat me up senseless about how wrong i was with my book. It was a very humbling experience. I kind of thought that by fighting hiding behind an i like ike button would make me more objective. But i seriously wondered if what i had said a few years before was even correct. Over the years, and in between other projects, and i have been fortunate enough to speak to you about these other projects, i have never let the president ial election of 1950 to get away. It is of 1952 get away. It is kind of like my first child who doesnt want to get away either, but that is neither here nor there. [laughter] but i realized i was not really saying material that was false. It wasnt a myth. But it was not the whole story. The Acclaimed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi adichie came up with this idea, a ted talk in 2009. She spoke of the dangers of taking an historical event and seeing only one part of it, because that is what you want to talk about. That is what interests you. That is what you know the best. The problem with that, it is a stereotype. Breaking down the myth of the Eisenhower Stevenson draft was a stereotype in it self. But it was incomplete. What a historian needs, and i think it has taken me 35 years of writing and teaching to really grasp this,s texture. This, is texture. Context. Not just to write about what happened, but about what it meant. President ial elections are a perfect forum for that. Because they are exciting. They are dramatic. They are often loony. Dont get me started. Im from new york. They are good stories, but if you take them just in and of themselves, you have only got part of the story. What they do is forecast the future. If you look at what we call realigning elections. 1932. 1832. 1789. 1960. 2000. Those elections changed what happened in american history. 1952 did the same thing. I was more interested in 1985 in telling people what i knew about the elections than telling them what it meant. I have a new opportunity now takes to the universal Election University election series to rethink everything. I am of the opinion now i was speaking with chuck myers and my editor i saw him blanche when i suggested this, that every author who gets a contract should automatically be given a contract to rewrite their book 20 years later. It has to be mandatory. He have to do this. Because you will get a different book 20 years later. That is what i am working on now that is what i am working on now and what i want to share with you. I want to talk about some of the context from which this comes. That is not a typo. Because the president ial election of 1952 begins with the problem that harry truman was having after 1949. You cannot divorce that election from what was happening after 1949. Nothing that truman wanted was going through the republican congress. He was faced with scandals. Remember the five percenters, the problem with skimming off the top. Harry was never implicated in that but it hurt his repetition. Remember the great debate. I will talk about bob taft and a second. In a second. About whether the notice states should be participating with nato or the united nations, or whether we should be withdrawing to within ourselves after world war ii. The whole concept of trumans loss of china. That has been completely debunked, but the republicans were beating him over the head with that and they were making his life miserable through congress. Truman had the interesting distinction of beginning his presidency as a wartime president , and ending his presidency as a wartime president with two different wars. And the domestic war he released on himself by recalling that was macarthur was hurting his administration by recalling Douglass Macarthur was hurting his administration. And the issue of communism and the rise of just carthy hurt him the rise of Joseph Mccarthy hurt him. This was key to the election, of walking out again in 1952 over civil rights and the issue of the tidelands oil, whether louisiana and california could own the oil off the coast, or whether that oil was owned by the federal government. All of these problems may truman vulnerable. Truman could have run again in 1952. Virtually everyone until december of 1951 thought that he was going to. Bob taft, who had all ready for the presidency three times, began his fourth president ial campaign romans after he lost the 1948 nomination campaign, moments after he lost the 1948 nomination to doing. To dewey. He was a thoughtful senator. Oldschool. Articulate. Less conservative in Domestic Affairs than people have given him credit for, but clearly the voice of unabashedly isolationism. Withdraw from nato, withdraw from the netted nations. The united nations. He owned the Republican Party after tom deweys failure. Everyone thought it would be an inevitable tafttruman race in 1952. He did not want to run. The correspondence is absolutely clear. He also did not want to be at nato. He was assigned there by harry truman. Perhaps to get him out of the country as a political threat, but trumans correspondence was equally clear that he believed that eisenhower would never run. Duty to the world, duty to his nation as head of nato. If you take sentences of eisenhowers correspondence out of context, which i did as a kid, you can find hints that maybe he might run under the right circumstances. But if you let eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson talk to you through their correspondence as a whole, it is certain that neither one of them wanted to run. But Dwight Eisenhower changes his mind. We know this because he did it. There is no debating it. In december of 1951, his correspondence gets to the point where i might allow myself to be a candidate. In january, 1952, eisenhower says ok i will accept the nomination. Three month later he is campaigning in the United States. He does actively change his mind. What changed his mind is that he did not want taft to win. He did not want the policy of isolationism to compromise what he had built at nato. He was willing, against his will, to run for the presidency. A job that he a poured. Abhorred. That he has seen literally ruin so many lives of those around him. He would have been opposed by minor candidates, smaller pictures. Harold stassen, miller warren. People forget before Harold Stassen began to run for the presidency over and over again, he was the youngest governor in the United States in minnesota. They called him the boy wonder. Earl warren, while he had not yet become what he would become as chief justice, had already run for Vice President of the United States. These were two fairly major players. They were never major enough to deal in the same circles in 1952. As eisenhowers mind started changing, as his correspondence showed that he was becoming more and more troubled by the stance that bob taft was taking, what was happening concurrently, running parallel with his change of mind, where the politicos were starting to organize a campaign without a candidate. Tom dewey, as early as 1949, knew that he could not run again. He wanted to desperately, but he would be humiliated at the convention. Taft would be his brains in. So instead, he decided to become a kingmaker. He starts pulling likeminded republican leaders, carlson from kansas. Duff from pennsylvania, and others together into a Shadow Organization for eisenhower, keeping his name out there. He keeps a link to eisenhower through general lucius clay. Clay was one of eisenhowers closest friends, a Constant Companion in nato and paris, and he would communicate to eisenhower through clay. Clay was the individual who organized the berlin airlift. When it got to him that they needed some organization on the ground, he turned to the junior senator from massachusetts, henry cabot lodge. He was working so hard that he let slide to a kid he did not think could beat him in 1952. Young congressman john f. Kennedy. What lodge gave to eisenhower in 1952 hurt him in the long run. He formed what was called the Eisenhower Committee. When eisenhower changes his mind, he comes back to an organization that was already there and running for him. Eisenhower decides that he is willing to accept the nomination as long as he doesnt have to run for it. But he does come back to run. What changes his mind . Three things. The first you should really take a look at this online, an event at Madison Square garden. The rally itself was a rally for eisenhower that was run by Jacqueline Cochran and her husband text mccrery tex mcrerry. They put this thing together and had over 20,000 people at this event. They take the thing and fly it to paris and show it to eisenhower. Eisenhower writes in his diary that he cried. He was really choked up. He did not accept until that point that people really wanted him. Then he was shown that in two primaries and he does that campaign for either one of them. In New Hampshire he goes up against bob taft. Beats him without having set foot in the state. In minnesota, he comes in second to Harold Stassen without even being on the ballot. He was a writein. It was these events that made eisenhower believe that people wanted him. And he was winning. By the way, this is a different primary setting. Today the primaries run everything. We will have our two nominees probably by may, if not by april, of next year. The primaries, there were only 12 in 1952, and the primaries chose a very small number of delegates. The rest was done with backroom dealing. With the delegates. Which taft had sewn up. Taft was so far ahead of eisenhower going into chicago, and after winning the wisconsin primary, eisenhower realized if he did not come back that he would lose the nomination. So he does. June 1, 1952, eisenhower comes back and announces his candidacy, which had our he happened, in his hometown of abilene, kansas down the road. It was a very inauspicious beginning. His speech was lousy. It was halting and he was terrible. He said so himself. The next day, when he met the press oneonone and not delivering a set speech, it was like night and day. The Eisenhower Committee knew just what they wanted to do with him in the fall. And what kind of a speaker he was going to be. So, eisenhower comes back in, june, 1952, as a candidate and has two months to deal and get delegates away from bob taft. There is another Political Party in this country. Harry truman treated it as his personal property. Harry truman had decided as early as 1949 not to run. Harry truman is wonderful in that he wrote letters to himself. These are extraordinary letters, and letters that he wrote about a book. Dear betts. He would stay up very late and he would write a letter to put on her pillow so she would see it in the morning. It was almost like a diary entry. Harry truman said he did not want to run in 1952, but he was not about to give up his control of the Democratic Party. He was going to name an error apparent heir apparent and this is like a comedy of errors because nobody wants it. What we have to keep in context is, nobody wanted to run against bob taft. Not eisenhower. Trumans first choice is the chief justice of the supreme court, fred vinson. Vinson dressed for business and i dont know what truman is dressed for. This is down in key west. Vinson came to the conclusion that his health would preclude him from running. He dies just a few years later so he must have known something. He tells truman no. Truman is disappointed. Truman has been linked to another possible candidate for the presidency. Estes kefauver, senator from tennessee, who made his mark running against the memphis crump machine by putting on a coonskin cap saying i may be pet coon, but i aint their pet coon. He is the first real