Finally, my friends of this staggering test, that you have assigned me i will always try to do justly to love mercy and walk humbly with my god. [ applause ] American History tv primetime continues wednesday night with a look at the 1964 president ial campaign of barry goldwater. A two hour discussion of the life and career of the nominee. At 10 50, a look at his role and the Conservation Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Cspan. Org you can watch our Public Affairs and political programming at your convenience. Go to our home page on cspan. Org. You can type in the name of the speaker and the bill and the event topics and click on the program you want to watch or refine your search tools. If you are looking at current programs and dont want to search the library cspan. Org is a public provider. If you are a cspan watcher, check it out on cspan. Org. Up next, of 1952 president ial election of john robert greene. Mr. Greene talks about the introduction of political tv ads and how they change to president ial campaigns. The Kansas City Public Library hosted this event. It is a little over an hour. So, good evening, welcome to the Kansas City Public Library. I am henry fortunato. My new part time status at the hall center of the university of campus. Whatever you want to call me, i am off the payroll here but i cannot stay away from this place, i am afraid. I am kind of addicted to us. As one of my former colleagues said an hour ago, i cannot go cold turkey. Tonight, we are hosting president ial historians greene. Where he taught for the past 36 years. As i just suggested since 2012, bob greene has been making annual appearances at the Kansas City Public Library. In 2013, he was back for a talk about first lady, betty ford, last year to the day of the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixons resignation, bob was hear giving the presentation about gerald ford. These three programs are part of our events and held in conjunction of our good friends at the institute. Of course, we have another president ial library in the neighborhood, more or less. Just down on i70 in abilene, kansas. This year, which happens to be the 125 anniversary years of eisenhowers birth, we launched the boyhood home to examine the eisenhower era. Tonight which marks the midpoint of that series out there on the corridor if you want to see the other two. Bob greene and the librarys good friend and someone who has became my good friend is baa k. Hes back to give us a review of the 1952 president ial election of eisenhower against the democratic, Adlai Stevenson. This talk had been in the making for more than 35 years. Bob wrote his dissertation about it shortly published there after his first book. The first of 17 that he has written or edited. A seriously revised version of that first book, the dissertation on the 1952 campaign is now forthcoming. It wont be available tonight. Unfortunately. But, you will be able to order it on amazon soon enough. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, bob greene. [ applause ] you are not going to be able to quit this place, never in a million years. Yeah. Thank you very much, henry. Good evening everybody, how are you . Good. Wonderful kansas city weather out there. I was worried about you people with snow, i got to worry about you with torrential downpours. It is so good to be back. It is always an awful a lot of fun to come back from casnova college in upstate new york where the snow comes and comes and comes. But, it is wonderful to come from here to here. I have to tell you i have said this to you before and i mean it every time. This is one of the best venues that speak at in the entire country. [ applause ] i speak absolutely [ applause ] the truman forum room had this wonderful ability to be intimate at the same time and the audiences are among the best educated and usually the best behaved audience that i speak at. Coming here to the truman forum is something that i look forward to every single year. We started talking about this, henry and i about six or seven months ago. For anybody in the pr business, you know that when you get invited some place, they immediately want a blurb about what you talk about. I came up with this concept that you may have seen around some of the advertising about talking about the myth of the 1952 president ial race. I had no idea of what i am going to say about them six months ago. I poll liished the thing up a le bit ago. I kept this idea of myths as the bases of my talk tonight. When you get involved in academics as a young scour. I was young once. [ laughs ] a hell of a long time ago. You get your doctoral dissertation and you get the opportunity to Say Something and the opportunity to give back to the academy and the opportunity to make a historical case to the public for the first time. You want to Say Something important. I mean thats what books are really supposed to be. Books are supposed to Say Something important and lasting. You dont want to say the same thing over and over again. You dont want to just simply latch onto the myths of the past that may or may not not be correct and what is it the people say, if it is not true or should be. You dont want to repeat over and over again of what people have said about a specific event. You immediately drawn as a young person and i think to write something new, to revise history and not to make it untrue but to Say Something that people have not said before about the elections, about president ial scholarships and history in general that you want to reinterpret of what was an orthodox view. Thats what i did with my first really bad book. That was published in 1985 and as henry said well, it was my dissertation, i did not revise it much. I was in a hurry to get the thing in print. It was on the president ial election of 1952 entitled the crusade. I wanted to Say Something different about the election that it had been said before. I tackled the myth of the president ial election. And what i center on was the myth of the draft. Yall know what it is. Dwight eisenhower was drafted. He did not want to run. He was drafted by a group that was fronted by the citizens for eisenhower, that was organized by i am going to talk about a little more later. He was drafted against his will. And Adlai Stevenson who did not want to run was drafted by a group of people who were fronted by Walter Johnson by the university of chicago, and the volunteers in illinois and he was drafted against his will. So what did i say in this first book . None of this happened. Thats what i said. I said neither one of them were drafted, that it was a myth. I thought it was great. The reviews were good. Then i went to a conference in 1992. Now, this is a where is waldo, you got to find me in this picture. I am the guy fifth from the left with black hair. [ laughs ] standing next to mr. John myers wisdom. You may see harold stason there. For three hours at the library, they beat me up about how wrong i was with my book. I kind of thought hiding behind an i like ike button would make me objective. I walked away wondering whether or not what i had said a few years before was even valid or correct. Over the years and in between projects that i have been fortunate enough to speak to you about other projects as henry so graciously said, i have never let the president ial election of 1952 get away. It is kind of like my first child, who does not want to go away either but thats neither here or there. The more that i thought about it the more that i realize that it was not i was not really saying materials that was false. It was not a myth. It was not the whole story. The nigeria author, came up with the idea of a singling story of teds talk in 2009. She spoke of the dangers of taking a historical event and seeing only one part of it because thats what you want to talk about. Thats what interests you. Thats what you know the best. The problem with that is that first of all, it is a stereotype. Breaking down the myths of the Eisenhower Stevenson draft was a stereotype in itself. It is what i wanted to do. It was incomplete. What a historian needs it took me 35 years of teachi teachinteaching teaching really grasp this is texture and context. Not just to write about what happen but about what it meant. President ial elections are a perfect forum for that. They are exciting and dramatic and often looney. Dont get me started. I am from new york. Theyre good stories. If you take them and take them just in of itself. You only got part of the story. What they do is they forecast the future. What we call realigning elections, 1932, 1832, 1789, 1960, 2000s, those elections change what happened in america. 1952 did the exact same thing. I was more interested in 1985 telling everybody what i knew about the election ths than telg people what the election meant. Not to redo everything but to rethink everything. I am of the opinion now and this, i was speaking with chuck myers who was here in the audience and my editor a bit ago. I saw him blanched when i suggested this. Every author who gets a contract should be automatically given a contract to rewrite their books 20 years later and it has to be mandatory and you have to do this because you are going to get a different book. 20 years later. Thats what i am working on now of what i want to share with you. I want to talk about some of the contexts from which this comes. No, thats not a typo. Because the president ial election of 1952 begins with the problems that harry truman was having after 1949. You cannot divorce out of elections from what was happening from 1949. Nothing that truman wanted was going to the republican congress. He was faced with scandals. Remember the 5 percenter and the problems of skimming off the top and harry truman was never implemented of any of that but heard his administration badly. Remember the great debate, i am going to talk more about bob taft in just a sect about whether or not the nation should be participating any kind of security with nato or United Nations or drawing within itself after world war ii. The whole concept of truman lost china, thats completely debunked by modern scholars. China lobby was making miserable for truman in congress. Truman had the interesting extinction beginning his wartime president and ending his presidency as a wartime president with two different wars. The domestic war that he unleashed upon himself by recalling Douglas Macarthur was hurting his administration. The rise of joe mccartney, all of these things and on the domestic front, the fact that the south which had walked out of the 1948 convention over the civil rights platform, the dixie krats were showing out every sign and walking out again of 1952 of the civil rights and issues of the land oil. Whether california could own the oil right off their coast or whether or not that oil was ownow owned by the federal government. All these problems made truman vulnerable. Truman could have ran again in 1952 and everybody thought he was going to. Bob taft, senator from ohio who had run for presidency three times began his fourth president ial campaign moments after he lost the 1948 convention or nomination to tom dewey. Taft was an honorable, eloquent, thoughtful, senator. Old school, articulate, less conservative or Domestic Affairs that people giving him credit for. The voice of isolationism would draw from nato and the United Nations and he owned the Republican Party after tom deweys third failure as president. Everybody thought it is going to be an inevitable taft trumans race in 1952. He did not want to run. The correspondence is absolutely clear. He also did not want to be at shape. He did not want to be at nato. He was assigned there by harry truman, perhaps, to get eisenhower out of the country as a political threat. Truman found that it was equally clear that believed that eisenhower would never run. Duty to the world, duty to the nation as head of nato. If you take sentences of eisenhowers correspondence out of context, which i did as a kid, you can find hence that maybe he may run under the right circumstances, Adlai Stevenson talks to you as a whole, it is absolutely certain that neither one of them wanted to be run. But, Dwight Howard changes his mind. We know this because he did it. There is no debating it. In december of 1951, his correspondence suddenly gets to the point where well, i might allow myself to be a candidate in january of 1952, eisenhower says okay, i will except taccep nomination and three months later, hes back campaign ing i the United States. He does actively changed his mind and what changed his mind was simple, he did not want taft to win. Hef he was willing against his will of a job what he has horde and he has seen literally ruined so many men. Not necessarily the president s but the people around him. He did not want any part of that. Yes, he would have been opposed by minor candidates. Yes, smaller pictures. Harold stason. People forget before harold began to run over and over again. Harold was the youngest governor in the United States in minnesota. They called him the boy wounder. He had run for Vice President of the United States. These were two fairly major players. They were never, ever major enough to deal in the same circles in 1952 with either eisenhower or bob taft, it was always the two of them. As eisenhowers mind suddenly started changing, it shows he was more and more troubled by this stance that bob taft was taken. What was happening and running parallel to his change of mind the politicals were starting to organize a campaign without candidates. Tom dewey knew that he could not run again. Instead, he decides what hes going to do is become a king maker. He starts pulling likeminded republican leaders, carlson from kansas and duff from pennsylvania and others together in a Shadow Organization for eisenhower keeping his name out there. He keeps a link to eisenhower through the gentleman in the center, clay, clay was one of eisenhowers closest friend. A Constant Companion of eisenhower and dewey communicated with eisenhower through clay. Clay was the individual who master minded the berlin air lift. When they finally got to the point where they needed to have some sort of an organization on the ground, they turn to the junior senator from massachusetts, who was then working so hard for eisenhower that he kind of let slide the challenge by a kid that he never thought could beat him in 1952. Young congressman jf. Kennedy. What ledge gave to eisenhower in 1952 hurts him in the long run. These three gentlemen formed what i call just the Eisenhower Committee. It was never really a name for it. When eisenhower changes his mind, he comes back to an organization thats already there and running for him. Now, eisenhower decides that he is going to be willing to accept the nomination as long as he does not have to run for it. But, he does come back to run. What changes his mind . Three things. The first is ticket from an extraordinary and you should really take a look at this online. An event at Madison Square garden. The rally was for eisenhower that was run by Jacqueline Cochran and her husband. They put this thing together and had over 20,000 people at this event. Then with the mind of a pr person, they take the tape and fly it to paris and show it to eisenhower. Eisenhower writes in his diary that he cried. He was so choked up and he did not really accept to that and until that point that people really wanted him. And then he will shown that in two primaries. Hes not he does not campaign for either one of them. In New Hampshire, he goes up against bob taft, beats him without having set foot in the states. In midnnesota, he comes insect o harold stason in his own state without being in the ballot, he was a write in. It was these events that made eisenhower believved that peopl wanted him. By the way, this was a different primary set. Today the primaries run everything. Well have our two nominees as you well know. Well have our two nominees probably by may. If not by april of next year. The primaries that were only 12 of them in 1952. The primaries chose a small number of delegates. The rest was done with back room dealing with the delegates which taft had delegates which taft had sewn up. Taft was so far ahead of eisenhower going into chicago, and after winning the wisconsin primary, eisenhower realized that if he didnt come back, he was going to lose the nomination. So he does. On june 1st, 1952, eisenhower comes back and announces his candidacy which had already happened in his hometown of abilene, kansas, right down the road. It was a very inauspicious beginning. Eisenhowers speech was absolutely lousy. He was halting. He was terrible. He said so himself the next day which is what this photo is of when he met the press oneonone and he wasnt delivering a set speech, it was like night and day. And the Eisenhower Committee knew just exactly what they wanted to do with him in the fall if he won the nomination and what kind of a speaker he was going to be. So eisenhower comes back in in june of 1952, as a candidate, and hes got three months im sorry two months before the convention to try and deal and get delegates away from bob taft. Meanwhile, theres another Political Party in this country, and 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 theyre also letters that harry truman wrote. Bob ferrells book dear bess would collect some of them. Bess went to bed very early and harry truman would stay up very late. He would write a letter to put on her pillow so she would see it in the morning. And it was almost like a diary entry. He said he didnt want to run in 1952, it only solidified all the problems he had but he was not about to give u