The 1952 campaign: Some lessons for bewildered voters

The first presidential campaign I remember was the 1952 Eisenhower-Stevenson race. There are, it seems to me, some similarities between that contest and the one we are about to decide.

In 1952, President Truman's popularity was in a nosedive. The Korean War had tapped the nation's military resources with no end in sight. Sen. Joe McCarthy was exposing the Red menace. Widespread corruption among federal employees was an unwelcome revelation to the American public. Truman chose not to seek re-election after losing the New Hampshire primary to Sen. Estes Kefauver from Tennessee. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, as the Republican nominee, vowed to clean up "the mess" in Washington and end the fighting in Korea. Truman threw his support, for what it was worth, to Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois, who was, despite his reluctance, drafted as the Democratic nominee.

I do not, at my fickle-memory age, remember clearly all of these details. They are readily available on the Internet. What I do remember is that the farm on Killough Valley in the Ozarks over yonder was virtually cut off from the rest of the nation and world in 1952. Without electricity or telephone, we had to rely on a battery-operated console radio for what little access we had to regular broadcast news reports, and what we listened for most was hog and cattle prices at the stockyards in East St. Louis.

Our other sources of news from the outside world came from the Weekly Star Farmer, Successful Farming magazine and Life magazine, which my mother subscribed to in a moment of weakness when a good friend said she needed to sell just one more subscription to qualify for a sales prize.

My mother was a staunch, lifelong Democrat, and my stepfather, who immigrated from Austria before World War I and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, was a staunch Republican. He purchased a new battery for the radio a few weeks before the July political conventions in Chicago, saying we needed to know what was going on. It was, perhaps, only coincidental the World Series would be broadcast a couple of months later.

Unbeknownst to us, Americans with television sets were being exposed, for the first time, to political commercials. Eisenhower's are generally regarded as the most effective, featuring short sound bites on key issues. Stevenson's ads, strangely, never showed the candidate. The Illinois governor's disdain for "selling" a candidate was obvious: "I think the American people will be shocked by such contempt for their intelligence. This isn't Ivory Soap versus Palmolive."

In fact, that's exactly what political TV ads have become: one "product" battling the other, mainly by claiming the competitor's "soap" contains enough poison to kill you even if your whites are whiter and your colors are brighter.

Roger Ailes, media consultant to Richard Nixon in 1968 and later creator of Fox News, put the new reality of hawking candidates on TV this way: "Television is not a gimmick, and nobody will ever be elected to major office without presenting themselves well on it."

Which brings us to the selling of the president in 2008. Americans are begging for information about what John McCain and Barack Obama have in mind for the economy, health care, education, Social Security, energy, the environment, the Iraq war (remember the war?), taxes, the national debt, annual budget deficits, international diplomacy, jobs, government spending and international trade, for starters.

Both candidates have put together detailed plans for all of these issues and many more, but what do American voters know about the details, except for a few glossy references in the debates? The TV ads for both candidates are aimed at undermining each other, not informing us about what they will do to ease whatever concerns we have.

I liken today's TV ads for presidential candidates to the IEDs planted by insurgents in Iraq: The hope is that this ad will be the one that blows up the opponent's campaign and destroys the faith of voters.

Little effort is made to attract, inform or assure voters with innovative ideas about the messes the new president will face come January. In the end, we are grossly shortchanged on useful information on which to base a decision on Nov. 4. At best, we're left with slick presentation, proving Roger Ailes right in one respect but wrong in another: It's all gimmick.

We are, it turns out, a nation that chooses a president by deciding which candidate is worse and voting for the other guy.

My mother and stepfather canceled each other's votes in the 1952 election, just as they did for the next 50 years, except 1980. when my mother convinced my stepfather to vote for Jimmy Carter, who was, after all, a Baptist. In the farmhouse on Killough Valley, religion trumped political-party affiliation that year. But my stepfather hated that he voted for a loser and switched back to his Republican base for the rest of his life. Bill Clinton's Baptist upbringing wasn't enough to change his mind.

My mother gloated over the Clinton victories, but his presidency left a bad ache in her stomach. After all, Baptists don't do what Clinton did. You know. Baptists don't talk about such things either. Except at the beauty shop.

Two final thoughts:

1. If I were in charge of the debates for presidential candidates, I would have at least one event where each candidate would be required, without any reference to his or her opponent, outline plans to address major issues. American voters are smart enough to compare those ideas and make a choice. Really, they are. And they should be able to participate in this process absent the distortions of the same sound bites that are used in negative TV advertising.

2. In case you're wondering, the Yankees won the 1952 World Series in Game 7. There was much rejoicing on Killough Valley. Some passers-by will swear they saw Baptists dancing in plain sight.

R. Joe Sulivan is the editorial page editor of the Southeast Missourian. E-mail: jsullivan@semissourian.com.