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tell corny jokes if you're a politician, but to be really witty...people are afraid of wits in politics. In fact, that was one of the things that was leveled against him: he was “too frothy and frivolous” when he was running for President. Of course, he didn't have a prayer; he was running against a national hero. Nobody could have beaten Eisenhower. I don't even know whether Stevenson would have been a good President because there was something indecisive about him.

Could you give an example of that?

Yes, I can. After he was defeated in 1956, he took the defeat so gallantly, in contrast to Nixon when he lost in California: a miserable exhibition. I spoke out at the University of Illinois one Friday night. On Saturday, Adlai invited me to have lunch and spend the day with him in Springfield. He was still Governor of Illinois. He was just finishing out his term. So Saturday morning I had a chance to show off a little bit at the University of Illinois because a state trooper arrived to take me to the governor's mansion in Springfield. It's quite a drive. I stepped into the car and we went bowling out of the campus and ran right into an automobile as we left the campus.

The driver got out of the other car in a rage. But when he saw that it was a state trooper he turned pale and began apologizing for our having run into him. Of course, it was all patched up. We weren't going very fast. There