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Why was Harry Truman so adamantly against him?
I think that Stevenson had offended him in some ways. He certainly had been rather rude to Margaret Truman, who had been a friend of Stevenson's, and I think, without realizing it, he didn't understand that he had offended President Truman because he had been rude to Margaret. But, maybe there were other reasons, and, anyway, he certainly was very put out with him. And his Friends, Judge Rosenman and George Barker were strongly for Harriman and worked on him to be for Harriman. However, he could have been for Harriman without being so bitter about Stevenson, and it was very sad to see him be, well, almost intemperate about anyone.
I remember the night of the nomination Stevenson telephoned me and seemed very elated about the nomination but was still under terrific control. Anna Rosenberg and Florence Mahoney were in Chicago and telephoned me frequently, so I got blow-by-blow descriptions of what was going on up until the nomination. Then Stevenson did what was unusual; he threw the nomination of the Vice President to the convention. I must ask him sometime why he really did this, because I'm not sure whether it was because he disliked Kefauver so much or felt indebted to Kennedy, who nominated him for the Presidency and must have given him some substantial support. But, in any case, Jack Kennedy came very close to being nominated that day on the floor of the convention, but Kefauver finally made it and became the candidate.
Generally speaking, that's a rather risky thing to do, isn't it?
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