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in than anybody I've ever known. He'd been campaigning for nine months and had the tremendous ability to go on and on without fatigue.
As the campaign went on, people criticized the campaign that Stevenson was making and felt he wasn't doing as well with his speeches as he had in the campaign of '52. Do you recall that? That his speeches weren't of as good quality and...
I always thought they were excellent.
I thought they were excellent, and I didn't agree with this at all. And they felt that he didn't talk enough about foreign affairs and foreign policy. He started to talk about foreign affairs and policy about the middle of October, but on the 25th of October the Suez Crisis occurred, and it was quite obvious from then on that his chances for winning were very, very poor because of the critical nature at that moment of the situation and people's anxiety about whether or not we'd be involved in some military way. I felt after that that the chances of his election were largely eliminated.
Then he made a statement the last night before the election in which he discussed Eisenhower's illness and how terrible it would be, should he die, to have a man like Nixon inherit the Presidency. The phrasing of this statement was very unfelicitous and, I think, offended a large number of people who don't like to hear spoken the possibility of the death of another person. I think that hurt him, an dit was very uncharacteristic
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