Weldon Kees on the Stevenson/Eisenhower election, 1952

"After all his, they found a small but 'delightful' duplex apartment near the Berkeley campus, at 2713 Dana Street, which had room for the piano and generous built-in bookshelves. Having such a new home raised their spirits--almost as much as the presidential candidacy of Adlai Stevenson, something Weldon had started to count on, like many of his peers.



"It was one thing to count onself among the tiny readership of the Nation, reading its 'ammunition' on what would happen if there were a Republican victory. Now the polls, though, were beginning to point to a Stevenson victory. The network commentators had even picked him to win by a good margin. This even seemed possible to Kees:



"Caught S. on his appearance here in Berkeley at the West Gate of the UC campus. Bogart, Bacall, Fred Clark, Mercedes McCambridge & some local politicos also appeared. Stevenson had a remarkable sense of his audience & the speece cd. scarcely be construed to be a vote-getting one in the ordinary sense of campaigning activity. The charm is enormous & the wit, combined with an ad lib ability scarcely second to Fred Allen's, is a bit breathtaking. There seems to be such intelligence here that he scarcely needs to try: just scoops out little bits & these suffice. I cannot say I was moved, but enormously impressed & touched by the man; anyway, considering a lot of things, I'd just as soon not be moved by politicians.



[...]



"Kees, [Delmore] Schwartz, poets, and much of the rest of America's intelligentsia awoke after Election Day expecting their candidate to have won. Kees had even put a small wager on a Stevenson victory. John Berryman was so high on Stevenson that he did not want his liberal hero and champion to be merely president, but king. Instead of a coronation, though, Stevenson's supporters discovered Republican landslide. Eisenhower's victory, which had developed during the early-morning hours, ended the hoped-for chance of an administration that would be generous to writers, painters, and intellectuals. Stevenson's defeat now assured a more banal Dark Age than the one they had already imagined around them. For Kees, this setback was another thing he would have to wait out, like the circumstances preventing his book from being published: 'To me it was a fairly graphic demonstration of Gresham's law all over again, a triumph for the soap-opera & singing commercial boys; and the campaign was probably the last one within our lifetimes that a Presidential candidate will conduct himself with even a modicum of honor & intelligence. Even so, I think I have steeled myself sufficiently to take it for the next forty-eight months, although I hope people won't hold it against me if I gag a little now & then at Dick & Pat.'"



From Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees by James Reidel (Nebraska, 2003)