(1900 – 1965) Urbane intellectual and liberal Democratic candidate for the presidency. After an Ivy League education and foreign service career, Stevenson became governor of his home state of Illinois in 1948. Drafted as presidential candidate against the popular military hero Dwight Eisenhower, he was trounced in 1952 and 1956. When the Democrats regained the White House in 1960, Stevenson became Ambassador to the United Nations under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, although he was sometimes troubled by their policies. His erudite speeches, sense of politics as pedagogy and dry wit seem impossibly distant from the popularity contests and spin control of later politics.