Stevenson.........................

     He did manage to evoke an astonishing degree of adoration.  The aura of special feeling that enveloped John F. Kennedy only after his death in Dallas surrounded Adlai Stevenson for a substantial stretch of his adult life.  Alongside the warmth and determined elegance with which his friends and admirers have written about Stevenson, the eulogies to President Kennedy read as though spoken by a clergyman who did not know the deceased while he lived.  Nor can there be any doubt that Stevenson's personality had a profound effect on the people who knew him;  he seemed to elevate all of them and somehow made them feel good.  As for the rest of his admirers, it is already a cliche to say that he struck a chord of affection in people in a way that few other American political figures have ever managed to do.  As Hans J. Morgenthau, not a notably sentimental man, wrote:  "His promise was ours, and so was his failure, and the tears we shed for him we shed for ourselves."

-Joseph Epstein, as excerpted from the chapter on Adlai Stevenson in Essays in Biography