Transcript

Museum of the Moving Image

The Living Room Candidate

"Man from Libertyville," Stevenson, 1956



MALE NARRATOR: The Democratic National Committee presents another visit with the man from Libertyville. Here at the end of this lane, on a farm about four miles from Libertyville, lives Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois. This is Governor Stevenson's living room, considerably cluttered up right now. A film crew has arrived to take pictures for television.



MAN: Scene Four, Five and Six. Take One. Track 43.



MALE NARRATOR: Now, here's the Governor.



STEVENSON: Yes, and I wish you could see what else is in this room beside the camera. Lights over here. There are cables all over the floor and even some of my friends standing around here. But you know, it's amazing how many things there are in television that you don't see. But I confess, I, I rather like it. It's wonderful. How sitting right here in my own library, thanks to television, I can talk to millions of people that I couldn't reach any other way.



But I'm not going to let this spoil me. I'm not going to stop traveling in this campaign. I can talk to you, yes. But I can't listen to you. I can't hear about your problems, about your hopes and your fears. To do that I've got to go out and see you in person, and that's what I've been doing. For the past several years I have traveled all over this country, hundreds of thousands of miles. I've been in every state, many of them more than once. And I've met thousands of you and millions of you have seen me. And out in the great Northwest - out here in Oregon and Washington and Idaho and Montana and all this great, beautiful, wonderful Western region - I've seen our magnificent natural resources, these priceless possessions that we have cherished so long, which the Eisenhower Administration has been giving away.



And the school problem is not a regional problem. All over the United States - from coast to coast, from Canada to Mexico - where I have traveled I have talked to people like you, parents, about their children, about the crisis in our schools. And I've talked with small businessmen all over the country, who get smaller and smaller and poorer and poorer while big business gets bigger and bigger.



And I've heard many people worry about the greatest anxiety of all in this age of the hydrogen bomb - about the state of our defenses, about the national security, about America's influence in the world under a Republican Administration that puts dollars ahead of national security. Yes, and I've seen the hurt in people's eyes, children and older people, too, who because of the color of their skin are treated somehow differently from their fellows in this land of equality and of freedom.



All of this and much more I have experienced - I have seen and heard and felt - as I have traveled across this broad land of ours, back and forth by train and plane and bus. And so, easy as it is to appear before you on television, I shall continue to travel and to listen throughout this campaign, as well as talk. And if you should elect me your president next November, I shall be the better for having done it, I'm sure, because I know that the strength and the wisdom that I need must be drawn from you, the people. So finally, I hope that the next time we meet it will be person to person and face to face.



MALE NARRATOR: Cast your vote on November 6th for the new America, for Adlai Stevenson for president and Estes Kefauver for vice president. Vote Democratic, the party for you, not just a few.