National Affairs: Invitation Declined

For the first time in recorded history, a U.S. President asked a defeated rival to attend an international summit council: in a ten-minute White House meeting last week, Dwight Eisenhower told Adlai Stevenson he would be "very happy" to have Stevenson accompany the U.S. delegation to next week's heads-of-government NATO meeting in Paris. Leaving the White House, Stevenson first said he was not really sure he had been invited, then promised to decide within a week or ten days, that afternoon announced that he would not go "unless there are compelling developments."

So ended a chapter in high politics that began a...

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