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Only a few formalities seemed necessary before the discredited Truman retired and Ike took over. But Europeans reckoned without the modes and manners of U.S. politics. Their best overseas reporters were totally unable to convey to them the nuances of a campaign in which the Republican candidate was darkly accused of being a Republican and the Democrat damned for supporting a Democratic administration.
In 1952, Americans, too, were getting a new perspective on their political practices. Seen for the first time through the pitiless magnifying glass of TV, the business of nominating and electing a U.S.
President was an overwhelming sight, often stirring, frequently entertaining, sometimes appalling. It was a new kind of lesson in civics, and a good one. Perhaps it lasted too long, and shouted too loud. Yet when the sound & fury were done, and the passion spent, firm stands had been taken and issues freely debated. Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower, both able, earnest and sincere candidates, had conducted their own campaigns on a high level. In the age of the airhop and the fireside telecast, both candidates had traveled farther and had been more searchingly inspected by more people than in any other election in history. On Election Day, Ike piled up the biggest landslide victory since that of Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.
Dwight Eisenhower's election was the major news event of 1952. As a military commander, he had been Man of 1944; in his new political role, he had every opportunity to become undisputed Man of 1953.
Small Maybe. In Western Europe a handful of brave and patient politicians did their best to fill the bill for 1952—Italy's sere and aging Alcide de Gasperi, still holding his pastepot coalition government together in the face of the largest Communist parliamentary opposition in Europe; Britain's Winston Churchill, fighting now not on the beaches and in the hills, but in the factories and in the shops, to bestir Britain's trade; Germany's flinty and determined Konrad Adenauer, desperately fighting to tie his country's destiny to the West; France's busy Bookkeeper Antoine Pinay, standing bulldog guard for 9^ months on the national budget like a Normandy farm wife, before at last (see France) giving up.
Western Europe in 1952 was eating better and keeping warmer. The Schuman Plan to pool its coal and steel industries was at last under way. Its defenses at year's end were still a good 10% below what the generals in charge thought a.