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In the Shade. In the Johnson Administration, Stevenson felt somewhat more comfortable than he had under Kennedy. President Johnson sought Stevenson's advice about foreign policy—although in fact he seldom accepted it. Stevenson disagreed in degree with some of the Administration's foreign policy moves, and his public support of the Dominican Republic and Viet Nam policies pained many of his liberal followers. This caused a good deal of chatter among journalists, including some talk immediately after his death that raised questions of journalistic ethics. Radio Reporter David Schoenbrun claimed that Stevenson, in a personal conversation the week before, had called President Johnson's intervention in the Dominican Republic a "massive blunder."
In recent months Stevenson some times spoke of retiring. CBS-TV's Eric Sevareid quoted Stevenson as having said only two days before his death that he wanted to quit: "For a while, I would just like to sit in the shade with a glass of wine in my hand and watch people dance." But before he accepted President Kennedy's offer to be Ambassador to the United Nations, Stevenson had indicated that he intended to stay with the job as long as he was wanted. "If I accept this appointment," he told a friend, "I am committed to support the President this side of treason or madness. There is no way for a man as prominent as I am to quietly step down."
As Adlai Stevenson lay in state in Washington's National Cathedral prior to final funeral services in Illinois this week, millions around the world mourned him, and eulogies poured out by the score. Perhaps he wrote his own epitaph when, on the evening of Nov. 3, 1952, before the presidential ballots had been cast, he summed up: "I have said what I meant and meant what I said. I have not done as well as I should like to have done, but I have done my best, frankly and forthrightly; no man can do more, and you are entitled to no less."