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Many of his speeches had the quality of an after-dinner address; they did not rouse his audience as Eisenhower's incandescent personality could. What effect, if any, were Stevenson's speeches having? Was he making any sense—or talking over people's heads? Correspondents began to report a frequent phenomenon: the listener who thought Stevenson was probably too abstruse for most people—though, of course he understood him. With one segment of the population—joyfully dubbed "the Shakespeare vote"—Stevenson certainly hits the mark.*
Columnist Stewart Alsop quoted a young Connecticut Republican: "Sure, all the eggheads love Stevenson. But how many eggheads do you think there are?" The term "egghead" (meaning "highbrow" or "double-dome") immediately got into political circulation.
Not all the eggheads are for Stevenson. Last winter and spring, three figures dominated the political horizon: Truman, Taft and Eisenhower. To intellectuals and other "opinion makers," Eisenhower was infinitely preferable to the other two. Taft warned the Republicans that many of this group would revert to their habit of supporting the Democrats, no matter which Republican or which Democrat was nominated. In this, Taft was partly right, and the egghead switch was intensified by the Stevenson eloquence.
Harry's Boy? In the early days of the campaign, Stevenson tried desperately—and with considerable success—to demonstrate the fact that he was not Truman's hand-picked and amenable follower. But Harry Truman soon showed that you cannot teach your political grandmother to suck eggs. Sooner or later, Stevenson would have to face the facts of life and support the whole Democratic record—including Harry Truman's. In the next few weeks Stevenson swallowed manfully and changed his views on three important issues:
¶ He called for repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. Previously, he had said that some parts of the law had "advanced the cause of good labor relations" and that "anyone who says flatly that he is either for or against that law is indulging in our common weakness for oversimplification." But in Detroit Stevenson said, "I don't say that everything in the Taft-Hartley Act is wrong: it isn't. And moreover, I'll say frankly that I don't think it's a slave-labor law, either. But I do say that it was biased and politically inspired and has not improved labor relations in a single plant . . . What should be retained from the old law can best be written into the new law after the political symbolism of the Taft-Hartley Act is behind us." Stevenson recognized that repeal of the law would deprive the Government of the power to deal with nationwide strikes; he had "no miracle-drug solution for this problem," but said a new law should give the President "a choice of procedures."
¶ He came out for federal control of the offshore tidelands. Previously, he had said he was not sure whether the tidelands were part of the national domain and asked whether this was a question of "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" or whether the question was "Who is Caesar?"