Stevenson vs. Nixon- 1956

[gorkay]

Here's one for you-- I apologize if it's already been done, but I think it's a good one.

President Eisenhower's health problems force him to retire after one term in office. He endorses Vice-President Nixon for the 1956 Republican presidential nomination, and Nixon wins handily. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Adlai Stevenson wins his party's nomination again on the first ballot.

Questions:

1. Who would Nixon choose as his running mate?

2. In such a situation, would Stevenson still have left the vice-presidential nomination up to a vote of the delegates as he did in RL, or would he have taken the safer route of choosing his running mate? If the latter, who would he have picked?

3. Based on your answers to the first two questions, what would have happened in the general election?

[gorkay]

I don't think Nixon would have won by such a large margin. I just don't see him being as popular a candidate as Ike, even if he had had Ike's enthusiastic endorsement.

[gorkay]

A Stevenson/Nixon debate in that election would have been highly entertaining. Despite all the legend about Nixon's performance in the 1960 debates, most of which is inaccurate, Nixon thought pretty fast on his feet (remember the "kitchen debate" with Khrushchev?), and assuming that he didn't bang his knee on a car door as he did in 1960, he would have been at full strength. Stevenson's oratory abilities are very well known, of course (his acceptance speech at the 1952 Democratic convention is the best one I've ever heard), so given their contrasting political philosophies and their abilities to express them, debates between the two could have been very edifying.