before the American Legion, a citadel of jingoism and political reaction, and told the audience that McCarthy’s kind of patriotism was a disgrace. Besides his own inevitable defeat, the result was that at a moment when the Democratic party, having been in power for more than twenty years, should have been in complete disrepute, Stevenson reinvigorated it and made it seem an open and exciting place for a generation of younger Americans who might otherwise never have thought of working for a political candidate.
