A wry anecdote circulated at Columbia University as the presidential election of 1952 approached. It was rumored that an Eisenhower-for-President meeting had been held on the campus and that only one faculty member had attended. All the rest were janitors, clerical staff, buildings-and-grounds people, athletic coaches, and so forth. Virtually the entire faculty was enthusiastic about the stylish and articulate Adlai Stevenson, but would no doubt have supported just about any liberal Democrat.

It has to be understood, of course, that in 1952 liberalism was very different from the New Left frenzy that severely wounded Columbia in 1968. For one thing, it was largely anti-Communist. Some of my professors had been Marxists of one sort or another during the 1930s, but this had largely faded. A small number had supported Henry Wallace and his policy of accommodation with the Soviets in 1948. But by 1952, that, too, had largely evaporated and Wallace himsel ...

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