Presidential races are the stuff of myth, sometimes literally. Like the 1952 contest between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, both purportedly reluctant candidates who were somewhat out of touch with their campaigns.

Cazenovia College history professor and presidential scholar John Robert Greene, author of The Crusade: The Presidential Election of 1952, sets the record straight in a discussion of the race ultimately won decisively by Eisenhower. The myth makers, he maintains, underrate the political shrewdness of the two men, each of whom wanted to win and recognized that voters were more receptive to a candidate who was “above politics.”

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