Project X

I tell? Yish sounds like something I would say. That's why I come here to this place, this cabinet of curiosities, a place that stores the facts that matter and matters a fact, it's all that stays between a reasonable doubt and the chaos of uncertainty. It lies in a time between now and then. The sign on the door reads the last Archive. Step through that door to a studio at the Columbia Broadcasting System on Election Night nineteen fifty two,

Good eighth and everyone. This was Walter grind Guide speaking to you from CBS Television. Election headquarters are in New York City. The vague Election Night nineteen fifty two, the year when the United States fixed its thirty President, Welcome

to election Night. But Election Night nineteen fifty two wasn't just any night, because everything you know about how campaigns are run and how results are announced, polls, targeted advertising, breathless television coverage, edge of your seat, computer projections, it all started right here in nineteen fifty two, with Walter Cronkite just settling in for the long night ahead and CBS Studio forty one on the third floor of Grand

Central Station, New York. As CBS's coverage begins, the camera pans across a crowded, frantic newsroom, teletype machines, adding machines, paper spread everywhere, dozens of telephones, some guys smoking at the back of the room near a giant wall map of the United States, a map that CBS will fill out as the returns come in. They couldn't color the states red and blue, because in nineteen fifty two hardly anyone had a color TV. Instead, states that went Democrat

would be covered with black. Republicans got stripes. Not so much elephants as zebras bomby weather over most of the United States today, and a record turnout apparently throughout the United States, a record turnout so many votes to out. This election would change how Americans predicted the outcome of the election. It would change all sorts of things about elections.

But let me first remind you who was running. The Republicans put forward as their candidate General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ike, the general behind D Day, military man, grandfather, straight shooter. Republicans came up with the slogan, I like Ike, I President, I President, I President President, and everybody really did like Ike. This is the election where a likability became a thing for the Democrats. The incumbent, Harry S. Truman was out. The Democrat who wanted to be in was Illinois Governor

Adlai E. Stevenson. Stevenson wasn't affable or folksy like Eisenhower. He was learned and experienced, dignified, he might even say aristocratic. Stevenson had and born to a political family. His grandfather had been Grover Cleveland's vice president. Stevenson held himself above the messiness, the tackiness of campaigns. Trustworthy. He was supposed to be trustworthy. Both Stevenson a man you can believe in the general versus the governor likable Ike versus the

man you can believe in sin anyway. Like Walter Cronkite said, voting in the nineteen fifty two race looked to be a record turnout, a turnout so big that the wire Service thought it might take until the next day to count the votes. We're going to be giving you all of the figures just as quickly as we can, but we'll no other results sometime the night, early in the morning, results that very night that would be fast, so fast. Historians sometimes call this era after the Second World War

the Great Acceleration. There were races, the arms race, the space race, even NASCAR racing started then, but in a bigger way. Everything got sped up, transportation, communication, production, consumption, everything. Knowledge is to take the form of mysteries, things only God could know. Then came facts, then numbers, and then during the Great Acceleration, numbers began to yield to data, including the votes counted on election night. CBS wanted to

count them faster than anyone else. Welcome to the Last Archive, the show about how we know what we know, how we used to know things, and why it seems sometimes lately as if we don't know anything at all. I'm Jill Lapoor on the edge of my seat, waiting for the returns to come in. Aside from all those television cameras, there was another machine in the CBS studio on election Night nineteen fifty two, a machine most Americans had never

seen before, a console blinking. The development of modern electronic digital computers began with early man, who used his digits or fingers to keep track of the things around him one weapon, two animals, and three wins. A few thousand years after that Caveman, the first general purpose digital computers were built by the Allies in the Second World War. They were used to calculate missile trajectories and to break codes. After the war, the first commercial digital computer was built

by an office equipment company called Remington Rand. I guess because there were more things to count than one weapon, two animals, and three wives. Even through the use of present day office equipment, it becomes increasingly difficult to process this accumulation to obtain the information we need. So many facts, so many numbers, so much data. Human Khan needed a new kind of machine to meet this need for high

speed data processing. The scientists and technicians of the Eckert Mauchley division of Remington Rand have created a miracle of electronic development, UNIVAC, a complete electronic system for sorting, classifying, computing, and decision making. The UNIVAC the Universal Automatic Computer. Remington Rand had sold one to the US Census Bureau to count the nineteen fifty census. Right now, UNIVAK is handling automatically and economically unbelievable volumes of statistical work for the

United States Bureau of the Census. Work that formerly took weeks and months to do is now being done in a matter of hours by UNIVAK. Okay, so the Census Bureau needed the machine to count the census. But who else could possibly need a crazy, expensive UNIVAC, a machine the size of a small truck. Hardly anyone, it seemed. But Remington Rand wanted to sell them, so they had to keep pitching them and pitching them and pitching them. UNIVAK is rapidly turning out answers, answers which have profound

significance in the lives of all of us. Maybe UNIVAC could count votes. Maybe on election night, UNIVAC could even know the winner before any human could. Maybe the UNIVAC might actually get it right, because in the last election, everyone had gotten it wrong. Thomas Dewey and his family waited expectantly for a concession. In nineteen forty eight, Truman had run against the Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey. All the big posters were sure Dewey would win. Reporters

were just as sure. The Chicago Tribune went to press early, too early, with one hundred and fifty thousand papers bearing the headline Dewey defeats Truman. Dear listener, he did not a man of the people had accomplished a political miracle. At his home in Independence, Missouri. President Tillman accepted the

congratulations of the nation. TV got it wrong, too, But TV didn't matter in nineteen forty eight, first because hardly anyone owned a television set then, and second, the TV coverage in nineteen forty eight was basically just live film of radio guys snoozing and waiting for the returns. But in nineteen fifty two everything was supposed to be different. People finally had television sets. Watching would be fun, the announcers would call it right. So back to election night

in nineteen fifty two. It seems to me that television has certainly come into its own this year. This time, everything seems to be specially designed for television. CBS had put a lot of effort and money into its coverage, every last bell and whistle. They'd also made it into a race. They really wanted to call the election early. Ideally, they wanted to call the election first, except they didn't want to call it so early that they'd get it wrong.

But in case that happened, they needed a scapegoat. Enter the computer. Millions of Americans had televisions, but how many had computers. None. At the time, there were, by my count, six computers in the whole country. It's possible I have my numbers wrong. Remember I am only human. But here's where what CBS wanted and what Remington Rand wanted lined up perfectly. Remington Ran needed a chance to show how useful computers are, a showcase. CBS needed a stunt and

also a scapegoat. It was a match made in heaven. These things tend to seem inevitable after the fact, but of course history doesn't work that way. Most things happened by accident. A few months before election day, a guy from CBS went out to lunch with a guy from Remington Rand. CBS wanted to put in a big order for you know, typewriters and calculators, the sorts of machines that figured it needed to stock up on for election night. But the Remington Ran guy said, have you considered a UNIVAC.

CBS's director of News and Public affairs guy called Sig Mickelson heard about the lunch. He decided to go to the Remington Ran factory in Philadelphia to take a look. He hopped on the train and went to meet the UNIVAC. The machine was a monster, a massive electronic vacuum tubes interconnected by miles of copper wire and cooled by noisy fans. Michelson was supposed to meet a colleague of his there in Philadelphia, the dashing CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood. As legend

has it, Collingwood was running lee when he arrived. The printer hooked up to the UNIVAC spat out a short message, Collingwood, you are a lap Where have you been? This is what's known among historians is a fact too good to check in this sense that this never happened. But I'm telling you about it because Michelson said it happened, and I love it. Back to things that did happen. CBS decided to proceed with what it called I'm not making

this up project. Here's the deal they worked out. CBS would get the services of Univac for Election night, but the machine would stay in Philadelphia. It was just too big to bring to New York. It weighed sixteen thousand pounds and had five thousand vacuum tubes. But the CBS studio in New York needed to look like it had a computer on set, so Charles Collingwood would sit at the UNIVAC looking thing of magic a console. There's actually just a dummy, a fake. The giant computer prop at

CBS did, however, light up. It blinked for the benefit of viewers at home, as if it were the real electronic brain thinking. It's like a Christmas tree light timer basically, and if you watch it long enough you see the pattern of the lights. Just appened. I first learned about the story in a dissertation, an amazing dissertation called Battle of the Brains by Ira Chenoi, and I don't say dissertations are amazing all that often. Chenoi is a professor

at the University of Maryland. But before he got his PhD, he was the director of Computer assisted Reporting at the Washington Post. Before that, he'd been an investigative reporter. I wanted to visit him in his office in Maryland so that we could watch this footage together, footage that he'd discovered in the archives. It looks great. It does look really good. And actually, I don't know if you can see it here, but I actually saw one of these when I went out to the Computer Instry Museum, and

I think it has an ashtray in it. Actually, Chenoy and I watched the footage where Walter Cronkite and Charles Collingwood on election night wait for the first prediction from the machine, and now perhaps a prediction on how this voting is going. What's the vote that has been so far means, let's turn to that miracle of the modern age, the electronic brain universe and the Charles Collingwood. Collingwood's on live television looking at a display offscreen, waiting for a

prediction that he's supposed to read out loud. UNIVAC is going to try to predict the winner for us, just as early as we can possibly get the returns. Then this is not a joke or a trick. It's an experiment. We think it's going to work, we don't know. We hope it'll work, but there's nothing coming in. It's incredibly awkward to watch. They didn't call this stuff cringe TV then, but this is cringe TV. Can you say something? UNIVAC, have you got anything to say to the television audience?

Apparently the UNIVAC in Philadelphia had made a prediction. It predicted that Eisenhower would win in a landslide, but given that exit polls had the race neck and neck, that prediction seemed bananas. So, supposedly, not wanting to screw up Remington, Rand decided not to send that prediction on to CBS in New York. Remington's second guest its own machine, which left Collingwood hanging and CBS without a prediction to announce.

You're a very impolite in Shane, I must say, it was as if the whole election had suddenly gone off script, when in fact, so much of the campaign had been so entirely scripted. There's more to this story. There are documents, There is evidence. My producer Ben has filed a copy of that campaign script in his desk here in the

last archive. So the supercomputer UNIVAC failed its first public audition as the predictor of voter behavior, at least though it was something obvious, a giant machine with these blinking lights right there on television. A lot more subtle stuff changed during that election, too, stuff that's been forgotten because now it's everywhere President I President. Television advert that was new two not jingles. There'd been campaign song since forever.

But nineteen fifty two saw the introduction of a particular kind of television advertising, the targeted political ad. Lately, all political ads are targeted. They're targeted by computers as unairing his missiles. But in nineteen fifty two, targeting was done by hand, and political television advertising was invented by a man named Rosser Reeves. Think Don Draper and Madmen, but even slicker the very best Madison Avenue could offer. Rosser Reeves he was the man. He owned one of the

world's biggest rubies. He led the US Jess team on a trip to the Soviet Union. He invested in island real estate. He captained yachts. He flew planes mainly, though he created modern television advertising. Reeves decided that there were many advantages to be gained by adopting a new form of political advertising, the short spot commercial. Nicholson, that executive from CBS who brought in the UNIVAC, he knew all

about Reeves he later wrote about it. He had a hunch that the sixty second advertising spot could be used in the way the soap, food and cigarette companies were using them with spectacular success. In nineteen fifty two, Reeves took his talents to politics. He went to the Republican Convention. The first convention broadcasts start to finish on television. Reeves was there, but instead of watching from the convention hall, he watched the keynote speech on TV from a hotel room.

The crowds inside the stadium were enthusiastic, but watching the convention on TV, Reeves thought the speeches were dreadful, too many ideas, too many words. So he devised a test to see which people remembered better a televised speech or a televised commercial. Less than ten percent of people remembered the speech remembered the commercial. Ree thought that was because speeches usually have a lot of ideas, too many for television.

He believed in something he called the unique selling proposition, the USP. What is a USP. It's a theory of the ideal selling concept. It is a condensation, a verbal shorthand, if you will, of what makes a campaign work. It is the hidden secret of literally thousands of the most successful advertising campaigns ever written. Reeves often made pitches over meetings at Manhattan Swinky twenty one club, where everyone was always several martinis deep. He told them that his unique

selling proposition had three rules. Number one, each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer, not just words, not just product puffery. Each advertisement must say to each reader, buy this product and you'll get this specific benefit. Number two, the proposition must be the one that the competition either cannot or does not offer. Number Three, the proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions.

That's from reeves book Reality and Advertising. My producer Ben and I decided to go get a copy of it. So we went to the basement of Widener Library at Harvard together. And when I say basement, I mean that in the deepest sense. To get to Reeves, you take the elevator four stories down and then you walk through a tunnel. So the Fuci tunnel, it's so much better that it used to be here, used to be these big plastic buckets down here because they're just all these

seal these pipes. They would just but you know what, like what does it still have that humidity? You know it's a humidity treatment smell. I think it would humiliate Reeves to know this. But after you go through that sweaty tunnel, you have to go down another level, down another elevator to finally get to the stacks and the shelf where his book is housed. His best advertisements all

follow those three rules of the USP. So wonder Bread helps build strong bodies in twelve ways, Anderson gives you fast, fast, fast relief. But my personal favorite was the campaign he wrote for Eminem's Which man has the Eminem and chocolate cann that's ordinary chocolate can it's melting, But this one there's no chocolate mint because built chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand. Reeves said Republicans should run ad

spots and sell Eisenhower like Eminem's. EIKE's campaign signed him right up, even though Eisenhower himself had yet to be convinced. Reeves took six weeks off and hold himself up in a hotel to write ad copy. He had all of Eisenhower's speech is sent over, but he didn't read them. I was too busy with the political maelstrom to sit down personally and read all of and how was rather dreary speeches. So we had other people do that. They drew up a list of topics that the general favored.

Reeves showed that list to George Gallop, the polster who ransom numbers, and told Reeves which three topics pulled best with voters. One corruption in government, two high prices and high taxes. Three war. Those three topics still pull well. They're evergreens today though computer driven targeted advertising, polling, and election predictions are all tangled up on your iPhone as if they're one thing. But they first got tangled up in nineteen fifty two when the polsters and the admin.

We're actually doing much the same thing as the UNIVAC was trying to do, running the numbers, coming up with a prediction. Are we okay with that? I mean we are, because this is our world. But still if we here in the last archive are wondering who killed truth? I'm looking at you, Rosser Reeves. Reeves had hired a friend of his to run the numbers for him, a guy named Michael Levin. Ben brought copies of what he found in the archives when we went looking for Reeves's book

fifty thousand Leagues beneath the library. This one is Michael Levin's plan. It's called how to ensure an Eisenhower victory in November, And this is what Reeves commissioned his numbers guy Levin, who worked at a different firm, Yeah, to write up about basically how to target the ads, where to run them, what counties, how often. This is a smoking gun of micro targeted advertising right here. We haven't

ranked here. Levin carved the country into voting blocks, the southern vote, the black vote, the farm vote, the middle class. He thought this way since Roosevelt most of the country had voted Democratic, but that could change now that the economy was good. People weren't so keen on paying taxes anymore. They'd rather keep their money and spend it on some of the things they saw, and all those television ads dishwashers and dog food. To make the electoral math work

in Republicans favor. Levin said they needed to flip the vote in forty nine counties in twelve states where they narrowly lost the last election. Levin called this block of states the Great Lakes Girdle. This was at a time when, by the way, people call parts of the country girdles, and now we call them belts, which is sad to me. Anyway. Forget kissing babies, shaking hands, and meeting voters, cultivating civic

life and political debate. Instead, Levin said, divide the electorate into market segments and then blitz those key counties with the custom made TV ads. Is there a new way of campaigning that can guarantee victory for Eisenhower in November? The answer is yes. Most people don't know the power of spot. However, here are the cold facts. The humble radio or TV spot can deliver more listeners for less

money than any other form advertising. This pitch, you may have noticed, sounds a little bit different from the Loven plan, but they were filed together in Roster's papers and the archives. This is kind of like lipstick on a pig, though like at least reefses, justlipstick, no pig. Here's the turn where commercial television advertising becomes political television advertising just lipstick, no pig Let us repeat that the humble radio or TV spot can deliver more listeners for less money than

any other form of advertising. It is a way of having a big town meeting but letting sixty million people hear all the questions of answers. This technique is ideally suited to Eisenhower's warm personality as opposed to the cold intellectual approach of ADLEI. Stevenson. And because they are simple, because they are quick, because they are short and uncomplicated, the public will remember them like candy but heat, dirty hands,

problem solved, vote Eisenhower. In other words, they will penetrate. Yes, they will penetrate the brains of sixty million critical voters, where the more complicated and more elaborate political speeches won't be remembered. And it's what the critical voters have in their brains when they go into the Poland booths to counts. But before he could get to voters brains, the eminem men first had to get General Eisenhower on board. Eisenhower

was worried that these spots would be undignified. After all, at the time, Eisenhower was president of Columbia University. He wasn't as appalled as at least Stevenson would have been, but he was still worried. So Reeves met the General for lunch, probably over scotch, and wore him down. Well, General, do you think it's all right for candidate to make a thirty minute speech on television or radio? Yes? Or would it be dignified to make a fifteen minute speech? Yes?

Would it be in order, perhaps to make a five five minutes speech? Yes, I am sure a five minutes speech would be an order if we could cut that speech to one minute? Is there anything wrong with that? Okay, let's go ahead, Or that's Reeves's account anyway. They filmed the campaign spots all in one day in Manhattan. The original idea was to run the spots in those targeted

markets we now call them swing precincts. Eisenhower answers America in each spot, and everyday person asks the General a question. Reeves had Eisenhower's answers written on huge posters so Eisenhower wouldn't have to wear his glasses to read them. The story goes that Eisenhower worked through Reeves's scripts so fast that Reeves grabbed his typewriter and started to dash off news scripts spots on the spot, General, the Democrats are telling me I never had it so good? Can that

be true? When America's billions in depth, when prices are doubled, When tech says, break our backs and we are still fighting in Korea? Is tragic, and it's time for a change. They filmed forty spots that day. A few days later, the crew grabbed some tourists from around Midtown to go on camera. The tourists were then prompted to ask the very questions Eisenhower had already answered. Then Reeves's producers stitched the spots together. They were the first television ads featuring

an American presidential candidate. You know what things cost today? High prices are just driving me crazy. Yes, my mami gets after me about the high cost of living. It's another reason why I say is time for the change. Time to get back to an honest dollar and an honest dollars worth. At the filming, someone overheard Eisenhower say to think that an old soldier should come to this, but Rosser Reeves was delighted. Here was the unique selling

proposition President. But wait, the Democrats had a new television strategy too. A man you can believe in ed La Stevenson would go on TV and read his speeches, speeches that were at the shortest, nearly a half an hour long, and when he went over that time, the networks would just cut him off mid sentence. The Stephenson campaign was bringing sticks to a knife fight. The tragedy of it all was that Stevenson had a lot of important things

to say about the problems confronting the nation. Better we lose the election than mislead the people, and better we lose than misgovern the people. Help me to do the job in this autumn of conflict and of campaign. Help me to do the job in the years of darkness, of doubt and the prices which stretch beyond the horizon of to Night's happy vision. And we will justify our glorious passed and the loyalty of silent millions who looked us for a compaion, for understanding and for honor. Honest

purpose was one of Stevenson's big themes. Treat people like citizens, don't treat us like idiots, like consumers who can be predicted and persuaded, but Stevenson wasn't any good at getting that message across on television. Democrats, desperate, did everything they could. They even got ahold of Rosseries' advertising plan, which was supposed to be top secret. It made Stevenson's campaign advisors

steaming mad. They've invented a new kind of campaign, a campaign conceived not by men who want us to face the crucial issues of the day, but by the high powered hucksters of Madison Avenue. They've conceived not an election campaign in the usual sense, but a super colossal, multi million dollar production designed to sell an inadequate ticket to the American people in precisely the way they sell soap, toothpaste,

hair tonic, or bubble gum or M and MS. Stevenson's campaign even asked the FCC to look into the legality of the Republican campaign ad spots. They figured, stuff's got to be illegal. Wasn't it an affront to everything a democracy stood for, faith in the voter to weigh the hard facts and make the call. But the FCC decided there was nothing to be done. In the end, Republicans spent one point five million dollars on television advertising in

nineteen fifty two, more than ten times what Democrats spent. Also, Stevenson never appeared in any of the Democrats ads. Amazingly, by election day, Stevenson was still a strong contender. He and Eisenhower were neck and neck, at least as the Poles had it. I've got those predictions on an old, yellowed punch card tacked to a bulletin board here in the Last Archive. Election Day nineteen fifty two began normally enough.

It just didn't end that way. At seven fifteen that morning, Dwight Eisenhower's train pulled into Grand Central Station, just a few floors beneath the CBS News studio. Ike and Mimi travel to the Upper West Side to vote, and then they retired to their apartment. That evening, they'd go to the Commodore Hotel to wait for the results. Ad La E. Stevenson, meanwhile,

was at the Governor's mansion in Illinois. I've talked before here on the Last Archive about the importance of historical imagination, and I'm trying, but I just can't picture Stevenson watching the returns on television. The rest of the country was watching, though, and a whole lot of them were watching CBS. This election had been all about television and advertising, and now the election coverage featured a first of its kind product placement for the computer, the UNIVAC. Like I've said that

part was going badly. Have you got a prediction for us? Univac. I have to say I totally feel for Charles Collingwood. He's on live television. The fate of CBS News probably seemed to turn on how well the network would cover this election. They'd spent gazillions on this insane production and it's a dud. Univac, our fabulous mathematical brain is down in Philadelphia mulling over the returns that we've sent him so far. He's sitting there in his partner humming away.

A few minutes ago, I asked him what his prediction was, and he sent me back a very caustic answer for a machine. He said that if we continue to be so late in sending him the result, it's going to take him a few minutes to find out just what the prediction is going to be. So he's not ready yet with his prediction, but we're going to go to him in just a little while. Univac be damned. The Eisenhower campaign was getting its own results by phone over

at the Commodore Hotel. Her confident Eisenhower was getting ready to celebrate. CBS, though still didn't want to call the race. And as I was saying that, as a great believer in the machine, we're having a little bit of trouble with univax. It seems that he's rebelling against the human element. About ten thirty, CBS finally got a prediction from the machine. Yes, Junivax finally come through. Good, give it to us, hump, We've got Stephens twenty stay, Eisenhour at twenty eighth Stay.

That adds up to an electoral vote for Stephenson of two hundred and seventeen for Eisenhower at three hundred and fourteen. A prediction at last, but not an outcome that just about anyone watching closely couldn't have predicted by that time of the night. And then half an hour before midnight, Univax seemed to go entirely off the rails. It predicted that while Eisenhower would win the electoral vote, Stevenson would win the popular vote. No human was predicting anything like that,

not even Walter Cronkite Charlie very interesting. Indeed, on that UNIVAC prediction, we who are on way human and I have to operate with the flash and blood instead of with electronic gadgets. I still think this thing looks like it's pretty much on the Eisenhower side at the moment. I know it seems as though UNIVAC was a complete disaster on election night nineteen fifty two. But it turned out that really in the night, UNIVEK had predicted an

Eisenhower landslide. The computer minute remington Ran, thinking the election was neck and neck and fraid of the machine making mistake on live television, just hadn't passed that prediction onto CBS. Remington RAN's entire interest in collaborating the CBS had been to demonstrate the usefulness of a general purpose digital computer

what if it failed? Disaster? So the UNIVX people, after suppressing that early prediction of an Eisenhower landslide, had gotten desperate and had tinkered with the data to see if they could get the machine to make a prediction that didn't seem nuts. The dancers are to one in favor of General Eisenhower. I might note that UNIVAK is running

a few moments behind ad Morrow. However, just before midnight, after veterans, CBS reporter Edward R. Morrow called the election for Eisenhower, CBS had finally announced that early Univak prediction. To viewers at home, it looked like the Univik was the slowest of all predictors. Remington Rand had some explaining to do. Well, we had a lot of troubles tonight. Strangely enough, they were all human and not the machine. Remington Rand guy tried desperately to explain what had gone wrong.

The problem, he insisted, had never been with the Univac. That we should have had nerve enough to believe the machine in the first place. It was right, we were wrong. Fifteen minutes later, an aide to at LEA. Stevenson told reporters that the candidate was conceding. He'd lost to the guy with the thirty second TV ADS in a vote predicted by a TV gimmick the supercomputer UNIVAC. Stevenson, after delivering the concession speech, headed back to the governor's mansion,

where guests had gathered. One of them tried to boost his spirits, told him that he'd educated the country. Stevenson supposedly said glumly that the American people had flunked his course. He'd wanted his campaign to show that truth can win. He wanted to demonstrate that you could run for president and win the White House by talking honestly about actual issues in all their complexity, not by making thirty second

ad spots that turned politics into M and m's. But truth didn't win, and the American people failed Professor Stephenson's exam, which, when you think about it, was a lousy way to run a campaign. No wonder he lost, but so did the country. Nineteen fifty two set a new course for the United States and for American politics the way every election does, by changing our president. But it also changed how we elect a president, and it even changed how

we know things. The day after the election, Edward R. Murrow talked about voters the way Americans like to think of themselves, self determining and unknowable. To me, the most impressive thing about tonight is again the demonstration that the people of this country are sovereign, that they are unpredictable, and that somehow in a faction that is as mysterious to pollsters as it is to reporters. The great normal majority in this country made up its mind as to

the man it wanted to meet. It. Maybe pollsters and advertising agencies and computers can predict how voters behave. Maybe they can change how voters behave. But should they? What if the very accuracy of those predictions means that citizens lose faith in the evidence what they see with their own eyes, lose faith in the political process. What if they really take to heart the idea behind the well targeted ad campaign and the computerized prediction and conclude that

we behave as predictable consumers, not as individual citizens. Four years later, during the election of nineteen fifty six, at LEAs Stevenson took on Eisenhower again, and this time he too appeared in commercials. It's wonderful. I was sitting right here in my own library. Thanks to television, I can talk to millions of people that I couldn't reach any other way. They were TV commercials, but really they were anti TV commercials. I can talk to you, yes, but

I can't listen to you. I can't hear about your problems, about your hopes and your affairs. To do that, I've got to go out and see you in person. And that's what I've been doing. So finally, I hope that the next time we meet it will be person to person and face to face. Stevenson wanted you to know it was all props, all fake TV ads were just as fake as dummy computers with Christmas lights. But it was no use, and it was too late. Citizens had

become consumers shopping for the best deal. Politics had become just another con the hard sell, face to face, fat chance. Campaigns would get glossier and glitzier. Elections would be predicted by faster and faster computers. In nineteen fifty six, President Eisenhower had new ads to lower taxes, wier taxes, record employment, unemployment, piece highest wages, lower pay, late write, centralization of government. Whoa stop. I've tried. I'd listened to everybody on TV

and radio. I've read the papers and magazine. I've tried, but I'm still confused. Who's right, What's right? What should I believe? What are the facts? How can I tell? Voters became irritated and impatient, looking for the quick fix. Eisenhower answers America the easy answer, What are the facts? When politics becomes big business? The facts of the matter become harder and harder to tell, especially outside of the Last Archive. The Last Archive is produced by Sophie Crane

mcabbon and Bennette of Faffrey. Our editor is Julia Barton, and our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Jason Gambrell and Martin Gonzalez are our engineers. Fact checking by Amy Gaines. Original music by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Simponette. Many of our sound effects are from Harry Jeannette Junior and the Star Jenette Foundation. Our full proof players are Barlow, Adamson, Daniel Burger, Jones, Jesse Henson, John Kuntz, Becca A. Lewis In,

Maurice Emmanuel Parent. The Last Archive is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Special thanks to Ryan McKittrick in the American Repertory Theater, to Alex Allenson and the Bridge Sound in stage, to Simon Leek and to the Wisconsin Historical Society. Footage provided by Veritone at Pushkin thanks to Heather Faine, Maya Kanig, Carl Migliori, Emily Rostick, Maggie Taylor, and Jacob Weisberg. Our research assistants are Michelle Gaw, Olivia Oldham, Henrietta Riley,

Oliver Riskin Cuts and Emily Spector. I'm Jill Lapoor.