ABSTRACT
This chapter details the televisual salvos used by the Republican and Democratic campaigns of both 1952 and 1956 to undermine the opponent's masculinity, as well as demonstrates the tactics used to resist these efforts. In particular, this analysis retrieves Adlai Stevenson's filmed campaign communications from the archives to restore their narratives to consideration as an important part of presidential campaign history. For all of the accusations of Stevenson's high-mindedness, his campaign engaged in the same kind of gendered aspersions as those the Democrats supposedly measured themselves against. As can be seen as early as 1956, the campaigns quickly maneuvered to replicate the spots perceived to be most effective, particularly those that represented the candidate as a concerned patriarch with a solution to the domestic ills of the nation. The omission of other kinds of interpersonal dynamics essentially erased other versions of either relationships or gender performance, reiterating the ideological investment in domestic containment.
