Historical Background 1

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Life magazine was the one of the most important sources of visual images of national events available to citizens in New Hampshire and elsewhere in the rural areas of the country.  More than fifty photographers were full-time employees of the magazine at this point.  The ultimate decision about which photographs were going to be published lay in the hands of the managing editor, Edward K. Thompson, a legendary figure at the magazine who would eventually direct the photographic content for the Smithsonian magazine.  In 1948 Thompson had been humiliated for letting the magazine print a caption labeling Thomas Dewey the next president of the United States.  By his own account he set out to cover the 1952 election in as evenhanded a manner as was possible.  His criteria for fairness probably amounted to crude quantitative measures of the number and size of the photographs showing each of the candidates or their supporters.  Life’s March 10th coverage offers roughly equal visual information about the Taft and Eisenhower candidacies.  You can see a clear effort to divide up the pages between the two politicians.  But even so, the coverage is restricted to the Republican Party.  There are no Democrats shown in this last edition of the magazine published before the election.[9]

As much power as Thompson may have possessed it is of consequence to know that he answered to a businessman whose sympathies and activities were going to be thrown behind Eisenhower.  C.D. Jackson, the publisher of the magazine, played an important role in the Eisenhower campaign for which he was rewarded with a high-ranking job.  Jackson and Nelson Rockefeller became Special Assistants for Cold War Planning.[10]  Thompson’s editor-in-chief, Henry Luce, did not slide into government service after the Eisenhower victory.  But his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, did – as our Ambassador to Italy.[11]