Adlai E. Stevenson II was the son of a former vice president. The younger Stevenson, as a Chicago lawyer, became involved after 1926 in the Council on Foreign Relations and the anti-isolationist Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. After working for the Navy and State Departments during World War II, he ran successfully for governor of Illinois in 1948. His performance as governor was so good that Democrats drafted him as their presidential nominee in both 1952 and 1956. Stevenson backed anticommunist foreign policies but generally avoided extreme Cold War rhetoric. He was a gifted speaker, but was no match for Dwight D. Eisenhower in either of the presidential elections. Trying for a third presidential nomination in 1960, Stevenson lost to John F. Kennedy, who named him ambassador to the United Nations.