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Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography
Chapter XIX. Choosing his Successor
by Thayer, William Roscoe
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Critics frequently remark that Roosevelt was the most masterful
politician of his time, and what we have already seen of his
career should justify this assertion. We need, however, to define
what we mean by "politician." Boss Platt, of New York, was a
politician, but far removed from Roosevelt. Platt and all similar
dishonest manipulators of voters--and the dishonesty took many
forms--held their power, not by principles, but by exerting an
unprincipled influence over the masses who supported them.
Roosevelt, on the other hand, was a great politician because he
saw earlier than most men certain fundamental principles which he
resolved to carry through whether the Bosses or their supporters
liked it or not. In a word he believed in principles rather than
in men. He was a statesman, and like the statesman he understood
that half a loaf is often better than no bread and that, though
he must often compromise and conciliate, he must surrender
nothing essential.
As a result, his career as Assemblyman, as Civil Service
Commissioner, as Police Commissioner of New York City, as
Governor of New York State, and as President, seems a continuous
rising scale of success. We see the achievement which swallows up
the baffling difficulties and the stubborn opposition. These we
must always remember if we would measure the extent of the
victory. It was Roosevelt's persistence and his refusal to be
baffled or turned aside which really made him seem to triumph in
all his work.
He never doubted, as I have often said, the necessity of party
organization in our political system, although he recognized the
tendency to corruption in it, the unreasoning loyalty which it
bred and its substitution of Party for Country in its teaching.
He had known something of political machine methods at Albany.
After he became President, he knew them through and through as
they were practiced on national proportions at Washington. The
Machine had hoped to shelve him by making him Vice President, and
in spite of it he suddenly emerged as President. This
confrontation would have been embarrassing on both sides if
Roosevelt had not displayed unexpected tact. He avowed his
purpose of carrying out McKinley's policies and he kept it
faithfully, thus relieving the Machine of much anxiety. By his
straightforwardness he even won the approval of Boss Quay, the
lifelong political bandit from Pennsylvania, who went to him and
said in substance: 'I believe that you are square and I will
stand by you until you prove otherwise.' Roosevelt made no
bargain, but like a sensible man he did not forbid Quay from
voting on his side. Personally, also, Quay's lack of hypocrisy
attracted him; for Quay never pretended that he was in politics
to promote the Golden Rule and he had skirted so close to the
Penal Code that he knew how it looked and how he could evade it.
Senator Hanna, the Ohio political Boss, who had made McKinley
President by ways which cannot all be documented except by
persons who have examined the Recording Angel's book (and
research students of that original source never return), was
another towering figure whom Roosevelt had to get along with. He
found out how to do it, and to do it so amicably that it was
reported that he breakfasted often with the Ohio Senator and that
they even ate griddle-cakes and scrapple together. The Senator
evidently no more understood the alert and fascinating young
President than we under stand what is going on in the brain of a
playful young tiger, but instinct warned him that this mysterious
young creature, electrified by a thousand talents, was dangerous
and must be held down. And so with the other members of the
Republican Machine which ran both Houses of Congress and expected
to run the undisciplined President too. Roosevelt studied them
all and discovered how to deal with each.
At the beginning of the year 1904, everybody began to discuss the
next Presidential campaign. Who should be the Republican
candidate? The President, naturally, wished to be elected and
thereby to hold the office in his own right and not by the chance
of assassination. Senator Hanna surprised many of the politicians
by bagging a good many delegates for himself. He probably did not
desire to be President; like Warwick he preferred the glory of
king-maker to that of king; but he was a shrewd business man who
knew the value of having goods which, although he did not care
for them himself, he might exchange for others. I doubt whether
he deluded himself into supposing that the American people would
elect so conspicuous a representative of the Big Interests as he
was, to be President, but he knew that the fortunes of candidates
in political conventions are uncertain, and that if he had a
considerable body of delegates to swing from one man to another,
he might, if his choice won, become the power behind the new
throne as he had been behind McKinley's. And if we could suspect
him of humor he may have enjoyed fun to a mild degree in keeping
the irrepressible Roosevelt in a state of suspense.
Senator Hanna's death, however, in March, 1904, removed the only
competitor whom Roosevelt could have regarded as dangerous.
Thenceforth he held the field, and yet, farseeing politician
though he was, he did not feel sure. The Convention at Chicago
nominated him, virtually, by acclamation. In the following months
of a rather slow campaign he had fits of depression, although all
signs pointed to his success. Talking with Hay as late as October
30, he said: "It seems a cheap sort of thing to say, and I would
not say it to other people, but laying aside my own great
personal interests and hopes,-- for of course I desire intensely
to succeed,--I have the greatest pride that in this fight we are
not only making it on clearly avowed principles, but we have the
principles and the record to avow. How can I help being a little
proud when I contrast the men and the considerations by which I
am attacked, and those by which I am defended?" *
[ W. R. Thayer: John Hay, II, 356, 357.]
Just at the end, the campaign was enlivened by the attack which
the Democratic candidate, Judge Alton B. Parker, made upon his
opponent. He charged that Mr. Cortelyou, the manager of the
Republican campaign, had received great sums of money from the
Big Interests, and that he had, indeed, been appointed manager
because, from his previous experience as Secretary of the
Department of Commerce, he had special information in regard to
malefactors of great wealth which would enable him to coerce them
to good purpose for the Republican Corruption Fund. President
Roosevelt published a letter denying Judge Parker's statements as
"unqualifiedly and atrociously false." If Judge Parker's attack
had any effect on the election it was to reduce his own votes.
Later, Edward H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, tried to smirch
Roosevelt by accusing him of seeking Harriman's help in 1904, but
this charge also was never sustained.
At the election on November 8, Roosevelt had a majority of nearly
two million and a half votes out of thirteen million and a half
cast, thus securing by large odds the greatest popular majority
any President has had. The Electoral College gave him 336 votes
and Parker 140. That same evening, his victory being assured, he
dictated the following statement to the press: "The wise custom
which limits the President to two terms, regards the substance
and not the form, and under no circumstances will I be a
candidate for and accept the nomination for another." Those who
heard this statement, or who had talked the matter over with
Roosevelt, under stood that he had in mind a renomination in
1908, but many persons regarded it as his final renunciation of
ever being a candidate for the Presidency. And later, when
circumstances quite altered the situation, this "promise" was
revived to plague him.
From March 4, 1905, he was President "in his own right." Behind
him stood the American people, and he was justified in regarding
himself, at that time, as the most popular President since
Washington. The unprecedented majority of votes he had received
at the election proved that, and proved also that the country
believed in "his policies." So he might go ahead to carry out and
to extend the general reforms which he had embarked on against
much opposition. No one could question that he had a mandate from
the people, and during his second term he was still more
aggressive.
Now, however, came the little rift which widened and widened and
at last opened a great chasm between Roosevelt and the people on
one side and the Machine dominators of the Republican Party on
the other. For although Roosevelt was the choice of the
Republicans and of migratory voters from other parties, although
he was, in fact, the idol of millions who supported him, the
Republican Machine insisted on ruling. Before an election, the
Machine consents to a candidate who can win, but after he has
been elected the. Machine instinctively acts as his master. A
strong man, like President Cleveland, may hold out against the
Bosses of his party, but the penalty he has to pay is to find
himself bereft of support and his party shattered. This might
have happened in Roosevelt's case also, if he had not been more
tactful than Cleveland was in dealing with his enemies.
He now had to learn the bitter knowledge of the trials which
beset a President whose vision outsoars that of the practical
rulers of his party. In the House of Representatives there was a
little group led by the Speaker, Joseph G. Cannon, of Illinois,
who controlled that part of Congress with despotic arrogance. In
the Senate there was a similar group of political oligarchs,
called the Steering Committee, which decided what questions
should be discussed, what bills should be killed, and what others
should be passed. Aldrich, of Rhode Island, headed this. A
multi-millionaire himself, he was the particular advocate of the
Big Interests. Next came Allison, of Iowa, an original
Republican, who entered Congress in 1863 and remained there for
the rest of his life, a hide-bound party man, personally honest
and sufficiently prominent to be "talked of" for Vice President
on several occasions. He was rather the peacemaker of the
Steering Committee, having the art of reconciling antagonists and
of smoothing annoying angles. A little older, was Orville H.
Platt, the Senator from Connecticut who died in 1905, and was
esteemed a model of virtue among the Senators of his time. As an
offset to the men of threescore and ten and over was Albert J.
Beveridge, the young Senator from Indiana, vigorous, eloquent,
fearless, and radical, whose mind and heart were consecrated to
Roosevelt. Beveridge, at least, had no ties, secret or open, with
the Trusts, or the Interests, or Wall Street; on the contrary, he
attacked them fiercely, and among other Anti-Trust legislation he
drove through the Meat Inspection Bill. How he managed to get on
with the gray wolves of the Committee it would be interesting to
hear; but we must rid ourselves of the notion that those gray
wolves sought personal profit in money by their steering. None of
them was charged with using his position for the benefit of his
purse. Power was what those politicians desired; Power, which
gave them the opportunity to make the political tenets of their
party prevail. Orville Platt, or Allison, regarded Republicanism
with al most religious fanaticism; and we need not search far in
history to find fanatics who were personally very good and
tender-hearted men, but who would put heretics to death with a
smile of pious satisfaction.
Roosevelt's task was to persuade the Steering Committee to
support him in as many of his Radical measures as he could. They
had done this during his first Administration, partly because
they did not see whither he was leading. Senator Hanna, then a
member of the Steering Committee, attempted to steady all
Republicans who seemed likely to be seduced by Roosevelt's
subversive novelties by telling them to "stand pat," and, as we
look back now, the Senator from Ohio with his stand-pattism broom
reminds us of the portly Mrs. Partington trying to sweep back the
inflowing Atlantic Ocean. During the second Administration,
however, no one could plead ignorance or surprise when Roosevelt
urged on new projects. He made no secret of his policies, and he
could not have disguised, if he would, the fact that he was
thorough. By a natural tendency the "Stand-Patters" drew closer
together. Similarly the various elements which followed Roosevelt
tended to combine. Already some of these were beginning to be
called "Insurgents," but this name did not frighten them nor did
it shame them back into the fold of the orthodox Republicans. As
Roosevelt continued his fight for reclamation, conservation,
health, and pure foods, and governmental control of the great
monopolies, the opposition to him, on the part of the capitalists
affected, grew more intense. What wonder that these men,
realizing at last that their unlimited privileges would be taken
away from them, resented their deprivation. The privileged
classes in England have not welcomed the suggestion that their
great landed estates shall be cut up, nor can we expect that the
American dukes and marquises of oil and steel and copper and
transportation should look forward with meek acquiescence to
their own extinction.
Nevertheless, there is no politics in politics, and so the gray
wolves who ran the Republican Party, knowing that Roosevelt, and
not themselves, had the determining popular support of the
country, were too wary to block him entirely as the Democrats had
done under Cleveland. They let his bills go through, but with
more evident reluctance, only after bitter fighting. And as they
were nearly all church members in good standing, we can imagine
that they prayed the Lord to hasten the day when this pestilent
marplot in the White House should retire from office. Trusting
Roosevelt so far as to believe that he would stand by his pledge
not to be a candidate in 1908, they cast about for a person of
their own stripe whom they could make the country accept.
But Roosevelt himself felt too deeply involved in the cause of
Reform, which he had been pushing for seven years, to allow his
successor to be dictated by the Stand-Patters. So he sought among
his associates in the Cabinet for the member who, judging by
their work together, would most loyally carry on his policies,
and at length he decided upon William H. Taft, his Secretary of
War. "Root would make the better President, but Taft would be the
better candidate," Theodore wrote to an intimate, and that
opinion was generally held in Washington and elsewhere. Mr. Root
had so conducted the Department of State, since the death of John
Hay, that many good judges regarded him as the ablest of all the
Secretaries of that Department, and Roosevelt himself went even
farther. "Root," he said to me, "is the greatest intellectual
force in American public life since Lincoln." But in his career
as lawyer, which brought him to the head of the American Bar, he
had been attorney for powerful corporations, and that being the
time when the Government was fighting the Corporations, it was
not supposed that his candidacy would be popular. So Taft was
preferred to him.
The Republican Machine accepted Taft as a candidate with
composure, if not with enthusiasm. Anyone would be better than
Roosevelt in the eyes of the Machine and its supporters, and
perhaps they perceived in Secretary Taft qualities not wholly
unsympathetic. They were probably thankful, also, that Roosevelt
had not demanded more. He allowed the "regulars" to choose the
nominee for Vice-President, and he did not meddle with the
make-up of the Republican National Committee. One of his critics,
Dean Lewis, marks this as Roosevelt's chief political blunder,
because by leaving the Republican National Committee in command
he virtually predetermined the policy of the next four years.
Only a very strong President with equal zeal and fighting quality
could win against the Committee. In 1908 he had them so docile
that he might have changed their membership, and changed the
rules by which elections were governed if he had so willed, but,
just as before the election of 1904, Roosevelt had doubted his
own popularity in the country, so now he missed his chance
because he did not wish to seem to wrest from the unwilling
Machine powers which it lost no time in using against him.
The campaign never reached a dramatic crisis. Mr. Bryan, the
Democratic candidate, who still posed as the Boy Orator of the
Platte, although he had passed forty-eight years of age, made a
spirited canvass, and when the votes were counted he gained more
than a million and a third over the total for Judge Parker in
1904. But Mr. Taft won easily by a million and a quarter votes.
Between election and inauguration an ominous disillusion set in.
The Rooseveltians had taken it for granted that the new President
would carry on the policies of the old; more than that, the
impression prevailed among them that the high officials of the
Roosevelt Administration, including some members of his Cabinet,
would be retained, but when Inauguration Day came, it appeared
that Mr. Taft had chosen a new set of advisers, and he denied
that he had given any one reason to believe that he would do
otherwise.
March 4, 1909, was a wintry day in Washington. A snowstorm and
high winds prevented holding the inaugural exercises out of doors
as usual on the East Front of the Capitol. President Roosevelt
and President-elect Taft drove in state down Pennsylvania Avenue,
and Mr. Taft, having taken the oath of office, delivered his
inaugural address in the Senate Chamber. The ceremonies being
over, Mr. Roosevelt, instead of accompanying the new President to
the White House, went to the railway station and took the train
for New York. This innovation had been planned some time before,
because Mr. Roosevelt had arranged to sail for Europe in a few
days, and needed to reach Oyster Bay as soon as possible to
complete his preparations.
Many an eye-witness who watched him leave, as a simple civilian,
the Hall of Congress, must have felt that with his going there
closed one of the most memorable administrations this country had
ever known. Roosevelt departed, but his invisible presence still
filled the capital city and frequented every quarter of the
Nation.
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