Colonel Roosevelt (44 page)

Thus goaded, Roosevelt announced that he would instruct his delegates to vote for Governor Francis E. McGovern of Wisconsin, a progressive sympathetic to both himself and Senator La Follette. “
Root,” he complained, “is simply the representative of Barnes in this matter.”

He relied on his organization in Chicago to seat as many as possible of his contesting delegates—potentially almost a quarter of the convention. Fifty more would make his bid for the nomination serious, and he hoped for 80 or 90. Assuming a minimum of 278 uncontested delegates from his primary victories, and another minimum of 133 non-primary pledges, his solid first-ballot strength was 411, with 540 needed to win. He therefore had to press another 129. There were 166 uninstructed delegates. Perhaps he could persuade enough of them to combine with his accreditees for a winning edge, however narrow.

Unfortunately, most of the uninstructed seemed to favor Taft. And so did a majority of the Republican National Committee.

ROOSEVELT COULD ONLY
hope the Committee would be fair, rather than blacken the GOP’s already tarnished political image with a show of discrimination. Many of the delegates pledged to Taft were obviously fraudulent. To seat a decent number of progressive challengers would make for good public relations, and confound the RNC’s pro-Roosevelt minority. That group was dominated by William Flinn, Francis J. Heney, and Senator Borah of Idaho, an austere, brooding maverick who had once voted for Bryan. All were formidable men, determined to shame their opposing trio of senior reactionaries: Barnes, Boise Penrose, and W. Murray Crane.

Barnes, of course, was already the Colonel’s open enemy. “Big Grizzly” Penrose was Taft’s chief supporter on Capitol Hill, infamous for reactionary machine politics. He would be seeking revenge on Roosevelt and Flinn for recently unseating him as boss of the Pennsylvania GOP. Crane was a Yankee paper manufacturer, as stiff and traditional as his own business cards. As for the Committee chairman, Victor Rosewater of Nebraska, the best that could be said of him was that he was
not a professional politician. Moderate, frail, and with luck, malleable, Rosewater might be receptive to arguments that progressivism was a social force that the Republican Party had to accommodate, or else cede to the candidacy of Woodrow Wilson. He was a key figure, since
he would serve
ex officio
as temporary chairman of the convention until giving way to either Root or McGovern.

The rest of the Committee, apart from ten or so members friendly to Roosevelt and La Follette, consisted of about thirty-five Party regulars who served at the President’s pleasure.

ROOSEVELT CHAFED AT
Sagamore Hill as the hearings proceeded alphabetically, state by state. On the first day, all twenty-four of his delegates from Alabama and Arkansas were barred from the convention, and on the second, his entire slate from Georgia. In electoral terms, those states counted for nothing. Still, the Committee’s bias against him seemed clear. Senator Dixon complained to reporters of “
theft, cold-blooded, premeditated and deliberate.”

For a while, Roosevelt tried to maintain control of his representatives by long-distance telephone. But he hated the instrument and suspected it was being tapped. A private telegraph in the attic, a relic of his time as president, was even less satisfactory. He preferred the clicking of his own teeth in face-to-face confrontations, the feel of lapels gripped in his hand.

Behind his frustration lay the embarrassing fact—harped on in many newspapers—that about a hundred of the delegates he needed to seat were no more legitimate than the machine men on Taft’s list. The kind of progressives-for-hire rounded up by Ormsby McHarg would have sold themselves quite as willingly to the Socialist candidate for the presidency, had Eugene V. Debs reached them first. Roosevelt remained convinced, however, that bona fide claimants were being discriminated against. Asked by a reporter whether he intended to barnstorm the convention, he said, “
If circumstances demand, of course I’ll go!”

That was as good as a threat to the Republican National Committee, which
proceeded to throw out all but 19 of his delegates, and seat 235 of Taft’s.

TWO FACTS WERE
clear in the aftermath of the Committee’s action: first, that Roosevelt no longer had a credible chance of being nominated, and second (what he was prevented by blind rage from seeing) that most of the contests had been decided fairly.
Perhaps thirty to thirty-five had not. But there would have been as much bias in favor of himself, had Taft been the challenging candidate, and he the Party leader.
An impartial observer might conclude that neither man had enough honestly elected delegates to nominate him.

All the same, Roosevelt had reason to accuse the Committee of being out of touch with current Republican sentiment. Penrose, Crane, Rosewater, and a dozen other members were themselves ineligible to serve as delegates, having
been defeated in their home primaries. Ten further members hailed from Southern states in the grip of the Democratic Party, and four from “territorial possessions” (including the District of Columbia) that could not vote in November. These eunuchs, comprising more than two-thirds of the Committee, had power
before
the convention to defeat a candidate who was overwhelmingly the people’s choice.

“
The Taft leaders speak as if they were regular Republicans,” Roosevelt said in an icy public statement. “I do not concede that theft is a test of party regularity.” He had never deluded himself that he could be elected in the fall, even if nominated in the spring. But the pugilist in him, so bruisingly evident on the stage of the Boston Arena, was now aroused beyond control. It was the phenomenon Root had seen coming:
When he gets into a fight he is completely dominated by the desire to destroy his adversary
.
There was nothing for him now but to go to Chicago and beat the convention into submission—or else bolt through the ropes and precipitate a riot.

Specifically, Roosevelt intended to use his huge primary vote to persuade the Party as a whole not to ratify the exclusion of his delegates, and to accept that progressivism was a natural, desirable evolution of Republican doctrine. Root, whose gavel would probably determine the issue, sent out word that any attempt by the Colonel to rewrite convention rules would lead to “
confusion and comparative anarchy.”

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD
Nicholas Roosevelt, one of the Oyster Bay cousins who had grown up as virtually a member of the Colonel’s own brood, visited Sagamore Hill on Friday, 14 June.
He found Roosevelt unusually silent over breakfast, and “Cousin Edith” exuding frosty disapproval of whatever was brewing in the house beside coffee. Later, without saying why, she insisted on accompanying her husband into town.

“
Well, Nick,” Roosevelt called out, as their automobile started down the driveway, “I guess we’ll meet at a lot of Philippics soon.”

This was a clear hint to the young man to pack his bags for Chicago—and maybe other cities as well. Nicholas was ardently interested in politics. Confirmation came by telephone at noon that Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt were booked on the Lake Shore Limited, departing New York at 5:30
P
.
M
. When Nicholas arrived at Grand Central, he found Kermit and two other cousins, George Roosevelt and Theodore Douglas Robinson, also ready to go. Word had also gone out to Ted and Eleanor (tired, now, of San Francisco, and keen to reestablish themselves in New York). They would travel to Chicago separately. So would Alice, to whom conventions were catnip.
The New York party was amplified by Regis H. Post—rich, progressive, retired, a willing workhorse—two or three
Outlook
staffers, and Frank Harper, the Colonel’s tiny
English secretary. And like bees attracted to the sudden popping of a lily, newsmen swarmed to ride along.

For twenty-two hours the Limited puffed west. A hot damp inversion enveloped it the following morning as it crossed from Ohio into the industrial flats of Indiana. Roosevelt laid aside his current reading—Herodotus—and labored on the text of a speech that he planned to deliver in the Chicago Auditorium on Monday night, the eve of the convention. He declined to provide reporters with an advance copy, but told Nicholas it would be “
the great effort of his life.”

In mid-afternoon, the train stopped at South Bend, and the ubiquitous Cal O’Laughlin climbed aboard. He had an optimistic projection to deliver. According to campaign headquarters, some of Taft’s uncontested delegates were wavering. They had been recruited under pressure, and resented it. If they defected, the President would find himself four votes short of a majority on Tuesday.

This was a number easier for Taft to reduce than for Roosevelt to expand, but it caused the Colonel to bubble over with joy. He began to talk about winning rather than bolting—an act that should be considered “only in the very last extremities.”

At 4
P.M
. he stepped down onto the platform of Chicago’s LaSalle Street station. He wore
a new, tan campaign hat that said, louder than words, that the Rough Rider was back in the saddle. Its brim, fully five inches wide, failed to obscure the brilliancy of his teeth. A howling crowd broke through barriers erected by the police and surged so voraciously that Nicholas, George, and two other youths had to form a wedge around him and batter their way toward the station exit. Meanwhile, a band thumped out his old marching song, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” Outside in Van Buren Street, the crowd was even larger and louder. Two other bands blared in Ivesian discord. A line of flag-decked automobiles stood waiting. Roosevelt hauled himself into the first, accompanied by Senator Dixon. The motorcade got under way with difficulty. As Nicholas recorded in his diary: