The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (147 page)
Read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Online
Authors: Edmund Morris
It was also true that there was a growing vice-presidential boom for the Governor in Washington. Lodge had intensified his efforts to swing the nomination for Roosevelt, to the extent of going to the White House and asking McKinley point-blank for the chairmanship of the convention. The President, taken aback, agreed at once. Lodge also got the impression that McKinley was “perfectly content” to have Roosevelt on the ticket.
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But then McKinley also seemed to be perfectly content with everything.
Lodge’s own correspondence with Roosevelt dangled a tempting bait, conditional on his acceptance of the nomination: the chance to become the first Governor-General of the Philippines. He informed his friend, with what truth one cannot tell, that McKinley would be favorable to the appointment, once the current native insurrection against U.S. rule was crushed.
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That might take another year or two, during which time Roosevelt, as Vice-President, would remain close to McKinley’s elbow, and be available for instant nomination whenever the insurgent general, Emilio Aguinaldo, surrendered.
It so happened that no job, short of the Presidency itself, so appealed to Roosevelt. Convinced as he might be that Cuba deserved
its freedom from Spanish rule, he was equally convinced that the Philippines needed the benison of an American colonial administration. “I … feel sure that we can ultimately help our brethren so far forward on the path of self-government and orderly liberty that that beautiful archipelago shall become a center of civilization for all eastern Asia and the islands round about.…”
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However, this bright vision was, he sensed, altogether too remote to pursue by the devious route Lodge recommended. Pressed to give his friend a decision on the Vice-Presidency, he wrote on 2 February: “With the utmost reluctance I have come to a conclusion that is against your judgment.” Then, with recourse to his favorite metaphor:
American politics are kaleidoscopic, and long before the next five years are out, the kaleidoscope is certain to have been many times shaken and some new men to have turned up.… Now the thing to decide at the moment is whether I shall try for the Governorship again, or accept the Vice-Presidency, if offered. I have been pretty successful as Governor … There is ample work left for me to do in another term—work that will need all of my energy and capacity—in short, work well worth any man’s doing … But in the Vice-Presidency I could do nothing. I am a comparatively young man yet and I like to work. I do not like to be a figurehead. It would not entertain me to preside in the Senate … I could not
do
anything; and yet I would be seeing continually things I would like to do … Finally the personal element comes in. Though I am a little better off than the
Sun
correspondent believes, I have not sufficient means to run the social side of the Vice-Presidency as it ought to be run. I should have to live very simply, and would be always in the position of “poor man at a frolic.” … So, old man, I am going to declare decisively that I want to be Governor and do not want to be Vice President.
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Lodge’s reaction to this flat refusal was ambiguous, while Senator Platt proved deaf to Roosevelt’s heavy hint, “Now, I should like
to be Governor for another term.…”
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On 3 February, Roosevelt discovered why. The big insurance companies of New York, furious over his ouster of Payn, had “to a man” joined the franchise corporations already prevailing upon Platt to kick the Governor upstairs. This represented a combined lobbying power of approximately one billion dollars.
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After a less-than-reverent meeting in the Amen Corner on 10 February, during which Platt cynically inquired what Roosevelt would do if the convention nominated him by unanimous vote (“I would not accept!” the Governor shot back), Roosevelt made the first public statement of his views two days later. It was both a rejection of the vice-presidential nomination and a plea for renomination as Governor. “And I am happy to say,” he concluded, to the puzzlement of many reporters, “that Senator Platt cordially acquiesces in my views in the matter.”
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If by that he meant the dry statement of support which Platt issued a little later, the Governor showed surprising ignorance of the fine art of political equivocation.
T
HE STORY OF THE
next two months, culminating in the Governor’s election as a delegate-at-large to Philadelphia on 17 April, is best expressed in the incomparable image of Thomas Collier Platt: “Roosevelt might as well stand under Niagara Falls and try to spit water back as to stop his nomination by this convention.”
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President McKinley remained studiously neutral amidst the frantic lobbying for Roosevelt against such minor candidates as Cornelius Bliss, Timothy Woodruff, and John D. Long. Mark Hanna soon emerged as the Governor’s principal opponent in Washington, swearing and thumping dramatically on his desk whenever the name Roosevelt was mentioned.
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Friends were puzzled by the violence of Hanna’s antipathy: there was something almost of terror in it. The National Chairman still clung to his massive administrative and patronage powers, augmented by the dignity of his Senate seat, but age and ill health were making him increasingly unstable. Fits of roaring, blind anger alternated with
childlike querulousness; the famous warmth seemed to have faded along with the light in his eyes. The truth was that Hanna was no longer sure of his influence on McKinley. His adoration for the podgy little President was such that the slightest hint of coolness depressed him. Recently McKinley had found it necessary to withdraw somewhat from Hanna, who had a habit of trying to run the White House, and he would not even say whether or not he would allow him to remain National Chairman through the convention. Hanna promptly suffered a heart attack.
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Roosevelt was neither involved nor particularly interested in the McKinley-Hanna relationship. But Nicholas Murray Butler’s news that neither man appeared to favor him for the Vice-Presidency left him oddly “chagrined.”
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He thought the office unsuitable for himself, but did not like to have eminent persons think
him
unsuitable for the office.
Another unsettling influence was the flinty resolution of his best friend to nominate him at Philadelphia, whether he liked it or not. “The qualities that make Cabot invaluable … as a public servant also make him quite unchangeable when he has determined that a certain course is right,” Roosevelt complained to Bamie. “There is no possible use in trying to make him see the affair as I look at it, because our points of view are different. He regards me as a man with a political career.”
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During the last week of April the Governor’s intransigence toward the nomination began to show subtle signs of change. “By the way,” he wrote suddenly to Lodge, “I did
not
say on February 12 that I would not under any circumstances accept the vice-presidency.” (Lodge must have been puzzled by this remark, for Roosevelt’s exact words to the press had been
It is proper for me to state that under no circumstances could I or would I accept the nomination for the vice-presidency.)
Then, on 26 April, he delivered himself of another public statement, which was markedly looser. “I would rather be in private life than be Vice-President. I believe I can be of more service to my country as Governor of the State of New York.”
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He explained somewhat shamefacedly to Paul Dana of the
Sun
that he must leave certain avenues open “simply because if it were
vital for me to help the ticket by going in, I would feel that the situation was changed.”
Dana’s own opinion was “If they want you you had better take it.”
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B
Y THE END
of the legislative session on 8 May, the Governor was having such doubts he decided to visit Washington and check the vice-presidential opinions of various eminent men in the capital. These dignitaries included Senators Foraker and Chandler, Secretaries Root and Long, and President McKinley himself, who gave a dinner in Roosevelt’s honor on 11 May.
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Accounts vary as to what Roosevelt was told and what he said in reply. Foraker remembered him asking for help in suppressing the nomination at Philadelphia, then returning next day to complain furiously that McKinley and his aides did not want him to run. “There is no reason why they should not want me, and I will not allow them to discredit me. If the Convention wants me, I shall accept.”
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On the other hand, John D. Long (whom Roosevelt discovered typically taking a postprandial stroll) got the impression that the Governor of New York wished to remain in Albany. This may well have been wishful thinking, because Long badly wanted the nomination himself.
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By far the best account of Roosevelt’s visit was written by Secretary of State John Hay, to Joseph Bucklin Bishop, after Roosevelt had returned north:
Teddy has been here: have you heard of it? It was more fun than a goat. He came down with a sombre resolution thrown on his strenuous brow to let McKinley and Hanna know once and for all that he would not be Vice President, and found to his stupefaction that nobody in Washington except Platt had ever dreamed of such a thing. He did not even have a chance to launch his
nolo episcopari
at the Major [McKinley]. That statesman said he did not want him on the ticket—that he would be far more valuable in New York—and Root
said, with his frank and murderous smile, “Of course not—you’re not fit for it.” And so he went back quite eased in his mind, but considerably bruised in his
amour propre.
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T
HEODORE
R
OOSEVELT’S BEHAVIOR
at the Republican National Convention in June 1900, while entirely characteristic, was so puzzling as to defy logical analysis. Notwithstanding his genuine repugnance for the Vice-Presidency—it is impossible to read his private letters and not feel it palpably—he seems to have courted the nomination from the moment he stepped off the train in Philadelphia on Saturday the fifteenth. His very presence at the convention was a positive gesture. It would have been easy for him, as Governor, to prevent his nomination as a delegate-at-large, two months before; Lodge had mockingly warned him that to accept delegation was to be nominated; but he had responded that “I would be looked upon as rather a coward if I didn’t go.”
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By this reasoning, mere token attendance would have shown courage enough. Roosevelt could have then sought to deflate his boom by remaining as inconspicuous as possible, in order to avoid attracting the attention of delegates and reporters. But he chose to arrive in town wearing a large, soft, black, wide-rimmed hat, which stood out among Philadelphia’s countless straw boaters like a tent in a wheat-field. His fellow delegates-at-large, Senator Platt, Chairman Odell, and Chauncey Depew, noted with amusement how en route to the Hotel Walton he coveted the recognition of the crowd, and kept up a running conversation with the inevitable train of reporters.
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