“See your delegate’s badge, sir?” asks the guard.
“Well,” replies Harding, “you see, I’m not a delegate, but actually, I’m sort of a . . .”
“Sorry, sir. No badge, can’t letcha in. Got strict orders.”
Harding nods good-naturedly. “That’s okay. Say, what’s the latest?”
“I hear Lowden’s ‘bout got it wrapped up.”
“So it is Lowden, after all.” Harding shrugs affably. “He’s an able man. Should do fine. Too bad about Henry, though.”
“Henry?”
“Oh — a friend of mine. He was thinking things might turn out differently.”
Harding nods and wanders away, just as two delegates arrive, flash their badges, and are promptly admitted. They saunter through the convention foyer past a bank of phone booths, each occupied by a reporter rattling off copy. One of them, H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, though just at the early edge of his fame, already carries great weight with the other newsmen.
“Lowden remains way out front,” dictates Mencken into the receiver, cigar cocked out of the side of his mouth. “But he still can’t break 440. So near and yet so far. Meanwhile, Wood continues to slip . . .”
Mencken’s protégé, a cub reporter covering his first convention, is working the adjacent booth. “ . . . bottom fishing for any odd delegate. Lodge finally showing some movement . . .”
Simultaneously, on the convention floor one flight above, an unprecedented fifteenth ballot is in progress as Lodge, his self-serving scheme in motion, finds himself presiding over a last false hope for his near half-century of presidential ambitions.
“New Hampshire?” he asks.
The New Hampshire whip hollers back. “New Hampshire is proud to cast its 16 votes for Henry Cabot Lodge.”
“About time,” mutters Lodge. “New Mexico?”
“New Mexico casts 12 votes for Lowden, 2 for Lodge,” replies New Mexico’s whip in a Western drawl.
So much for Albert Fall’s sworn promises. But Lodge is heartened to see that with all but two of Harding’s delegates now his, and some North Atlantic states showing interest, he’s gathered up a respectable eighty-five votes and climbing, while Wood has faded to two hundred and twenty-eight. Most encouraging, Lowden has abruptly tumbled to three hundred and fifty-five, down from four hundred and forty just two hours earlier. Perhaps this time, this time . . .
From her perch on a wooden folding chair, an exhausted Nan looks up at the numbers.
My worst moment came, I think, with the fifteenth ballot. Mr. Harding had suddenly lost most of his delegates. It seemed his own state had abandoned him. But as they say, it’s always darkest before the dawn.
In Marion, Ohio, a hundred and eighty miles to the east, Florence Harding sits propped up in bed, eyes closed, seemingly asleep as Dr. Sawyer makes an adjustment to the medical apparatus near her feet, then picks up his black bag and slips out of the room.
Florence opens her eyes. She takes a Bible from her night stand, quickly finds a passage, and begins to pray. A light breeze through a half-open window toys with the curtain.
It is now nearly 2:00 a.m. in Chicago. Most of the windows of the hotel housing Wood’s campaign headquarters are dark. But those of Wood’s suite on the twelfth floor remain brightly lit. The general’s workers sit around drinking coffee and smoking, having simply run out of ways to try to staunch their candidate’s hemorrhage. Wood keeps busy working the phone. “Surrender” is not part of his lexicon.
There’s a stir in the outer room. Wood is startled to see Lowden and a small entourage stride in. He cuts his call short. “We’ll talk again later.”
“Morning, General,” says Lowden.
“Good morning,” replies Wood, stiffly, putting down the phone. There’s no effort on either part to shake hands.
“Is there a place we can talk?” asks Lowden.
“I conduct my affairs in the open, sir, not behind a tree. I’m no politician.”
“Indeed, General. And if I may say so, you’ve small hope of becoming one. Unless we join forces.”
“Join forces?”
Lowden nods. “I’m offering you a place on the winning ticket.” He pauses. “A Lowden-Wood ticket.”
Wood stares at him. “You want me as your Vice-President?”
Lowden nods again.
Wood smiles contemptuously. “I’d sooner be Sheriff of Nottingham.”
Outside and just around the corner, Harding looks through the plate glass window of the Dearborn Bar & Grill and is pleased to find a lively late-night crowd. He strolls in, unaware that this ordinary, casual act permitted every American of legal age is shortly one he will never again be free to enjoy.
But Nan is at the coliseum to bear witness.
The moment is buried indelibly in my memory: I was perched on my folding chair off in a corner of the convention floor, giving my poor feet a bit of relief, when I sensed that something was different. All at once the hall seemed strangely quiet and there was a sort of tension in the air. I looked up at the scoreboard. Suddenly it was as if my heart was too large for my chest — before my very eyes, Mr. Harding’s numbers shot from 2 to 74 and then to 94! Without even waiting for a formal ballot, several entire states had come over to him. I confess to this day I’ve no idea what great issues Mr. Harding had staked his candidacy on but his strategy clearly had begun to bear fruit at last.
Nan is hardly the only one startled by this turn of events. Up at the podium, Lodge confers disconcertedly with his manager, then flips on the microphone. “The Chair moves that the convention adjourn till tomorrow morning, ten o’clock.” A querulous murmur ripples through the hall. Lodge continues. “Those in favor signify by saying ‘aye.’”
A few tired “AYES.”
“Those opposed?” Lodge asks perfunctorily.
A great thunder of “NO’S.”
No matter. Lodge whacks his gavel. “The ayes have it. This convention is adjourned till 10:00 a.m.” Pandemonium throughout, rage amongst Lowden’s people, but Lodge turns coolly from the podium and heads for the exit, whisking past Nan.
Though I’d always known my darling’s remarkable abilities would tell in the end, few party leaders expected it, I think. Oh that I were privy to their thoughts and to their surprise and delight in Mr. Harding’s achievement, as this long, long convention entered the home stretch.
Lodge and his senatorial clique, with Daugherty trailing along behind, reach the ground floor foyer and sweep past reporters working the telephone bank. The dutiful journalists who for three stifling days have perfunctorily rattled off the same copy again and again, glassy-eyed with boredom, unable to find fresh ways to describe an intractable Republican stalemate, now are galvanized into a body of alert heralds who perceive that they are witnessing history.
Mencken continues to monopolize the first phone booth, firing the emerging story off the top of his head. “ . . . front runners still deadlocked on this, the nineteenth ballot. But dark horse Warren Harding, an innocuous man known primarily for his sonorous platitudes, inexplicably showing dramatic signs of life. There is speculation on the floor that the exhausted delegates have no place else to turn. Moments ago, the powers that be unexpectedly called a recess, so something . . .”
On the adjacent phone, the cub reporter is losing his voice. “ . . . Harding,” he rasps. “Warren Harding! Warren. Coming out of nowhere.” He listens for a moment. “That’s right, Harding.” He listens again. “I tell you I’ve tried. Nobody here knows much about him.” He listens. “Right. Nothing good but nothing bad, either. What am I supposed to do, make something up . . . ?”
A reporter for the Chicago Tribune is further plagued by a poor connection. “Harding!” he shouts. “H-a-r-d-i-n-g. The senator from Ohio. Ohio. O-H-I-O. Look, that’s all I — hang on a minute . . .”
All of them drop their p
hones and turn their attention to Lodge as he and his brain trust race by.
“Senator . . . ?”
“Would you care to make a statement . . . ?”
“Is Harding . . . ?”
But Lodge, with a backward wave of his hand, fobs them off on Daugherty, and is out the door. Daugherty smiles as the press converges on him, pens poised. Mencken is given the first shot. He aims for the heart of the matter. “So it’s all gonna be decided at 3:00 a.m. in a smoke-filled room, huh, Harry?”
“Make it 3:11, Mr. Mencken,” Daugherty replies with a wink. “Yes, 3:11. Actually, gentlemen, here’s how I see things shaping up. First off, as you doubtless have all observed . . .”
While Daugherty is dallying with reporters, the object of their intense interest, the man at the eye of the developing storm, has found safe harbor in the Dearborn Bar & Grill — Harding has not only gotten his hands on the first truly decent bourbon of the night, he’s spotted a high stakes poker game underway at a far corner table. And he’s feeling lucky. Enormously lucky.
But a far larger gamble is to be played out in Lodge’s campaign suite — spacious, well-appointed and generously supplied with cases of Mumms and “President Henry Cabot Lodge” banners. Lodge has spared no expense, fully expecting that at last he would be his party’s nominee. After close to fifty years of faithful service, who was more deserving?
The candidate, his manager and six key senators stride in, continue through to a smaller room, and close the door. As they settle into chairs and light their cigars, Lodge prepares them for what just twenty-four hours ago — three hours ago — would have been unimaginable.
“Time to face facts,” he tells them. “Lowden and Wood are finished. Both of them.”
“Good riddance,” adds Senator Guthrie.
“Regrettably,” continues Lodge in a flat voice, “the grass roots support we anticipated for our candidacy seems . . . not to have materialized.”
Lodge’s manager strives for a silver lining. “Nor for anyone else. Hoover’s stuck.”
Senator Paxton joins in. “Coolidge and Borah are burned out . . .”
“It appears,” says Lodge, resigned to the celestially improbable, “that the only man still on his feet . . . is Warren Harding.” He pauses for deliberate effect. “Gentlemen, we’d best ride the horse in the direction it’s going.”
Lodge’s manager is the first to catch his boss’ drift. “Harding? You’re not serious, Henry.”
Lodge looks at him steadily but says nothing. For a long moment the room is still. A shroud of melancholia settles heavily upon the men.
Morris Webb breaks the funereal silence. “Well, why not Harding?”
“Why not?” asks one senator, indignantly. “He’s a born follower.”
“The man wants only to be liked,” observes another. “Touching in a spaniel . . .”
Webb persists. “Warren’s always been there when any of us needed him.”
Webb is bombarded from every side as the senators erupt. “So has the Senate barber,” comes a salvo from across the room. “Why don’t we just nominate him . . . ?”
“God knows Harding’s congenial, but he has no passion,” another senator insists.
“I don’t think the fellow’s even been to college, has he? Admittedly, he’s reasonably well-spoken, but . . .”
“He never actually says anything. I can’t recall his ever taking a firm stand. On any issue. Can you?”
“Scratch Warren’s surface and you come out the other side . . .”
“Christ, Henry,” grouses Lodge’s manager, “there isn’t a man in this room who isn’t infinitely more qualified for the presidency than Harding!”
Vigorous nods of agreement, the odd “here, here.”
Lodge remains unmoved. “What’s most important, Senators, is that Harding is one of us. And after eight years of Woodrow Wilson, the Senate deserves a President — a President who’ll see things our way.”
The men quietly chew on that as the room clouds with cigar smoke. You could hear an ash drop.
Finally, Albert Fall speaks up. “Face it, friends,” he says, softly. The delegates are at the end of their string. If we don’t all line up behind someone, someone now, they’ll bolt. Stampede to Coolidge . . .”
“They could even give it to Hoover, God forbid,” mutters Blair. “After Wilson, the one thing this country doesn’t need is another do-gooder in the White House.”
Webb weighs in again. “Warren’s already drawn more delegates than Hoover and Coolidge together. He might pull it off, gentlemen. He very well might. If we get out the word.”
Lodge has reserved his most potent arguments for last. “Senators, consider: Warren Harding seems nearly incapable of alienating anyone. Given the voters’ current mood, that alone makes him eminently electable. And of greatest importance, Warren Harding is one man who listens to his betters.”
Harding’s betters look at each other and prepare to bite the bullet. Lodge rises from his chair. “Then we’re agreed?”
A collective sigh through the room. Paxton shrugs. “As they say, Henry: in America anyone can become president.”
Harding has settled in comfortably with a half-dozen new friends around the Dearborn’s poker table, cracking jokes and winning one pot after another. An attractive flapper in a short skirt stands close by, admiring both the man and his enormous pile of chips. The dealer calls. Triumphantly, Harding shows his hand. Everything is going his way.
At the coliseum, for the last time in his long political life, Lodge holds down his party’s convention podium; though not yet a quarter-way through this, the twenty-first ballot, the early numbers already make clear to him and almost everyone else that the protracted nominating convention of 1920 is coming to its astonishing and utterly unforeseen end:
Borah
18
Coolidge
6
Harding
188
Hoover
35
Lodge
46
Lowden
165
Wood
130
Across the floor, Nan watches mesmerized as Harding’s numbers climb.
“The sunshine state of Florida,” intones its whip, “casts its 24 votes for Harding.”
“Georgia?” asks Lodge.
“The state of Georgia gives 4 votes to Wood, 18 votes to Harding, 4 votes to Lowden.”
Up in Lowden’s suite, Lowden’s manager, Dan Wicker, has his ear to the phone, his eyes trained on Lowden, waiting for guidance. Tight-lipped, Lowden nods “yes.”
Lodge continues his march through the states. “Illinois?”
Unhappy turmoil amongst the Illinois delegation. Lowden, after all, is their governor.
Lodge tries again. “Illinois?”
“Illinois casts 4 votes for Lowden,” comes the answer in a hoarse voice. There’s a pause. Then a new voice, loud and clear: “42 for Harding.”
A murmur ripples across the convention floor.
Lodge plugs away. “Iowa?”
“Iowa casts its 16 votes for Warren Harding.”
Harding’s thrust now appears irresistible. Though more than a few delegates are too tired to care, the Ohio contingent starts to chant:
“Harding! Harding!”
Slowly, Nan rises from her chair to stand with her gaze fixed upon the scoreboard as Harding soars and the others fade away.
At 4:00 a.m., Harding closes down the Dearborn and staggers out onto the street. He passes a hideously scarred, blinded veteran leaning agai
nst the wall, selling pencils. A hand-lettered sign propped up on a small table reads: “GASSED IN 1918.” Sobered somewhat by the vet’s disfigurement, Harding reaches into a pocket, pulls out a good chunk of his winnings and stuffs them into the man’s tin cup, shakes his head sadly and continues on.
Simultaneously, Maine’s whip, who had just cast 17 votes for Harding and 8 for Lowden, interrupts himself. “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. Correction — that’s 2 for Lowden, 23 for Harding.” The impact of this revision rumbles through the convention hall.
“God help these great United States,” mutters Lodge, as he moves on to Minnesota.
“Minnesota casts all 31 votes for Warren Harding.”
One Minnesota delegate turns to another. “Who the hell is this guy?”
“Hey,” comes the response, “I just do what I’m told.”
The Republican’s moment of truth has come. “Pennsylvania?” Lodge asks. Despite the microphone, his voice is increasingly submerged by chants of “Harding! Harding!”
Pennsylvania’s whip rises portentously. “Pennsylvania . . . is proud . . . to cast the entirety of its 54 votes . . . for our next President . . . Warren Gamaliel Harding!”
Harding is over the top.
Nan stands rooted to the ground, her curls matted down with perspiration, Harding’s flashing score of 510 reflecting off her shining face. Around her, from floor to ceiling, the convention reverberates with yells and cries, perhaps more of relief than of joy.
Lodge struggles to make himself heard. “The Chair moves that the nomination be unanimous. All in favor?!”
“AYES” come roaring back at him, all but smothering a distinct number of loud “NO’S” from Lowden and Wood diehards.
“The Chair declares, by unanimous acclaim: Warren G. Harding is the Republican nominee for the Presidency of the United States!”
As hundreds of straw boaters are tossed into the cheer-saturated air, Lodge slams the convention gavel. Then he lays it down on the podium, removes his spectacles, pinches the bridge of his nose and slowly shakes his head. He feels quite old.
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