The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  The accommodations Edith made in her manner of life at Sagamore Hill were insignificant beside the transformations occasioned by her husband’s impulsive move to Washington, D.C., to become a member of the Civil Service Commission. The 1888 presidential campaign between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland had revived his interest in politics. A loyal Republican, he had agreed to stump for Harrison, traveling through the Midwest for twelve days, speaking before large crowds, discovering once again the pride and pleasure an enthusiastic audience could bestow. His reintroduction to national politics was “immense fun,” he told Henry Cabot Lodge, who would join him in Washington as a new congressman from Massachusetts.

  When Republicans captured both the presidency and the U.S. Congress, Roosevelt hoped he might be appointed assistant secretary of state. Despite intense lobbying by his friends, however, the new secretary, James Blaine, was hesitant to have a man of “Mr. T.R.’s temperament” in such an important post. “I do somehow fear that my sleep at Augusta or Bar Harbor would not be quite so easy and refreshing,” Blaine admitted, “if so brilliant and aggressive a man had hold of the helm.”

  After absorbing this disappointing news, Roosevelt finally received word that President Harrison would offer him the less exalted post of civil service commissioner, where he would be charged with enforcing the 1883 Pendleton Act, mandating that one quarter of all federal jobs be filled by competitive examination rather than party affiliation. Roosevelt’s family and friends cautioned against accepting the post, believing it beneath his talents, but Roosevelt leapt at the chance to return to political life.

  For Edith, pregnant with their second child after a miscarriage the previous summer, the move to Washington signaled an unwelcome disruption of domestic order. Politics held scant interest for her compared with an abiding love of literature, a passion she could share with her husband while he was at work writing. Moreover, as the manager of the family’s finances, she worried that his meager annual salary of $3,500 would not cover both the rental in Washington and the maintenance of Sagamore Hill. To economize, Roosevelt decided to stay with Henry Cabot Lodge until Edith could join him after the baby’s birth in October.

  Whereas Edith dreaded the long separation from her husband, Roosevelt was thrilled to be actively involved in the ferment of the capital. Within minutes of his arrival at the commission offices in the City Hall building, it was clear that he would bring impetus and authority to his new role. Matthew Halloran, who served as a certification clerk for thirty-five years, recalled his first indelible glimpse of Roosevelt. The morning quiet was instantly shattered by his ringing introduction: “I am the new Civil Service Commissioner,” he proclaimed, his energetic, penetrating voice and brusque demeanor setting his new staff scrambling. “Have you a telephone? Call up the Ebbit House. I have an engagement with Archbishop Ireland. Say that I will be there at ten o’clock.” His appearance had immediate effect. “I jumped up with alacrity,” Halloran recalled. “Behind large-rimmed eye-glasses flashed piercing blue-gray eyes, Theodore Roosevelt impressed me as a fine specimen of vigorous manhood. The dazzling smile with its strong white teeth, which was later to become famous all over the world, is still a most vivid recollection. It seemed to mirror the wholesomeness and geniality of the man and it put me wholly at ease. . . . Our friendship and my admiration for him began at that moment.”

  Indeed, it seemed that a favorable impression of the new commissioner was widespread. In an editorial praising Roosevelt’s appointment, the Decatur (Illinois) Republican observed, “He is equally at home in the drawing rooms of New York or Paris, in the halls of legislation or amid the exciting scenes of a national convention, and when he plays the cowboy on the ranch in Montana he is as far from a tenderfoot as when he takes up the pen to paint in glowing language the glories of a sunset in the Rockies or describes in a magazine article the interest of a fight with the hungry coyotes of the plains.” The legend of this intrepid young man and his multifarious talents was beginning to grow.

  Theodore spent most of the summer in Washington, with only occasional weekend visits to Sagamore Hill. “It has been a hopeless kind of summer to look back on,” Edith wrote in mid-August, “and all I can think of are the times you have been here; our lovely rows and that long drive and our drives to and from the station. . . . My darling you are all the world to me. I am not myself when you are away. Do not forget me or love me less.”

  On October 10, 1889, Edith gave birth to a second son. She named him Kermit, carrying forward the name of her Aunt Kermit and her father’s old mercantile house, Kermit & Carow. Two months later, she finally joined her husband in their newly rented town house at 1820 Jefferson Place. “Edie has occasional fits of gloom,” Theodore reported to Bamie on January 4, 1890, “but the house is now getting to look very homelike and comfortable, such a contrast to when I was alone in it! I can hardly realize it is the same place; and I am thoroughly enjoying the change.”

  SO IT WAS THAT THE spring of 1890 saw both the Roosevelts and the Tafts settled in the same Washington neighborhood. Both men had accepted positions in the capital that were far from their ideal vocations, though Roosevelt stepped into his job as commissioner with characteristic verve, while Will approached the role of solicitor general with trepidation. Their two wives also responded very differently to the prospect of life in Washington. Nellie had been an active proponent of the move, undeterred by the idea of uprooting her growing family in order to expand her experience and influence alongside her husband. Edith shuddered at the tumult and social demands of the city, a disruption imposed on the family circle she had waited so long to establish. In many ways, the two women complemented and balanced their respective partners. Nellie spurred Will Taft to greater confidence and action, her expectations and support driving him to greater engagement in the important work of the time. Edith, meanwhile, worked to restrain the impetuous will that drove her husband to ceaseless activity.

  Despite—or perhaps because of—their dissimilar natures, Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft would forge a historic friendship. Nellie and Edith, despite their proximity and clear parallels in their interests and upbringings, never made a deep connection. In fact, their commonalities were far more superficial than their disparities. Both had grown up in the shadow of wealthier, more eminent families and had eventually married into them. The social ambitions that dictated private schools, proper wardrobes, and advantageous marriages for both girls were internalized in very different ways. Nellie, exposed to the scintillating world of national politics and society as a girl, was determined to marry a future president (or create one of the man she married). She had watched her father sacrifice personal ambitions and satisfaction for material comfort and longed to find personal fulfillment, a more vivid and expansive existence. Edith, on the other hand, who had seen the dissipation of her family’s empire in the hands of an alcoholic father, craved security and domestic coherence above all else.

  Both women were scholars after their fashion. Each had avidly pursued her education, read widely for pleasure, and developed her closest friendships in a circle with similar literary inclinations. For Nellie, literature was a way to engage the larger world, to explore the social issues of the day; reading and writing were intensely personal pursuits for Edith, a way to isolate herself and create a private world to share with those she let in. When Edith married, she believed that she and Theodore could withdraw and build a life centered on books and family, sustained by reading and writing. Nellie, whose relationship with Will evolved in the heated discussions of her salon, agreed to a marriage she believed would expand the boundaries of her existence and her opportunities for involvement and impact.

  Nellie always chafed at the conventions that circumscribed her role in the world. The same iconoclastic impulse that drove her to sneak cigarettes or dance in German beer halls made her ache to pursue higher education, as her brothers had, or to find purpose as a pioneer in early childhood schooling despite the opposition of her fami
ly. Seeing nothing but ennui in the “favorable” matches that were the crowning achievement for women of her time and station, she sought something different in her union with Will Taft. Solicitous and respectful, he accepted and needed her as a partner in public as well as in domestic pursuits. In London on her honeymoon, she was thrilled to hear Gladstone speak in Parliament. In Cincinnati, she savored newspapers and enjoyed discussions of current events. She was elated that they would now find themselves in Washington, at the epicenter of American political life.

  Edith desperately longed for the staid home life that Nellie was fighting to escape. She sought always to make the Roosevelt home a refuge for herself and her family. “A very long way after her husband and children,” one friend observed, “came a small group of chosen friends.” Like Nellie, she was accomplished and competent, pursuing her intellectual passions while astutely managing her household. She did not, however, share her new neighbor’s interest in the social and political agendas that dominated the consciousness of Washington, D.C. While Edith and Nellie lacked a basic affinity and understanding, the unique support each woman gave her husband was indispensable, allowing William Taft and Theodore Roosevelt to find common cause and succeed in ways neither could have alone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Insider and the Outsider

  Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. Civil Service Commissioner, ca. 1889.

  WASHINGTON IS JUST A BIG village, but it is a very pleasant big village,” Theodore Roosevelt reported in the 1890s. Accustomed to the clamor of New York, “where everything throbs with the chase for the almighty dollar,” Roosevelt must have been amazed to find that in the nation’s capital, “pleasure takes precedence over work.” Government officials enjoyed unhurried breakfasts, arriving at their desks between nine and ten, often leaving the office by four. Even Roosevelt, with his singular disciplined drive, managed to quit work early four or five afternoons each week for a game of tennis or jog through Rock Creek Park before heading off to a dinner party.

  To illustrate the marked atmospheric contrast between the two cities, the writer Frank Carpenter observed that in New York, “a streetcar will not wait for you if you are not just at its stopping point. It goes on and you must stand there until the next car comes along. In Washington people a block away signal the cars by waving their hands or their umbrellas. Then they walk to the car at a leisurely pace, while the drivers wait patiently and the horses rest.” While the capital might lack “the spirit of intense energy” that animated New York, Carpenter concluded that Washington, with its broad, clean streets and fine marble buildings (and its shanties generally hidden from view), offered “the pleasanter place in which to live.”

  Roosevelt and Taft apparently met within days of Taft’s arrival in town, possibly through their mutual friendship with Congressman Benjamin Butterworth. “Common views and sympathies,” Taft recalled, made them immediate allies, particularly in the cause of “Civil Service reform.” Roosevelt had been chagrined to find that many influential senators, congressmen, and cabinet officials “hated the whole reform and everything concerned with it and everybody who championed it.” For sixty years, politicians in both parties had been complicit in a spoils system where officials (postal carriers, typists, stenographers, and clerks) were appointed, promoted, or fired according to their politics rather than their merit. Uprooting that system would prove a far more strenuous endeavor than Roosevelt had realized when he accepted the post of civil service commissioner.

  In William Howard Taft, however, Roosevelt recognized a staunch comrade, a steadfast advocate of advancement due not to cronyism but to competence. Indeed, Taft had been willing to resign his post as revenue collector rather than bow to demands that he fire the best men in his department due to their political affiliations. This experience had given Taft some intimation of the hardships his new friend would face. “It will be a long, hard, discouraging struggle,” Taft acknowledged during Roosevelt’s tenure as commissioner, “but the right must win.”

  In the mornings, Roosevelt and Taft would often walk together to work. Although a streetcar stopped at nearby Farragut Square, they preferred to go on foot, as did most Washingtonians of the time. “One of the first observations that a New-Yorker makes on coming to Washington,” the New York Times recorded, “is the difference in the way people walk. Here they usually walk slowly, deliberately always, and one rarely sees the rushing, hurrying, preoccupied walking that lends so much life to New York streets.” The two friends soon became familiar figures as they strolled along Connecticut Avenue. More than half a foot shorter and 70 pounds lighter than Taft, Roosevelt busily scanned “everything and everybody” as he pursued a lively conversation. Taft trudged more ponderously, focused intently upon his companion. Taft reached the Justice Department first, which stood one block from the White House, opposite the northern front of the Treasury Department. Roosevelt continued ten blocks east to his destination, Judiciary Square, where the Civil Service Commission was housed.

  Increasingly, they relied upon one another for advice and camaraderie, often meeting for leisurely lunches. Roosevelt did most of the talking, finding scant pleasure in his food, while Taft relished generous portions. Whether “absorbed in work or play,” one reporter observed, Roosevelt “would eat hay and not know it,” whereas Taft savored his meals with care. Profound differences in manner and metabolism never diminished the delight they found in each other’s company.

  “Externally Taft is everything Roosevelt is not,” commented the journalist William Allen White. “Roosevelt’s mental processes are quick, intuitive and sure,” while “Taft grapples a proposition, wrestles with it without resting and without fatigue until it is settled or solved.” Taft had no interest in hunting, boxing, or playing polo, no affinity for the often violent contests of strength and endurance, those manifestations of male prowess that so obsessed Roosevelt. His one passion was for the game of golf, which Roosevelt found excruciatingly dull and slow. Nonetheless, White concluded, the two had no sooner become acquainted than “they established one of those strong friendships that may be established only by men whose exteriors form such antipathetical sutures that they unite by a spiritual affinity.”

  From the outset, each man recognized the rare character and unique talent of the other. “Mr. Taft,” a Boston American reporter expounded, “is the kind of man you would expect to find in the president’s office of a bank if you went in to start an account. His appearance would give you confidence in the bank. You would say to yourself, ‘This man will not let the bank fail if he can possibly help it.’ ” His kind and ingenuous nature was instantly apparent, inspiring the trust and amity of all he encountered. “If the boat were sinking, and he could swim and you couldn’t, you’d hand him your $50,000—if you had it—saying, ‘Give this to my wife,’ and she’d get it.”

  “One loves him at first sight,” Roosevelt acknowledged of Taft. “He has nothing to overcome when he meets people. I realize that I have always got to overcome a little something before I get to the heart of people. . . . I almost envy a man possessing a personality like Taft’s.” Taft, Roosevelt said, “can get along with some men that I can’t get along with.” While Roosevelt had difficulty suppressing his contempt and irritation toward men he did not like, Taft’s “good nature, his indifference to self, his apparently infinite patience, enables him to get along with men, however cold or acerb or crotchety.”

  A reporter well acquainted with both men noted that Taft possessed “a capacity, indeed, for personal intimacy which a self-centered man like Roosevelt never could have.” Perhaps, he suggested, “Roosevelt could see that sweetness of character in Mr. Taft and he could admire it, as we so often admire the faculties we do not possess.” Taft felt a similar wonder at Roosevelt’s aggressive self-confidence. His friend’s talent for publicity, delight in confrontation, and rousing rhetorical manner were gifts he would never share.

  ROOSEVELT WOULD NEED ALL THESE attributes and more if he hoped to win his war
against the entrenched spoils system. “Each party profited by the offices when in power,” Roosevelt explained, “and when in opposition each party insincerely denounced its opponents for doing exactly what it itself had done and intended again to do.” Although long aware that corruption was endemic in the country’s political and judicial systems, Roosevelt was sustained by his sometimes overweening belief in the rectitude of his cause and the prospect of a rousing struggle. “For the last few years politics with me has been largely a balancing of evils,” he explained to a friend, “and I am delighted to go in on a side where I have no doubt whatever, and feel absolutely certain that my efforts are wholly for the good; and you can guarantee I intend to hew to the line, and let the chips fly where they will.”

  For Roosevelt, civil service reform presented a historic opening to ensure that “the fellow with no pull should have an even chance with his rival who came backed; that the farmer’s lad and the mechanic’s son who had no one to speak for them should have the same show in competing for the public service as the son of wealth and social prestige.” Allowing party officials to ensconce unqualified friends and kinsmen in public positions, he argued, was not merely “undemocratic”; it ensured inefficient public service that impacted the poor and vulnerable most of all. The smug axiom “To the victor belongs the spoils” was a “cynical battle-cry” he denounced as “so nakedly vicious” that no honorable man could condone it.

  Roosevelt’s crusade prompted immediate attention from reporters in Washington. Although he was only one of three commissioners, he soon became the public face of the Civil Service Commission. “Yes, TR is a breezy young fellow,” a New York Sun correspondent commented with patronizing approbation, “and we do not find fault with him because he fancies that he knows it all. The quality of self-confidence is not bad in youth. We rather like to see it, for it indicates usually the possession or the motive power which makes a man aggressive and enterprising. He works more vigorously if he is sure that he is nearer right than other people, and has no misgivings as to his ability to accomplish his ends. The self distrustful, self-critical young man, who is always looking for direction from somebody else, and in whom what the old phrenologists used to call the bump of approbativeness is out of proper proportion, is pretty sure to be left behind in the race.”