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

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  The scandal that did catch the public’s attention and threatened to derail Roosevelt’s campaign was the far more lethal accusation that the president and George Cortelyou were engaged “in a conspiracy to blackmail corporations.” Judge Parker and fellow Democrats charged the Republicans with extortion—using detailed information on violations obtained from the newly created Bureau of Corporations “like a big stick with the threat of prosecution if a fat contribution to the republican campaign [was] not made.” Democratic newspapers insinuated that “the prostitution of an entire federal department to the use of a campaign committee was cleverly planned and carefully executed.” First, the papers accused, Roosevelt had appointed Cortelyou head of the cabinet department overseeing the new bureau; then, having amassed the necessary information, Cortelyou was made chairman of the Republican National Committee.

  Roosevelt’s advisers were divided over how to respond. Initially, Cortelyou and Garfield were reluctant to dignify the infamous accusation with a rejoinder. Taft disagreed. “I don’t see why Cortelyou does not deny it but he keeps mum,” he wrote Nellie. “Of course Parker cites no evidence to sustain his charge and Cortelyou’s position is that until he does so, he is not called upon to answer. But I think it would be better to make a short denial.”

  Roosevelt concurred with Taft that the charges must be refuted, but resolved, against all precedent, to answer them personally. “I am the man against whom Parker’s assaults are really directed and I am the man who can give the widest publicity to the denial,” he told Cortelyou. “I should feel an intolerable humiliation if I were beaten because infamous charges had been made against me and good people regarded my silence as acquiescence in them.” In characteristic fashion, Roosevelt drafted the statement himself, submitting it to his advisers for criticism. Revised speech in hand, he asked Garfield to take the midnight train to New York and confer with Cortelyou and Root.

  All reservations concerning the propriety of the president’s personal involvement in the fray vanished when, in an inflammatory speech on November 3, five days before the election, Parker labeled Cortelyou’s fund “Blood Money.” From the rear of his train in Meriden, Connecticut, Parker spoke “without notes for the first time since the campaign began.” The Democratic candidate, reporters suggested, was stirred from his usual reticence by the loud enthusiasm of the immense crowd of 5,000. “His eyes flashed, his clenched hand swung above his head and his voice rang out with a vigor that betrayed his emotion,” as he declared that all other issues of the campaign were now subsumed by one great question: “whether it is possible for interests in this country to control the elections with money.” Parker scornfully claimed that when “every trust in this country, including the Standard Oil Trust, is doing its best to elect the Republican ticket,” it becomes the duty of the American people to determine “once and for all, whether money or manhood suffrage shall control.” He described how Cortelyou had exploited his cabinet position to blackmail the trusts for campaign contributions. “This country,” he pledged in closing, “shall not pass into the hands of the trusts.” The crowd responded “with a thundering cry that lasted until the train drew out of sight.”

  At ten o’clock the following night, William Loeb summoned members of the press to the White House, where he handed them the president’s signed statement. The “direct and fierce” tone of this letter “became the common news of the hotels and streets in a few moments,” prompting a flurry of discussion among politicians and the press. “The gravamen of these charges,” Roosevelt began, “lies in the assertion that corporations have been blackmailed into contributing,” and that in return, “they have been promised certain immunities or favors.” Such accusations leveled without any evidence were “monstrous,” he maintained. “If true, they would brand both of us forever with infamy, and inasmuch as they are false, heavy must be the condemnation of the man making them.” He unequivocally dismissed the charge that Cortelyou had used intelligence gleaned from his cabinet position to coerce contributions as “a falsehood” and the insinuations that pledges were offered for contributions as “a wicked falsehood.” All these allegations, the president flatly concluded, were “unqualifiedly and atrociously false.”

  In the wake of Roosevelt’s vigorous and categorical rebuttal, Parker seemed to backpedal, claiming that “he had made no criticism of the President, but had simply called attention to a ‘notorious and offensive situation.’ ” Nor, in response to Roosevelt’s direct challenge, did he offer to substantiate his earlier claims. “Parker fails to furnish proofs,” headlines blared in response. The president’s public rebuttal, Garfield happily observed, “has knocked Parker flat.”

  The outcome delighted Roosevelt. “Parker’s attacks became so atrocious,” an ebullient Roosevelt told Kermit, “that I determined—against the counsel of my advisors—to hit; and as I never believe in hitting soft, I hit him in a way he will remember. In spite of loud boasting he made no real return attack at all, and I came out of the encounter with flying colors.”

  AS ELECTION DAY APPROACHED, ROOSEVELT’S anxiety escalated. He confessed to his sister Corinne that “he had never wanted anything in his life quite as much as the outward and visible sign of his country’s approval.” Elevated to the presidency as a result of “a calamity to another rather than as the personal choice of the people,” he longed “to be chosen President on his own merits by the people of the United States.” Should his campaign end in rejection, he consoled himself in moments fraught with tension that he had enjoyed “a first class run.” And if, in defeat, he “felt soured at not having had more, instead of being thankful for having had so much,” it would signal “a small and mean mind.”

  Late on the morning of November 8, Roosevelt cast his vote in Oyster Bay. A crowd of “home folk” greeted him at the train station with flags and banners. Arriving at the polling place, he “sprang briskly from the carriage and ran up the stairs.” As soon as his ballot was cast, he caught the 1:14 train back to Washington, reaching the White House at 6:30 p.m. Not expecting returns for several hours, Roosevelt tried “not to think of the result, but to school [himself] to accept it as a man.” He had scarcely crossed the threshold when news arrived that he had carried doubtful New York with “a plurality so large as to be astonishing.” By the time he sat down with his family at dinner, sufficient returns had been received from key precincts in various states to suggest “a tremendous drift” in his direction.

  After dinner, the president joined a group of intimate friends and members of his official family in the Red Parlor to await further results. While Taft had not yet returned from voting in Cincinnati, Nellie and the wives of the other cabinet members were present. Eleven-year-old Archie, “fairly plastered with badges,” carried telegrams from the telegraph operator to his father, who read them aloud. At 9 p.m., a personal telegram arrived from Judge Parker conceding the election. It was “the greatest triumph I ever had had or ever could have,” Roosevelt wrote, “and I was very proud and happy.”

  An hour later, Roosevelt greeted the Washington correspondents in the executive mansion office. Following an animated discussion in which he made “no attempt to conceal his gratification,” the president leaned back in his chair and dictated a statement to his secretary. “So quiet was everyone in the room,” one correspondent noted, “that one could hear the clock tick on the mantel shelf” as he read his startling pronouncement.

  I am deeply sensible of the honor done me by the American people in thus expressing their confidence in what I have done and have tried to do. I appreciate to the full the solemn responsibility this confidence imposed on me, and I shall do all that in my power lies not to forfeit it. On the 4th of March next I shall have served three and one half years and the three and one half years constitute my first term. The wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no circumstance will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.

  Roosevelt’s state
ment was not an impulsive gesture made in a moment of delirious joy; he had considered renouncing a third term weeks earlier but decided to wait for the election results lest it seem “a bid for votes.” From his first days in office, critics had disparaged Roosevelt’s single-minded focus on his own advancement. Such negativity sharpened during the campaign as opponents charged that he would “use the office of President to perpetuate [himself] in power.” His simple pledge in the wake of the election-day triumph silenced all such criticism.

  “I feel very strongly,” Roosevelt explained to the British historian George Trevelyan, that “a public man’s usefulness in the highest position becomes in the end impaired by the mere fact of too long continuance in that position.” Even if custom had not frowned upon a third term, he maintained, “it would yet be true that in 1908 it would be better to have some man like Taft or Root succeed me in the presidency, at the head of the Republican party, than to have me succeed myself. In all the essentials of policy they look upon things as I do; but . . . what they did and said would have a freshness which what I did and said could not possibly have; and they would be free from the animosities and suspicions which I had accumulated, and would be able to take a new start.”

  When all the votes were finally tallied, Roosevelt had achieved “the greatest popular majority and the greatest electoral majority ever given to a candidate for President.” He had won all the northern states, carried the western states previously claimed by Bryan, and added a totally unexpected coup in Missouri, breaking the Democratic Party’s enduring hold on the South. “I am stunned by the overwhelming victory we have won,” Roosevelt confessed. “I had no conception that such a thing was possible.”

  Everyone in the administration, Taft told his brother Charley, “has had a smile that won’t come off since the election.” William Taft could well take particular satisfaction in his own vital contribution to the victorious campaign. Personal letters and newspaper articles recorded his tireless efforts and powerful speeches in defense of administration policy. “The document that gave the most force to the Roosevelt campaign,” journalist Murat Halstead told Taft, “was your utterance on the Philippines on the stump—that had the air and the dignity and the conclusiveness of a decision handed down by the Supreme Court.” Howard Hollister proudly noted that his old friend had generated “thousands of votes” by standing “fearlessly” on the issues, making “a contribution much greater probably than you would be willing to admit.” Characteristically, Taft refused to take credit, replying to all who congratulated him that “the victory is so overwhelming that I cannot think that anything that was done in the way of speaking had any particular effect.” Above all, he insisted, the success was “a tribute to the personal popularity of the President.”

  Notwithstanding the general elation surrounding the historic election, Taft issued a public warning to the Republican Party: “It is no unheard of thing to have a majority as large and sweeping as this followed by a defeat equally emphatic at the next Presidential election.” Without a candidate as compelling and charismatic as Roosevelt, it was very possible that the country would have voted Democratic; the Republican Party must not “diminish in any way the care with which the public interests must be protected.” His timely admonition met with widespread approval. “Unless the Republican party is wise and liberal toward all legitimate and right demands of the people in the social and economic controversies which are going on,” one respondent agreed, “we must expect sweeping radical victories during the next few years.”

  For those who hoped to see a more progressive Republican Party, Roosevelt’s surprise decision to forgo a third term seemed “pregnant with promise” of a vigorous future for reform. Now that he was “absolutely independent of all party bosses and party machines,” the Minneapolis Journal predicted, “Theodore Roosevelt is likely to make the administration of 1905–9 one of the two or three most resplendent and beneficial in the history of the republic.” The St. Paul Globe endorsed this sanguine assessment, proclaiming that if Roosevelt stayed true “to the best that is in him,” he could “become one of the great presidents in our history.” Even his harshest critics had “nothing but praise” for Roosevelt’s declaration. It was “to his everlasting honor,” the New York Sun proclaimed, that “in the hour of his triumph,” the president chose to make his second term his last.

  Though he reveled in the acclaim that accompanied his declaration, Theodore Roosevelt would come to bitterly regret his action, later reportedly telling a friend that if he could rescind the pledge, he would willingly cut off his hand at the wrist.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Sitting on the Lid”

  “I have left Taft sitting on the lid,” Roosevelt remarked before departing on a western tour, prompting this April 5, 1905, cartoon in the Washington Times.

  AFTER WEEKS OF CLOUDY SKIES and heavy snow, the morning of March 4, 1905, broke “blue, flecked with lazily floating white clouds”—the day Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated president in his own right. Washingtonians happily remarked that once again “Roosevelt luck” had brought “Roosevelt weather.” For the tens of thousands lining the streets to watch the president’s carriage pass from the White House to the Capitol, “the morning sun gave brilliancy and luster to the fluttering mass of flags and banners.”

  Roosevelt appeared “supremely happy,” waving and bowing as a record-breaking crowd hailed him with “the roar of the ocean upon a rockbound coast.” The galleries were filled inside the Senate chamber, where Charles Fairbanks prepared to take the vice-presidential oath. Raucous cheers broke out when Roosevelt arrived. Stepping onto the floor, he at once scanned the gallery for Edith and the children; spotting them, he did not wave “furtively, nor half-heartedly, nor as if he were afraid someone might see this evidence of his domestic affection but with demonstration frank and full.” His demeanor proclaimed simply: “This, my dear wife and children, is the proudest moment of our lives.”

  Hundreds of spectators perched in trees, crowded on rooftops, and lined the wings of the Capitol building as the president stood before the vast multitude and delivered “a friendly little homily on the duties of the nation and citizen,” betraying nothing of the “truculent note” that often marked his speeches. “Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us,” he told the crowd. “We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth. . . . Our relations with the other powers of the world are important, but still more important are our relations among ourselves.” The Industrial Revolution, Roosevelt maintained, had generated both “marvelous material well-being” and the “care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth”—creating a host of problems that government had the responsibility to address. He spoke with characteristic “earnestness,” one reporter wrote, stressing every word with such force that it seemed “as if he would like to get hold of each individual person in his audience and pound home the truths which he believes he is uttering, till the wretched man should be forced to admit the error of his ways and agree with the speaker.”

  Editorialists predicted “tempestuous doings” now that Roosevelt was president in his own right rather than by the happenstance of assassination. Backed by a massive popular mandate, he would no longer be held in check by the conservative bloc in Congress. “The Republican party has turned the corner and is now on a new road,” William Allen White proclaimed. “It is hard to believe that the party that eight years ago was advocating the policy of ‘hands off’ is now ready to lay hands on capital, and such rough hands, too, when capital goes wrong. ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to the new.’ ”

  TURBULENT EVENTS WOULD INDEED FOLLOW, but first the newly elected president embarked on a two-month vacation trip through the Southwest and the Rocky Mountain region. A Rough Riders reunion in Texas began the hiatus, followed by a five-day wolf-hunting expedition in Oklahoma and a three-week bear hunt in Colorado. “
Everybody rejoices that he is to have some time for recuperation,” an Ohio newspaper editorialized. “Only the bears and the mountain lions have occasion for regret.” On the morning of April 4, cheered by well-wishers at the Pennsylvania Railroad Station, Roosevelt stepped onto a “handsomely fitted” train consisting of a private car, a Pullman sleeper, and a buffet car. He looked, one reporter noted, “like a small boy let out of school,” rejoicing that he would soon enter wild country beyond the reach of official duties and office seekers.

  Along the route, Roosevelt followed his customary procedure, emerging onto the platform at every stop to shake hands and deliver brief remarks. It was “much more pleasant than ordinarily,” he told his son Kermit, because the presidential race was over and he was finally “free from the everlasting suspicion” a candidate invariably arouses. Even in the traditionally Democratic strongholds of Louisville, Austin, and Dallas, flags waved, cannons thundered, and tens of thousands greeted him with “wild enthusiasm.”

  Clearly, these hunting expeditions not only afforded Roosevelt a most “genuine pleasure” but provided the opportunity for revitalization. In Oklahoma, he was “in the saddle eight or nine hours every day” helping to track and kill eleven wolves: “It was tremendous galloping over cut banks, prairie dog towns, flats, creek bottoms, everything,” he exulted. “One run was nine miles long and I was the only man in at the finish except the professional wolf hunter.” In Colorado, he was “up at daybreak” and refused to stop until the sun set, keeping his “little band of huntsmen” in constant motion. As always, Roosevelt found the intense physical trial invigorating; while his face was “roughened by wind and sun and snow,” he felt healthier than he had for months.