Roosevelt’s proclamation arrived “like a clap of thunder out of the clear sky,” the National Tribune reported. “Washington has been throbbing with political gossip ever since.” Derisive speculation abounded among the president’s critics: “I suppose he has come to the conclusion that it would not be worthwhile for him to run,” Democratic senator Tillman charged, stridently observing that “the pitiful condition into which he and Cortelyou have got things shows that he could not be elected.” Although Roosevelt would undoubtedly “do his utmost to name the man who [would] carry out his policies,” William Randolph Hearst noted, only time would tell whether the popularity he once enjoyed or the rejection he currently endured would prove more potent for his chosen candidate.
In Republican circles, commentary focused primarily on Taft’s brightening prospects. With Roosevelt “definitely and positively out of the Presidential race,” party leaders were free “to come out squarely for Taft.” California senator Frank Flint insisted that the state had been for Taft “all along” and could now openly declare its support. Kansas senator Chester Long concurred, calling Taft’s candidacy “the only one worth considering.”
As the political world debated Taft’s future, Will and Nellie crossed the Atlantic on the SS President Grant. They had cut short their round-the-world tour upon receiving news that Taft’s mother was critically ill. Louise Taft had been in splendid health until the previous summer, when she developed an acute inflammation of the gall bladder. Before his departure for the Philippines, Taft had stopped at the old family mansion in Millbury, Massachusetts, where his mother and her sister Delia resided together. Doctors considered Louise’s condition serious, yet Will and his brothers were convinced that her cheerful nature and her “strength, constitution and courage” would carry her through. She remained mentally clear and for a time seemed to be “on the road to recovery.” On her eightieth birthday in September, Annie Taft reported, “her cheeks were as rosy as a young girl’s and she was happy as a child at seeing us. There was something marvelous about the youthfulness of her face.” As winter approached, however, she “slowly but steadily” lost ground. On December 4, Charles telegraphed Will in St. Petersburg that the end was near. “Still have hope that she will survive until you arrive,” Charles wrote two days later, but Taft’s ship had left Hamburg, Germany, when he received word that his mother was dead.
When the SS President Grant arrived at Quarantine in New York, a courier handed Taft a confidential letter from the president. “I hope you will say nothing for publication until you see me,” Roosevelt cautioned. “Things have become somewhat intricate and you want to consider well what steps you are to take before taking them,” he explained. “A great many of your ardent supporters became convinced that your canvass was being hurt by the refusal of many people to accept my declination as final, and that numbers of people who were sincerely attached to you, but who were even more devoted to me, did not come out for you because they thought I was still a possibility . . . I therefore decided to make one more public statement.”
Neither politics nor strategy were foremost on William Taft’s agenda. No sooner had he landed than he made plans for an immediate trip to Cincinnati. “I was very much pained not to be able to come here to attend the funeral,” he told a friend. Missing the final “epoch” in his mother’s life had left him with a terrible “sense of something wanting,” a loss he hoped to mitigate by laying “a wreath on her grave and [calling] on her old friends.” While his mother’s death represented “a great change” for the entire family, he took solace in the knowledge that through eight decades, she had lived according to her own design, never riddled by a longing “for something else.” Ever a force “to be reckoned with,” Louise Taft had been a formative power within her own family, just as she had helped shape every community in which she lived. And although she would not see the new chapter that was beginning for her son William, Louise Taft had never doubted his devoted and amiable soul.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Kingmaker and King
In this Aug. 1, 1906, Puck cartoon—“The Crown Prince”—Theodore Roosevelt wears an emperor’s garb and holds aloft his chosen successor: an infant Taft.
BY THE TIME HE RETURNED to Washington in the early winter of 1908, Taft found that the push for his nomination had “caught its second wind and straightened out for the home-stretch.” In the wake of Roosevelt’s reaffirmation that he would not run again, William Nelson of the Kansas City Star informed Taft that the state now regarded him “as its first and only choice”—a resolution in his favor had gone through “with a whoop.” Furthermore, the Colorado State Committee endorsed Taft unanimously, and a poll among likely Michigan delegates showed him trouncing the field by a two to one margin.
Buoyed by the show of widening support, Taft began to actively engage in his campaign for the first time. On the eve of a Republican State Committee meeting in West Virginia, he assured Governor William Dawson that his endorsement would be a decisive blow, clinching not only West Virginia but neighboring states as well. “If you could bring this about,” he encouraged the governor, “I shall be everlastingly grateful.” He solicited activists for information on the political climate in their regions and responded to encouraging editorials with handwritten notes, telling the publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Tribune that the “friendly tone” of a recent editorial had made his “whole day and week brighter.”
Increasingly comfortable at the podium, Taft responded to questions with “rapid-fire” retorts and “witty sallies.” Asked at Cooper Union in New York why “a blacklisted laborer” should not “be allowed an injunction as well as a boycotted capitalist,” he replied succinctly: “He should be. Were I on the bench I would give him one quickly.” Explaining his preference for capitalism over socialism, Taft wryly observed that he did not trust a governmental committee “to determine the worth” of a lawyer, doctor, carpenter or judge—unless, of course, he himself was a member of that committee. Only once did Taft’s words come back to haunt him. To the daunting question of what those unable to find work during the recession might do, he had earnestly answered, “God knows. . . . They have my deepest sympathy. It is an awful case when a man is willing to work and is put in this position.” Critics seized upon the phrase “God knows” to suggest Taft’s want of empathy for the laboring class. Nonetheless, when the long question-and-answer session came to an end, “it was the general verdict that the Secretary was entitled to the referee’s decision, and when the gong rang the crowd swarmed into the ring to grasp the victor’s hand.”
By late January, New York governor Hughes was the sole remaining candidate with a national following who could potentially challenge Taft for the Republican nomination. Taft’s supporters urged him to fight Hughes for the New York delegates, but Taft insisted that a nasty struggle in the governor’s home fort would ultimately hurt Republican chances in the fall. This decision drew praise from party leaders, but Roosevelt continued to worry that Hughes was a threat. Aware that the governor intended to deliver a major campaign speech on January 31, Roosevelt deliberately chose that same date to present a special message to Congress. The president’s words proved to be so “blistering,” so “genuinely sensational,” that they stole headlines from Hughes’s “sane and sound” address.
Roosevelt’s anger over the legislature’s persistent refusal to act on his recommendations had been mounting for weeks. When the Supreme Court ruled the 1906 Employers’ Liability Act unconstitutional in early January, the president was irate, calling it “a matter of humiliation to the Nation” that an employee who suffered an accident “through no fault of his own” would not be protected. “In no other prominent industrial country in the world,” he charged, “could such gross injustice occur.” He challenged Congress to enact a new liability law and take up his additional regulatory measures without delay. Any implication that such regulations had precipitated the recent panic was wrongheaded, he maintained; in fact, as fa
r as individual blame could be ascribed, the collapse was “due to the speculative folly and flagrant dishonesty of a few men of great wealth, who seek to shield themselves from the effects of their own wrongdoing by ascribing its results to the actions of those who have sought to put a stop to the wrongdoing.”
While critics accused Roosevelt of “prostituting his high office and the machinery of government in order to play petty and mean politics against Hughes,” the substance of his speech garnered widespread approval. “It hurls defiance at a legislature that thought in its folly that the day of Roosevelt was done,” the Denver Post observed, contending that “it appeals beyond Congress to the hearts of the American people.” The Boston Daily Globe also praised the president’s “sledgehammer eloquence,” while the Chicago Tribune rated it “one of America’s great state papers.” Even those who considered its tone incongruous with “the preconceptions of presidential dignity” acknowledged that the message had caught everyone’s attention. “It has maddened my enemies,” Roosevelt told Kermit, but “I believe it has helped Taft’s nomination.”
A New York World cartoon aptly illustrated the strategic timing of the president’s address: Hughes is pictured trying to deliver his speech while Roosevelt beats an enormous bass drum, drowning out the governor’s words. Delighted by the image, Taft wrote to the World editor and requested the original caricature. “It records something which may prove to be an epoch in the campaign,” he explained. “I should like very much to have it as a part of my memorabilia.” By spring, the president noted with satisfaction that “the Hughes boom has collapsed,” and Taft’s nomination was all but “settled.”
Still, Roosevelt continued to monitor every aspect of the campaign, counseling and comforting Taft through the inevitable vicissitudes. In March, for instance, a subordinate in his Columbus campaign office released a statement declaring that Taft would prove more acceptable to the business community than his predecessor. The statement reprinted a series of quotes from the Wall Street Journal touting Taft as deliberative and measured in his nature and training—a needful antidote to the impulsive, intemperate president. Both Taft’s temperament and his record, the Journal had suggested, boded “distinctly against any conclusion that he would continue Mr. Roosevelt’s methods.” Taft immediately repudiated the release and fired the employee, but the incident continued to disturb him. “Good heavens, you beloved individual,” Roosevelt placated him, “you’ll have any number of such experiences,” though not “as many as I have had; and, unlike you I have frequently been myself responsible!”
Far more troubling, Taft confided, was the “painful experience” of finding himself “held up to execration” as an enemy of the black race for his role as secretary of war during the Brownsville incident. From his abolitionist father, Taft had inherited a deep sympathy and support for the rights of the freed slaves. Indefatigably, he had worked in the Philippines “to oppose the color caste.” Yet regardless of his record of combating inequality, scores of traditionally Republican black leaders now considered him “a menace” and declared they would “never, never” support him. While some in Taft’s camp suggested he distance himself from the president by publicly discussing his attempt to delay the order, Taft refused; loyalty trumped political advantage. Roosevelt finally took action himself, issuing a formal statement claiming “entire responsibility for the dismissal of the negro troops” and absolving Taft of any role in the decision. As news of Roosevelt’s statement spread through the black community, resistance to Taft’s nomination dissipated. “We are satisfied,” declared the editor of a popular black newspaper, that “President Roosevelt was responsible for the discharge of the soldiers and we believe that Mr. Taft had nothing at all to do with it.”
In late spring, however, speaking at Grant’s Tomb on Decoration Day, Taft inadvertently instigated his own controversy when he referred to the Civil War general’s predilection “for strong drink,” which had forced his resignation from the Union Army. Intended as a tribute to the “wonderful resolution, strength of character, and military genius” that allowed Grant to triumph over adversity, Taft’s address sought to project a fallible exemplar for young people rather than a mythical figure, “painted as perfect without temptation.” Whatever his intention, many veterans perceived Taft’s depiction of Grant as a desecration: “I trust you will have the grace to go and hang yourself rather than attempt to belittle a nation by running for the presidency,” the commander of the New Hampshire Sons of Veterans histrionically suggested. Across the country, outraged veterans accused Taft of insulting “the mighty dead” and warned that they would not forget his “heartless” remarks on election day. When Roosevelt and Taft reconvened, the president stood “at mock attention,” solemnly exclaiming, “Viva Grant.” He advised Taft not to fret: “It is not going to hurt you. I have got the public accustomed to hearing the truth from statesmen or politicians, whichever we might be termed, without it changing the destinies of the nation.”
The president’s confidence, it seemed, was well founded; such stumbles did little to stay the momentum of Taft’s campaign. “All opposition to Taft has died down and he will be nominated easily,” Roosevelt assured a friend at the end of May. The surge of support in recent months represented “an astonishing achievement for Mr. Taft,” the Chicago Evening Post observed, affirming the candidate’s ability to evade the many snares that had beset his campaign. “We doubt whether the history of the country has ever recorded a more remarkable feat by a presidential candidate than this utter routing of each and every anti-convention attack upon him.”
ROOSEVELT’S SATISFACTION WITH THE PROGRESS of Taft’s campaign as summer arrived could not mask his chagrin that Congress had refused to act on his proposals for a second straight year. “Congress is ending, by no means in a blaze of glory,” the president complained to Whitelaw Reid, ambassador to Great Britain. The reigning conservatives in the House and Senate, he grumbled, “felt a relief that they did not try to conceal at the fact that I was not to remain as President.” While a few significant measures had passed—including a revised employer liability act and a child labor bill for the District of Columbia—the core of Roosevelt’s progressive recommendations had again been ignored. With “practical unanimity,” journalists referred to the session as the “do nothing Congress.”
In his frustration, Roosevelt failed to appreciate that conservatives were emboldened not only by his impending departure but also by the diminished power of the muckraking journalists, whose popular exposures of corporate abuse had played a collaborative role in pressuring Congress to act. Nor did the president acknowledge that his celebrated address castigating muckrakers had “crystallized” a nascent sentiment of disfavor toward the new journalism. Two years after Roosevelt’s diatribe, a survey of leading monthlies revealed a sharp decline in the fiery investigative pieces that had fueled public demand for reform. “The noon of the muckraker’s day is past,” one Iowa newspaper declared. “Look upon these magazines now,” observed the New York Times. “Read them from cover to cover. Where are the muckrakers?” Magazine publishers were acutely sensitive to capricious public sentiment, the Times concluded: “Like the manufacturers of print cloth and summer silks,” they were “prepared to offer any pattern the reader desires. We judge that quiet patterns are now in favor.”
While the country sought respite from grim catalogues of wrongdoing, members of the old McClure’s team struggled with their vacillating feelings toward Theodore Roosevelt and the Square Deal. William Allen White remained the most passionate champion of the president. Embarking on a biographical sketch of Taft for the May issue of The American Magazine, White first consulted with Roosevelt. “Don’t hold the knife edge of your balance so perfectly poised in this piece that your readers won’t see your bias,” Roosevelt had counseled him. White needed little prompting, for he had developed a genuine affection for Taft after spending several days with him on a train from Kansas City to Washington. In the weeks that followed,
the two men continued to correspond as White sought to fill in details of Taft’s career. In lengthy letters to White, Taft meticulously credited every mentor and benefactor who had helped facilitate his success. “The meanest man in the world,” he remarked, “is the man who forgets the old friends that helped him on an early day and over early difficulties.”
The resulting piece portrayed Taft as an “amiable giant,” who had triumphed through the warmth of his personality, his “prodigious capacity for hard, consecutive work,” and his judicial instinct to grapple with every issue “without resting and without fatigue until it is settled or solved.” No political figure was better suited than Taft to pursue Roosevelt’s “unfinished business,” White argued, to push nearly a dozen pending anti-trust suits through the courts, to resolve the imperfections in recently enacted epoch-making laws. “The times demand not a man bearing promises of new things,” White concluded, “but a man who can finish the things begun . . . who, with a steady hand, and a heart always kind and a mind always generously just, can clean off the desk.” The piece delighted Roosevelt. “It would be impossible to get two men of fairly strong character and fairly marked individuality who would agree more closely,” he responded to White, “unless it is either one of us and Taft!”
Ida Tarbell had long shared White’s fascination with Roosevelt, though she found his pugnacity and relish for war distasteful. “I wabble terribly whenever I see him face to face,” she confessed to Baker. “He seems so amazing.” She had genuinely exulted in his crusade against the trusts, sharing his conviction that the government had a right and a duty to regulate corporations “for the sake of democracy.” Roosevelt was “in the right,” she insisted; “corporations exist not for themselves, but for the people.” As Tarbell immersed herself in the tariff issue, however, she began to suspect that the president was a “less amazing” figure than she had initially imagined. Having envisioned Roosevelt as “the St. George” who would marshal popular support for downward tariff revision after the 1907 Panic, she was sorely disappointed by his unwillingness to risk Republican Party unity. Still, Tarbell remained a proponent of the Square Deal, trusting that investigation, legislation, regulation, and judicial proceedings could right the wrongs of the industrial world.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 77