After another conversation at the Outlook office two days later, Baker told Roosevelt that his words on the tariff lacked his “usual moral punch,” that he “would have stood higher with the country” if he had fought against the tariff plank. “He took it all in very good part,” Baker wrote, considering this ability to endure criticism “one of his finest characteristics.” Nevertheless, the reporter was beginning to believe that Roosevelt would ultimately fail in his attempt to play “the old game” of serving “both party & principle.” The tide was simply moving too fast for someone “trying to be both radical & conservative.”
As summer turned to fall, Roosevelt spent his days and nights on the campaign trail, trying to keep the Republican Party unified for the midterm elections. He stumped for both progressives and conservatives—for Beveridge in Indiana, then Henry Cabot Lodge in Massachusetts. He traveled first to Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas, and then to Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa. “I am being nearly worked to death,” he admitted to Bamie in early October. “I only hope I can last until election day.” In mid-October, he returned to his native state for the final push. Rallying huge audiences, his charismatic self had become the central issue of the campaign, leaving Henry Stimson in his shadow.
As the election neared, Republican prospects across the country darkened. After more than a decade of Republican rule, the people were frustrated by the cost of living, tired of high tariffs, and resentful of machine politics. When Democrats won an “unprecedented” victory in the October state elections in Maine, commentators predicted the midterms would result in a Democratic landslide.
“If Mr. Roosevelt can save New York while neighboring States are captured by the opposition,” the Springfield Republican declared, “his own national leadership and influence will take on a finality unapproached even in his own career.” If he triumphs, the New York Times agreed, “it will be practically impossible to prevent his seizing the nomination to the Presidency in 1912.”
REPUBLICANS HAD EXPECTED TO LOSE ground during the midterm elections, but when the votes were totaled on November 8, the strength of the Democratic victory “stunned Washington.” Democrats gained control of the House by a margin of nearly 60 votes, reduced the Republican majority in the Senate by ten seats, and elevated Democratic governors to power in twenty-six of the forty-eight states. In New Jersey, former university president Woodrow Wilson vanquished Republican Vivian Lewis by one of the widest margins in the state’s history. In New York, the entire state ticket lost, including Henry Stimson and his own congressman, Charles Cocks. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, Democrats Simeon Baldwin and Eugene Foss easily trounced their opponents. In Ohio, Democrat Judson Harmon handily defeated Warren Harding. “The Democratic party in November of 1910,” one historian has observed, “stood rehabilitated in the eyes of the country.”
Despite the clear national trend, journalists interpreted the New York result as a “crushing rebuke” to Theodore Roosevelt. Had he kept his initial vow of silence after returning from Africa, one commentator observed, “defeat would have come to his party but a great cry for him as the only compeller of victory would have been heard.” Instead, he had alienated the Old Guard at Saratoga, assumed personal control of the state party, and thrown his full weight behind the losing candidate, Henry Stimson. With the thrashing he took on his home turf, the New York Times declared, Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism has been pitched into its grave.” And beyond New York, there seemed “to be a fatal quality in his endorsement,” one editorial observed, for “nearly every man whom he lauded in different parts of the country has been defeated,” while the men he “singled out for vituperation” were “triumphantly elected.”
Sensing blood, Roosevelt’s opponents moved in for the kill. “The trail that Mr. Roosevelt has traveled for the last ten weeks can be traced by the battered wrecks of Republican hopes,” declared the New York World. This “tremendous overthrow,” proclaimed the New York Herald, “makes complete the defeat of his plans to make himself the next nominee for the Presidency and places upon a man once President a humiliation such as has never before been known by any one who has essayed the role of national leader of his party.” Theodore Roosevelt, the New York Evening Post editorialized, is seen as “the chief architect of disaster. He has demonstrated that there are thousands of Republicans who will not vote for him or his nominees or his novel doctrines.”
Roosevelt acknowledged that he had experienced “a smashing defeat” in New York, with troubling reverberations across the land. He recognized that he had lost support on all sides of the political spectrum: progressives claimed he had not been radical enough; conservatives charged he was too radical. Westerners condemned his failure to break with the administration, while easterners berated his unwillingness to endorse Taft. The time had come, he understood, for a new leader, “one who has aroused less envenomed hatred,” to take up the causes he had championed. “The American people,” he reluctantly admitted to William Allen White, “feel a little tired of me.”
The decisive routing and overwhelming negative press hit the proud former president hard. On the weekend after the election, the journalist Mark Sullivan called on Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill. When Sullivan rose to leave after a good talk, Roosevelt pleaded: “Don’t go. The time will come when only a few friends like you will come out to see me here.” Roosevelt was still “in a most depressed state of mind” when Lloyd Griscom stopped by weeks later. “All his old buoyancy was gone,” Griscom related to Archie Butt. “He really seemed to him to be a changed man.” Regardless of his falling-out with Roosevelt, Taft was deeply affected when Archie shared Griscom’s description of Roosevelt’s isolation at Oyster Bay. “The American people are strange in their attitudes toward their idols,” he mused. They lead them on and then “cut their legs from under them,” simply “to make their fall all the greater.” Given their former intimacy, he understood how hard it must be for Roosevelt “to feel everything slipping away from him, all the popularity, the power which he loved, and above all the ability to do what he thought was of real benefit to his country.”
As president and head of the Republican Party, Taft was, of course, more responsible than anyone else for the magnitude of the Republican loss. “It was not only a landslide,” he acknowledged, “but a tidal wave and holocaust all rolled into one general cataclysm.” As early as the previous January, he had predicted that the “whole drift” of public sentiment was turning toward the Democrats. “Sooner or later I fear we have got to turn the government over to this element and let it demonstrate its incapacity to govern the country,” he reflected, believing that only then would Republicans come back into power. When everyone in his inner circle “took a whack at the Colonel,” placing all the blame “for the national disaster” on him, Taft cut the conversation short. “Roosevelt did not help the ticket very much,” he said, “but I am inclined to think that even had he remained in Africa the result would have been the same.”
Three days after the election, Taft headed for Panama to monitor progress on the building of the Canal. “The warmth of the tropics is in our veins again,” Archie noted with delight. The balmy climate led Taft to express a similar release from anxiety: “What difference does it make to a man how Ohio went, when he can look at this scene and feel its warmth? Oh how it takes me back to the Philippines!” At every meal during the trip, Taft told nostalgic anecdotes of his time as governor general. “It is always back to the Philippines he likes to go when he reminisces,” Archie observed. “The scenes which he pictures” and the events he describes “seem more real than any of the more recent years here in Washington.”
While Taft was away, Roosevelt visited Washington to give a speech about his African safari to the National Geographic Society, inspect the collection of specimens he had sent to the Smithsonian, and meet with old friends. Though he knew the first lady was in New York, he stopped at the White House to pay his respects and leave his calling card. Greeted affectionately by the servants a
nd employees, all of whose names he remembered, he expressed enthusiastic approval of the significant renovations Taft had made to the West Wing.
To accommodate the increased White House staff—which now numbered thirty clerks, in addition to the regular cadre of messengers and security guards—Congress had approved a budget of $40,000 to double the office space from six to twelve rooms. Positioned directly “in the center of the new addition” was a handsome new oval-shaped office for the president, replacing what had been a “severe rectangular room.” As the former president entered the new Oval Office, he was informed that he was standing on what had been the site of the tennis court, where he and his playmates had spent many happy hours. “Oh, yes,” he said wistfully, “the old tennis court.”
The shared sense of loss created by the midterm rout engendered a brief period of rapprochement between Roosevelt and Taft. At Archie Butt’s urging, Taft wrote to Roosevelt in November 1910, expressing his regret that he had missed his friend’s visit to Washington. If he were coming back for the Gridiron Dinner, he added, “it would gratify me very much if you would come to the White House and stay with me.” Roosevelt replied with more warmth than he had shown since his return. “You are a trump to ask me to come to the White House, and I should accept at once if I were going to the Gridiron dinner. But I am not going; I have repeatedly refused.” Even while declining the invitation, Roosevelt proceeded to ask Taft about Panama and share his concerns about the California legislature, which was about to pass anti-Japanese legislation.
Taft wrote back the next day detailing the progress on the Canal, which was scheduled for completion in July 1913, at which time both of them would be “private citizens,” able to go together to see the work begun by one and finished by the other. Roosevelt replied appreciatively, “I have always felt that the one thing for which I deserved most credit in my entire Administration was my action in seizing the psychological moment to get complete control of Panama. Incidentally, it was one of the things for which I was most attacked.” And Taft wrote yet again, sending an advance copy of his annual message and letting Roosevelt know that he had discussed the California situation with his cabinet. “I have read your Message with great interest,” Roosevelt replied. “There is nothing for me to say save in the way of agreement and commendation.”
This cordial exchange of letters continued through the winter. “I see signs of the clouds which have been hanging over the President and Colonel Roosevelt breaking up,” Archie happily observed, knowing that he was responsible for many small gestures that had helped to smooth “the rough edges.” On Christmas Day, he showed the president a mahogany settee in the Red Room which Edith Roosevelt had purchased for the White House during her husband’s first year as president. Sentimentally attached to the sofa because her children had “kneeled on it to look at the circus parades passing up and down Pennsylvania Avenue,” Edith had hoped to take it with her to Sagamore Hill. A government bureaucrat summarily denied her request on the ground that it belonged to the White House. Hearing the story from Archie, Taft had the old sofa shipped to Oyster Bay as a New Year’s gift, along with a letter, telling Edith he had purchased a substitute, thus making her old sofa his “to bestow by exchange.” Both Theodore and Edith were touched by the thoughtful act. If the small sofa “brings the two families closer together,” Archie remarked with his unerring emotional intelligence, “then it will indeed be worth preserving in a museum.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Like a War Horse”
In the winter of 1911, Ray Stannard Baker observed that Roosevelt seemed poised to fight for a third term, “like a war horse beginning to sniff the air of distant battles.”
WHILE TAFT AND ROOSEVELT RETREATED to nurse their wounds, Senator La Follette and his dedicated band of insurgents pressed their advantage, confident in their vision for the future of the Republican Party. In states where radicals controlled the nominating slates and platforms, William Allen White pointed out, Republicans had triumphed; in conservative states “where they compromised and pow-wowed and pussy-footed,” Republicans had met defeat. “I cannot get Roosevelt to see this,” White lamented. “He thinks compromise is the only thing and he is going to be everlastingly crucified by the American people unless he gets this compromise idea out of his head.”
On January 21, 1911, La Follette hosted a gathering of progressive leaders at his Washington home. In the prior weeks he had called for the formation of a new organization that would redeem the party and restore popular rule long subverted by the special interests that controlled caucuses, nominating conventions, and the Republican Party organization. The National Progressive League promised to fight for a series of propositions: direct elections of U.S. senators; direct primaries to replace party caucuses; direct election of delegates to the party’s national convention; and state constitutional amendments to provide for the initiative, referendum, and recall. The charter membership was impressive—“nine U.S. Senators, six governors and thirteen Congressmen.” Nearly every leading progressive spokesman had signed on, including James Garfield, Gifford Pinchot, Louis Brandeis, Ray Baker, and William Allen White. The creation of the national organization spurred numerous states to set up their own Progressive Leagues.
In short order, a Progressive Federation of Publicists and Editors was founded. Its membership list, the New York Times remarked, was like “a roll call” of muckraker journalists, including S. S. McClure, Norman Hapgood, George Kibbe Turner, and Lincoln Steffens. La Follette was particularly thrilled to have the support of Lincoln Steffens. After leaving The American, the journalist had embarked on a series of disparate projects, among them a study of Boston’s city government generously financed by the progressive merchant Edward Filene. A leader of the Good Government Association, Filene had engaged Steffens as “a sort of pathologist” to analyze the historic roots of Boston’s corruption. During the two years Steffens lived on Beacon Hill, he had remained in close touch with La Follette. Their correspondence reveals an intimate friendship, different in kind from the mutually advantageous relationship Steffens had forged with Roosevelt. “I am hungry to see you,” La Follette had written after a short absence. “How soon can you come to Washington and stay with us for a week?”
Despite their comprehensive reform agenda, the Washington press interpreted the activities of the National Progressive League as “an anti-Taft movement,” designed to boost La Follette’s prospects for the presidential nomination. “Nothing,” the Springfield Republican agreed, “could be more reasonable than the supposition that the League will be in the thick of the fight over the Republican presidential nomination of 1912.” Observers claimed that La Follette now had “a much larger following in the West than Roosevelt” and that he would be the “decided beneficiary if the Progressive League takes root and advances its schemes for direct nominations and popular government.”
Before the inaugural meeting of the National Progressive League, La Follette had tried to enlist Roosevelt as a charter member. “Now, Colonel,” La Follette had asked, “can’t you consistently give this movement the benefit of your great name and influence?” The two men had never become friends. La Follette considered Roosevelt an opportunist who adapted his positions to accommodate public sentiment, while Roosevelt regarded the Wisconsin senator as “an extremist,” with a “touch of fanaticism.” Yet at this juncture, both men recognized the value of a show of cordiality. “That is a mighty nice letter of yours,” Roosevelt replied, “and I appreciate it to the full.” He heartily agreed with the league propositions, the Colonel told La Follette, though he considered them “merely a means and not an end.” Nothing in the charter spoke of the economic issues he cared most deeply about—corporate control, the regulation of wealth, or the working conditions of the laboring man. Nevertheless, he intended to give the league his full support, not by joining but by endorsing its principles in The Outlook. After the midterm fiasco, he was “very anxious not to seem to take part prominently in any poli
tical movement.”
ON MARCH 8, 1911, THEODORE Roosevelt embarked on a six-week train trip through the South and the Southwest that he presumed would be his last extensive speaking tour. He dreaded the daily grind of ceremonies, speeches, and dinners, worrying how he would be received. To friends and family members, Roosevelt claimed he did “not care a rap” about the “fairly universal” criticism directed toward him. “Such a revulsion was bound to come,” he said. “The present feeling may wear itself out, or it may not. If it does, and I regain any influence and can use it to good purpose, I shall be glad; and if it does not, I shall be exceedingly happy here in my own home and doing my own work.” In any case, he would proceed with his tour, honoring commitments made shortly after his return from Africa.
To Roosevelt’s amazed delight, he was met everywhere with crowds as immense and adoring as any he had ever encountered. Eight thousand cheering spectators filled the Armory in Atlanta; 30,000 greeted him in Tacoma, Washington; and the applause from the Minnesota legislature was “as uproarious as in the days of yore.” Though he appeared “heavier and slightly grayer,” correspondents marveled at his continued ability to withstand rigorous days “without the slightest sign of tiring and without once deviating from the spirit of utmost good humor.” Cities vied with one another to honor him. In Spokane, “all traffic was suspended; streetcars were stopped,” and “every window, curbstone, cornice and even lofty roofs held their quota of cheering admirers.” The Commercial Club in Portland was transformed into an African jungle, complete with live monkeys, parrots, and cockatoos. In Arizona, he formally dedicated the Roosevelt Dam, marking the completion of the immense reclamation project begun during his presidency. “If there could be any monument which would appeal to any man, surely it is this,” he declared. “And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the honor.”
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 94