Mid-June—as Democrats prepared to leave for their convention in San Francisco, the first such event in the West—Carter Glass stopped by the executive offices. Dr. Grayson confided to him the President’s latest scheme—that he would run for office solely to continue his fight for the Covenant and would resign upon its adoption. Grayson begged Glass “to do all possible to guard against such an untoward development.” He told Grayson bluntly that he did not think the convention could be induced to nominate a man in the President’s disabled condition, and that even if he were in robust health, the Democrats, to say nothing of the nation, did not seem prepared to overcome their antipathy to a third term.
Three days later, Glass met the Wilsons for tea on the South Portico of the White House. The Senator expressed regret that the President was “not in physical form to lead a great fight for the League of Nations,” for the people might very well suppress their third-term aversion if things were otherwise. Neither of the Wilsons responded. Glass reengaged them when he said that he would “rather follow the President’s corpse through a campaign than the live bodies of some of the men mentioned for the nomination.” Wilson liked that, and they discussed the current contenders. The President dismissed every possibility with a backhanded compliment at best—most especially a run by Ohio’s able and affable Governor, James M. Cox, whose candidacy, he said, would be “a fake.”
“There is no man who can devise plans with more inspiration, or put them into operation with more vigor, than can Mac,” Wilson had said of his son-in-law, for whom he always felt that twinge of distrust that any boss feels for a man who marries his daughter; “but I never caught Mac reflecting.” The President admitted he might be wrong, but he thought that very quality “to be essential to a successful and wise administration in the near future.” McAdoo had announced just the day before that he “would not seek the nomination for the Presidency,” but as Wilson and Glass realized, McAdoo had never said he would not accept it.
Grayson accompanied Glass to the train, telling him as he parted for the convention, “If anything comes up, save the life and fame of this great man from the juggling of false friends.” The doctor explained that he had served three Presidents and not one had been ready to relinquish the office. To a second party operative, Robert W. Woolley, Grayson detailed Wilson’s physical condition, reiterating that he must not be nominated. “No matter what others may tell you,” he insisted, “no matter what you may read about the President being on the road to recovery, I tell you that he is permanently ill physically, is gradually weakening mentally and can’t recover. He couldn’t possibly survive the campaign.” Wilson had indeed enjoyed weeklong periods of improvement, during which he transacted business with Tumulty, but setbacks ensued, usually depressions. “Cary,” Woolley said, “the name of the President will receive many an ovation, his desire as to the platform will prevail, in other ways will he be honored, but his ambition to succeed himself is definitely hopeless.” Said Grayson, “We must not take any chances.”
Ten thousand Democrats—men and women—filled San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium on June 28, 1920. Even before the speeches—when the keynoter would be paying homage to the President and his principles—the convention got off to a boisterous start. An enormous flag rose above the rostrum, and the appearance of a gigantic likeness of the President whipped the crowd into a frenzy. When a spotlight illuminated this portrait, the delegates paraded through the aisles and around the arena. All hell broke loose—except within one large area. After seven years of Wilson’s Presidency, Tammany Hall and Wall Street still had not embraced him, and the New York delegation sat silent and still during this storm of adulation. Some among them expressed the fear that the parade would incite a stampede for a third term. After a few minutes, a few pro-Wilson New Yorkers could sit on their hands no longer. A fistfight broke out, and the thirty-eight-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy—six-foot-two-inch Franklin Roosevelt—grabbed the state’s standard from the hands of a Tammany man and joined in the parade, taking a few delegates from the Empire State along.
The convention had no decided frontrunner, though Wilson’s son-in-law felt like an emotional favorite. In Washington, the President appeared indifferent, but as one ballot followed another with no candidate emerging, Wilson took increasing interest in the press reports that came over the in-house telegraph wire. He began to suffer from insomnia, asthma, and anxiety. By July 3, Governor Cox had a measurable lead over McAdoo, with Palmer a distant third. After sixteen ballots, the convention deadlocked. Grayson went to his patient’s room at three o’clock that morning to deliver the latest tallies. Wilson said nothing, except that he believed Cox was “the weakest of the lot.” Almost simultaneously, Bainbridge Colby, in a spur-of-the-moment gesture of loyalty to the President, sent him a telegram from San Francisco explaining that amid all the competition, the “outstanding characteristic of the convention is the unanimity and fervor of feeling for you.” After monitoring the situation closely, he said an opportunity had arrived in which to move for a suspension of the rules and nominate the President by acclamation. To Colby’s surprise, Wilson assented.
Colby was caught in a political riptide. The party insiders closed ranks to sink the President’s plans—all feeling it would result in defeat, some knowing it might mean his death. They forced a chagrined Colby to send another telegram to the President, this time rescinding his plan—explaining that Democratic leaders did not command votes sufficient either to set aside the convention rules or to nominate him and that such a public display would only injure the party’s chances in the upcoming election—as well as any hope left for the League. Wilson accepted the decision, though he suspected misconduct, especially when he heard that Burleson was supporting McAdoo and that there was serious talk among the California and New York delegations of running Bainbridge Colby.
Between the thirtieth and thirty-eighth ballots, McAdoo and Cox ran neck and neck, the former leading by a nose; but on the next roll call, Palmer, a distant third, released his delegates, and Cox pulled ahead. On the forty-third ballot he received a majority of the votes, and on the next vote the rest of the delegates jumped on the bandwagon. In November, the genial Governor of Ohio would run against his junior Senator, Warren G. Harding, whom the Republicans had nominated weeks earlier. Harding’s running mate would be the Massachusetts Governor who had shut down Boston’s police strike, Calvin Coolidge. Cox would run with the fervent New Yorker who had grabbed the state standard during the opening parade—Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wilson sent congratulatory telegrams to each of the men on the Democratic ticket with “cordial” best wishes. Back in the White House, devoted stenographer Swem watched the President’s moods all week. He believed Wilson had preferred Cox over McAdoo— “solely out of jealousy toward McAdoo.” Either way, there was no doubt in Swem’s mind the President was “a bitter man” over the Cox nomination—“not that he disliked Cox but because he didn’t get it himself.”
Upon the Cabinet’s return to Washington, Ike Hoover observed that “they met with a cold reception from the President.” A few of them earned their way back into his good graces, but he showed only the most obligatory interest in the campaign, or much else. One late morning, while Wilson was eating his crackers and milk on the South Portico, a breathless Tumulty ran up the steps waving a piece of paper. Once the butler had taken his leave, he blurted, “Governor, we’ve got ’em beat! Here is a paper which . . . is absolutely true, showing that Harding has negro blood in him. This country will never stand for that!” While Tumulty raved, Wilson quietly sipped his milk. “Even if that is so,” the President said, “it will never be used with my consent. We cannot go into a man’s genealogy; we must base our campaign on principles, not on backstairs gossip. That is not only right but good politics. So I insist you kill any such proposal.”
At 10:30 on July 18, 1920, a warm Sunday morning, Cox and Roosevelt arrived at the White House for the President’s ble
ssing. They had to wait until the President had been wheeled to the South Portico. After fifteen minutes, the guests were shown outside; and, as they approached the man in the wheelchair—his left shoulder covered with a shawl to conceal his paralyzed arm—Cox murmured, “He is a very sick man.”
Cox warmly greeted the President, who, in a low and weak voice, thanked the two men for coming. His frailty brought tears to Cox’s eyes. But Wilson revived when he spoke of the campaign ahead, as he briefed the two hopefuls with substantial details and humorous anecdotes. He referred the nominees to the information about Harding’s ancestry and was pleased to see they concurred with his decision to squelch it. When the conversation turned to the main topic, Cox assured his host, “Mr. President, we are going to be a million percent with you, and your Administration, and that means the League of Nations.” Wilson looked up and said in a barely audible voice, “I am very grateful. I am very grateful.”
After close to an hour, the aspirants left the President for the executive offices to prepare statements for the press. As Roosevelt recalled, Cox just sat down at a table, asked Tumulty for paper and pencil, summoned his skills as a former newspaperman, and wrote a release committing the ticket to making the League “the paramount issue of the campaign.” Franklin Roosevelt said, “It was one of the most impressive scenes I have ever witnessed.”
The men returned to the President for lunch, where Mrs. Wilson, Dr. Grayson, Tumulty, and Carter Glass joined them. Wilson quickly realized that he had misjudged the quality of Cox’s character, and he commented that he thought Cox would find the White House a comfortable home. The guests left by way of the White House’s basement, where stenographer Swem handed them the President’s statement, which assured Cox of “an absolutely united party and . . . an absolutely united nation.” Confident that he would be serving alongside the next Commander in Chief, Roosevelt announced his resignation from the Navy Department. On his way out, Cox told Tumulty that “no experience of his life had ever touched him so deeply” as meeting the President. “No man could talk to President Wilson about the League of Nations and not become a crusader on its behalf,” he said.
Cox and Roosevelt waged an aggressive three-month campaign. There was little the President could do beyond offering a public statement or two, which he did. On September 16, political terrorists bombed Wall Street, killing thirty-eight people and injuring four hundred, making it the deadliest act of terrorism the nation had witnessed. Wilson privately opined that a Republican victory would result in “the most terrible industrial situation in this country,” which would create a breeding ground for Bolshevism. In launching his campaign, Harding attacked Wilson’s earlier position on the Panama Canal, which had exempted the United States from certain tolls. Off the record, Wilson referred to Harding as shallow and voluble, dismissing him as “nothing.”
On October 3, the President stated that the election had become a national referendum on the League. He asked his fellow Americans why they should “be afraid of responsibilities which we are qualified to sustain and which the whole of our history has constituted a promise to the world we would sustain.” Wilson said every nation awaited the November verdict. He was completely confident of the outcome.
The President had spent part of Election Day engaged in physical therapy—struggling with a cane to mount a few low steps. When he paused for news, he learned that Cox was trailing badly. There would be no late-night wait for results. The earliest returns foretold a landslide. Before dawn it was plain that the entire country had gone Republican, except the South—which, for the first time since Reconstruction, was not “solid.” A fugitive Tennessee gave Harding thirty-seven states to Cox’s eleven, an electoral count of 404 to 127. The popular vote of 16.1 million to 9.1 million (60.3 percent to 34.1 percent) marked the widest popular-vote margin in a century. Even Democratic stronghold New York City went for Harding. More than 900,000 people voted defiantly for the Socialist candidate, Eugene V. Debs, who ran from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. The Congressional results slapped Wilson in the face as well, yielding a Senate with fifty-nine Republicans and thirty-seven Democrats and an even more lopsided House, with its majority of 302 to 131. The victors were only too happy to embrace Wilson’s premise that the election had been a referendum on his League.
Wilson admitted his disappointment to Tumulty, predicting a period of isolation that would translate into a loss of business, ultimately producing a depression.
When Tumulty suggested the Democratic loss might prove a blessing in the long run, Wilson rebuked him. “I am not thinking of the partisan side of this thing,” he said. “It is the country and its future that I am thinking about. We had a chance to gain the leadership of the world. We have lost it, and soon we will be witnessing the tragedy of it all.” Of Harding’s victory, he could only wonder, “How can he lead when he does not know where he is going?” The day after the election, the Wilsons took their automobile ride through Washington, as though nothing had happened. In fact, Stockton Axson found his brother-in-law as serene that day as in the moments of his prior victories. “I have not lost faith in the American people,” Wilson said. “They have merely been temporarily deceived. They will realize their error in a little while.”
Secret Service agent Starling, who had tracked Wilson since 1914, observed that the election had, strangely, made the President more cheerful. He could enjoy his own new freedom, as the Congress would virtually shut down until Inauguration Day, leaving Wilson only a few ceremonial duties.
An unsettling sense of purposelessness quickly replaced joy, and Wilson’s feelings darkened with the approach of winter. “I hobble from one part of the house to the other and go through the motions of working every morning,” he wrote daughter Jessie, “though I am afraid it is work that doesn’t count very much.” Foreign affairs always demanded attention, but the President followed a policy of noninterference as much as possible. He feared the new party in power might take the United States into the League but “in such a niggardly fashion” as to proceed “from prejudice and self-interest and a desire to play a lone hand and think first and only of the United States,” thereby robbing the nation of dignity and influence. Dr. Grayson confirmed that Wilson’s physical health improved after the election, but his nerves were on edge. “He takes it less easily, does not make light of it or joke as he did,” Grayson said. “He more easily loses control of himself & when he talks is likely to break down & weep.” Wilson’s temper shortened. He barked at nurses, threatening to throw them all out; and he periodically did the same to Grayson, whom he summoned regularly in the middle of the night, whether something was wrong or not. He was in a near-constant state of irritation.
Nothing soothed him more than movies, and the daily matinees became essential to his well-being. One of Edith’s brothers regularly brought the President copies of the latest photoplay magazines, which he studied intently, looking for films he wished to order for the coming weeks. At the end of November, they had viewed all the available Westerns, melodramas, and love stories, and they requested the Signal Corps documentary footage of his trip to Europe.
Ray Baker was there that day, and he watched the White House ushers lift the heavy red rug of the main hall and lay it aside as the sixty-three-year-old President lumbered toward him, his left arm hanging, his left leg dragging. His eyes reflected the liveliness of his mind, but Baker shook hands with a broken man—stooped, gray-faced, and white-haired. Together they walked into the East Room. The President, Mrs. Wilson, Dr. Grayson, and Baker sat quietly in the dark as the projector from Douglas Fairbanks threw flickering images onto the screen of that extraordinary week less than two years ago, when Woodrow Wilson—tall and hale and waving his hat to the enraptured throngs—was known as “the Savior of the World.” There he was sailing into the harbor at Brest . . . arriving in Paris . . . leaving Buckingham Palace . . . and everywhere flags waved and hundreds of thousands of people tossed roses and exude
d so much adulation, one could almost hear their cheers emanate from the silent screen. Periodically, Wilson would comment on the scene before them, in a lifeless voice. When these glorious pictures came to an end, the audience found itself in a dim cavern of stark reality. Several attendants went to the chair of the President, who sat hunched and silent. One placed a foot against his, to brace him as he stood. Without saying another word, Wilson shuffled out of the room, to the rhythm of his cane tapping against the marble floor.
With limited energy, Wilson worked on one important document during this period, his last State of the Union message. He surely would have wished to make a final appearance before Congress, to solidify the tradition he had reestablished; but volatile as his emotions were, it was best that he did not deliver the address in person, as his appearance would surely have provoked an ovation from which he might not have recomposed himself. On Monday, December 6, 1920, the Congressional leadership came to the White House to notify the President formally that Congress had reconvened. The two Senators and three Representatives waited in the Blue Room; and as the President entered, aided by his cane, he immediately noticed Henry Cabot Lodge and said, “Gentlemen, I hope you will excuse me from going through the formality of shaking hands with you individually, but, as you see, I cannot yet dispense with my third leg.” Wilson stood close enough to Senate Minority Leader Underwood to whisper, “I used the excuse of this ‘third leg,’ as I did not want to shake hands with Lodge.” The two Democrats chuckled, and then Wilson announced that he would transmit his message to the Congress the next day. When the legislators had left, Wilson could not resist saying to Grayson, “Can you imagine what kind of a hide Lodge has got, coming up here in these circumstances and wanting to appear familiar and talk with me?”
A far cry from 1913, when Woodrow Wilson made his first dramatic appearances before joint sessions of Congress, a clerk in each chamber read the annual message as Senators and Representatives followed along reading printed copies. Except for a sentence of Abraham Lincoln’s—“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it”—and a few Wilsonian phrases, the text lacked luster. It perfunctorily urged revision of tax laws, care for the economy, and increased veterans’ benefits; and he further recommended a loan to Armenia and the independence of the Philippines. It made no mention of the Treaty, but it did ask the lawmakers to remember the purity and spiritual power of democracy: “It is surely the manifest destiny of the United States,” he said, “to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail.”
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