The American Vice Presidency

by Jules Witcover

  In domestic matters, McKinley depended more and more on Hobart’s counsel in the administration. In 1898, he brought John Griggs, the man Hobart had helped elect to the governorship of New Jersey, into the cabinet as attorney general. The vice president also became a political emissary to the Republican bosses in New Jersey and New York. But the year also brought hardship to the Hobarts. Late in the year, he was found to have a serious heart ailment, and by April 1899 speculation began on whether he would be up to a strenuous reelection campaign in 1900. Hanna insisted to reporters that in light of his appreciated service, “nothing but death or an earthquake can stop the renomination of Vice President Hobart.”35

  McKinley’s reliance on him was seen again when the president, averse to unpleasant personal encounters, asked him to call on Secretary of War Russell Alger to resign in the wake of heavy criticism of mismanaging the war with Spain. Alger was a close Hobart friend, but the vice president got Alger to step down amid press speculation that Hobart had personally added a financial sweetener to achieve the desired end.36 The New York Sun reported that Alger’s resignation had come as a result of Hobart’s “crystal insight” and “velvet tact.” The vice president, severely ailing, had his wife compose a wire to McKinley: “My ‘crystal insight’ is still clear but the nap is slightly worn off my velvet tact vide the New York Sun.”37

  Hobart’s health continued to lag, and in August allegations surfaced that he was involved in a plot to gain control of New York City’s water franchise that would require payment of five million dollars a year, nearly twice that being currently paid, to a fake firm without the ability to deliver the water. The New York Times charged that the scandal led “to the political threshold of the administration itself” and that “every rascal in the job, be he near the President, be he in the Senate Chamber, or be he a third-rate Tammany hack, must have his Constitutional chance to show he is not guilty.”38 A state investigating committee issued a host of subpoenas but none to Hobart, and eventually the investigation died out without further implicating him.

  In early November, in seclusion in Paterson with his health further ebbing, Hobart announced his retirement from all his business connections, adding that he would not be returning to Washington. On November 21, Hobart died with fifteen months remaining in his vice presidential term, having attained perhaps greater utility, if not recognition, in the post than any of its previous holders since Van Buren. At the same time, Hobart’s continued engagement in private business affairs was a caution to future occupants of the second office. An obvious requisite of any successful vice president was commitment to the agenda of the president above all else, and Hobart seemed often to have had a dual focus that cast a shadow over an otherwise constructive tenure in the office.

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  OF NEW YORK

  The death of Vice President “Gus” Hobart fifteen months before the end of his term required President William McKinley to start looking for another running mate in his expected pursuit of a second term in 1900. An unusual political circumstance in the state of New York and in its internal intrigues brought one of the most dynamic occupants to the vice presidency up to this time, but he was a man who neither yet wanted nor sought the office—the governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt. He served in it only seven months, but that period was a prelude to one of the nation’s most vibrant presidencies.

  The uncommon condition that set Roosevelt’s course to becoming president-in-waiting, and shortly afterward to the presidency itself, was the concern of Senator Thomas Platt, New York’s Republican leader, that Roosevelt’s independence and willpower would erode Platt’s influence in the political domain over which he ruled. Roosevelt had attained the governorship only after an agreement with Platt to consult with him on major appointments and in general to pay proper homage to the man known in the Empire State as “the easy boss” of the party machine. While Roosevelt adhered to that arrangement, his forceful and exuberant nature led Platt to determine that his own life would be better off with a new governor in Albany. And he concluded that his purpose would be conveniently served by having Roosevelt in effect kicked upstairs to the second office in the land.

  In a letter to his closest political friend, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, during his first years as governor, Roosevelt wrote, “I have found out one reason why Senator Platt wants me nominated for the Vice-Presidency. He is, I am convinced, genuinely friendly, and indeed I think I may say, really fond of me, and is personally satisfied with the way I have conducted politics; but the big money men with whom he is in close touch and whose campaign contributions have certainly been no inconsiderable factor in his strength, have been pressing him very strongly to get me put in the Vice-Presidency so as to get me out of the state.”1

  Roosevelt, enjoying immensely the executive power he was wielding as governor of the country’s most important state, did not consider that proposed office a step up for him. He was well aware of its reputation as a political dead end and its usual minimal utility by the president. While it was true that McKinley had brought Hobart into his inner circle as few of his predecessors ever had done with their vice presidents, Roosevelt had no reason to surmise with his own reputation for power wielding that he would be given similar deference were he to become McKinley’s second vice president.

  There was a certain irony in the situation wherein a distinctly political hack like Platt would be instrumental in the fortunes of a man of aristocratic birth like Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore was the grandson of Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, one of New York’s first real-estate scions and millionaires and the namesake son of a prominent philanthropist. In a rare self-deprecating assessment of himself upon his father’s death at only age forty-six, Roosevelt said, “I often feel badly that such a wonderful man as Father should have had a son of so little worth as I am.”2

  Young Theodore Roosevelt, although still a student at Harvard at the time and nothing yet on his résumé to contradict that appraisal, had grounds to expect a successful career ahead, if not particularly in politics. Born into family wealth to the home of Theodore Senior and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt on Manhattan’s fashionable east side on October 27, 1858, he suffered from the start from debilitating asthma. But under the prodding and guidance of his father, he eventually overcame the affliction through rigorous exercise and sheer determination. He later recalled that Theodore Senior had pointedly told him at the age of twelve, “You have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot get as far as it should. You must make your body.”3 The boy responded conscientiously, throwing himself into more than just body-building calisthenics and boxing. He also embraced the outdoor life, including hiking and hunting, which became a core of his physical being thereafter, along with a fascination with all aspects of wildlife.

  While at Harvard, Teddy, known in the family then as “Teedie,” met Alice Lee, a vivacious seventeen-year-old, of Chestnut Hill, outside Boston, and immediately set his cap for her. After a two-year courtship and a final bachelor’s adventure out west with younger brother, Elliot, he and Alice were married in late October 1880, and after a brief and isolated stay at the Roosevelt summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, they moved to midtown Manhattan. The groom entered Columbia Law School and began writing a history of the War of 1812, demonstrating his determination to lead a multifaceted life that continued throughout his days.

  Young Roosevelt also explored political engagement for the first time, amid family reservations. Roosevelt himself was wary of entering politics as a sole occupation. “I did not then, and I do not now believe,” he wrote later, “that any man should ever attempt to make politics his only career. It is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend on his staying in office.”4

  Considering his own “bringing-up and convictions,” he wrote that the Republican Party was his only recourse, and it was “treated as a private corporation.” Nevertheless
, when he first asked around among colleagues how to proceed, he said, he was told, “Politics were ‘low’;… the organizations were not controlled by ‘gentlemen’;… I would find them run by saloon-keepers, horse-car conductors.” Describing his response, he wrote, “I answered that if this were so it merely meant that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class … and that I intended to be one of the governing class; that if they proved to be too hard-bit for me I supposed I would have to quit, but that I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough and tumble.”5

  After a break for a belated honeymoon trip to Europe, during which he left his wife behind for a few days as he climbed the Matterhorn, Roosevelt left law school, entered the political wars as a candidate in 1882, and was nominated and elected to the New York State Assembly three times in what was known as a “silk stocking” district. But in February 1844, family matters rushed to the fore, first in joy with the birth of his first daughter, which was quickly and grimly followed with the death of his mother of typhoid fever and then of his wife, Alice, of Bright’s disease. This vital and vibrant man wrote in his diary the night of his wife’s death: “The light has gone out of my life.”6 And later in a private memorial: “When my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever.”7

  Already somewhat of an insomniac, Roosevelt turned to work to fill the daily hours of grief, returning to Albany to immerse himself as best he could in his legislative duties. He commuted regularly between Albany, where he navigated a series of bills through the Assembly, and his Manhattan district, and in April 1884 he attended the state Republican Party convention in Utica.

  But these political matters could not drive off the personal sorrow that gripped him. He never publicly mentioned his wife again and, seeking refuge, he left his infant daughter, who also was named Alice but was called Baby Lee, in the care of his maiden sister and headed for the Badlands of the Dakota Territory. There he bought a shack on a site for a small cattle ranch and toured the territory on horseback, later finding a more suitable locale for his planned spread. After a brief and apparently uncomfortable visit in New York with the baby and his family, he retreated again to his ranch and life as a cowboy. He drove his own cattle, hunted, and supervised the construction of Elkhorn Ranch, on the Little Missouri River, all the while building his strength in keeping with his father’s instruction to fashion a body that was the match of his mind.

  Gradually his zest for politics returned and along with it romance. Two years after the death of his first wife, he became secretly engaged to Edith Crowe, a friend of his sister Corinne. In 1886, he was nominated for mayor of New York but ran a poor third, and shortly after the election he and Edith embarked by Cunard liner for England, where they were married in the presence of the bride’s mother and sister, living in London. After a fifteen-week honeymoon tour of England, France, and Italy, the couple returned to New York, where Roosevelt learned his ranch had been hit hard by a bitter winter. Yet he credited his cowboy experience later with hardening him for the many difficult days that would lie ahead of him.

  When the Republican Benjamin Harrison sought the presidency against Grover Cleveland in 1888, Roosevelt undertook a speaking tour for Harrison in key midwestern states. Afterward, his friend Lodge interceded directly with the victorious Harrison for Roosevelt, who hoped to be appointed an assistant secretary of state. But the new secretary, James Blaine, balked, and Roosevelt, at age thirty, was instead named a Civil Service commissioner at the annual salary of thirty-five hundred dollars.8 Reform under the Pendleton Act of 1883 was close to his heart, and he plunged into the task with customary zest. He embarked on a housecleaning tour of post offices that confirmed Roosevelt meant business, and he was reappointed in 1892.

  In 1895, Roosevelt became the police commissioner of New York City and the head of the Police Board. Almost at once he fired the chief of police of the notoriously corrupt force and one of its most brutal inspectors, taking dead aim at saloon keepers who routinely violated the city’s prohibition of intoxicating liquor sales on the Sabbath. Personally undertaking nighttime raids across the city, Roosevelt laid down the law to his precinct police officers to close down any establishments serving alcohol between midnight Saturday and midnight Sunday. “No matter if you think the law is a bad one; you must see that your men carry out your orders to the letter,” he told them. “If it proves impossible to enforce it, it will only be after the experiment of breaking many a captain of the police.”9

  By the end of June 1895, 97 percent of the city’s saloons were closed down on Sunday, in the face of loud complaints from the Democratic organization against a law that Roosevelt said “was intended to be the most potent weapon in keeping the saloons subservient allies to Tammany Hall.” The controversy put Roosevelt’s name on every lip in New York, whether wet or dry.

  When prominent New York reporter Jacob Riis observed that the police commissioner had his eye on the presidency, Riis put the question directly to Roosevelt, who responded angrily, “Don’t you dare ask me that! Don’t you put such ideas into my head. No friend of mine would ever say a thing like that.” Then Roosevelt put his arm over Riis’s shoulder and told him he must never “remind a man at work on a political job that he may be President. It almost always kills him politically. He loses his nerve; he can’t do his work; he gives up the very traits that are making him a possibility.” After a pause, he continued, “I must be wanting to be President. Every young man does. But I won’t let myself think of it; I must not, because if I do, I will begin to work for it, I’ll be careful, calculating, cautious in word and act, and so—I’ll beat myself.”10

  If Roosevelt did not yet let himself think about the presidency, he clearly did muse at this time about getting back on the federal track. In 1896 he arranged an interview with Mark Hanna, chief political adviser to Governor William McKinley of Ohio, the Republican presidential nominee. He offered to campaign vigorously for McKinley in the fall, a most welcome offer to Hanna, whose plan was to have McKinley conduct a front-porch campaign from his home in Canton. With the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan, already lighting up the West with his emotional speech decrying the gold standard, in which he referred to the crucifixion of mankind on a cross of gold, Hanna put Roosevelt on Bryan’s trail. He whistle-stopped across Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and the prairies, refuting the Bryan message with his own gruff and pointed pitch in support of gold—an aristocratic easterner with the Wild West swagger of a rugged cattle rancher.11

  When McKinley was easily elected over Bryan, Roosevelt had reason to expect that his hope to be named an assistant secretary of the navy would soon follow. But apparent concerns of McKinley that Roosevelt might be a loose cannon and political hesitation by the New York Republican boss Tom Platt held up the appointment for a time, until Roosevelt met with Platt. The party boss said thereafter that Roosevelt “would probably do less damage to the [party] organization” in that federal position in Washington than mucking about in New York.12

  Roosevelt was a good fit for the navy post, having written a well-received book on the War of 1812 right out of Harvard and maintaining a keen interest in naval affairs thereafter. He advocated an expansion of the American fleet in Pacific and Caribbean waters to deal with real or potential naval threats from Spain. Revolution in Cuba against its Spanish ruler had broken out in early 1895, with strong sympathies in the United States for the insurgents. The fighting in Cuba eventually had deleterious economic consequences for American commerce with that country, which Spain regarded as indisputably part of its empire. The situation coincided with growing American sentiments for expansionism, which Roosevelt saw as a need for a stronger navy.

  As the Cuban insurrection dragged on through 1897, McKinley sent a message to Madrid in mid-September saying the fighting on the island had brought “upon the United States a degree of injury and suffering which can not longer be ignored.�
� He called on Spain to “put a stop to this destructive war” with an honorable settlement.13 Madrid decided to give Cuba autonomy, followed by amnesty to political prisoners and the release of any Americans in Cuban jails. But Spain as a sovereign power would continue controlling military and foreign policy in Cuba. This response was a far cry from the American objective, which was independence for the island. Madrid warned that any foreign interference “would lead to an intervention which any nation possessing any self-respect would have to repel by force.”14

  Spain’s autonomy plan went into effect on January 1, 1898, but protest riots led many in the U.S. Congress to agitate for recognition of Cuban independence. The McKinley administration sent the American navy on winter maneuvers in the Caribbean, and the battleship Maine was at Key West awaiting orders. In what appeared to be a conciliatory diplomatic gesture, the ship was sent into Havana Harbor, but on the night of February 16, the ship suddenly was destroyed in a huge explosion. Not waiting for the findings of a court of inquiry, Roosevelt fired off his belief that the ship “was sunk by an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards.”15 The Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers jumped to the same conclusion, and their circulations soared.

  Roosevelt by now had alerted Navy Secretary John Davis Long that in the event of armed conflict he intended to resign his desk job and join the fight. He told the head of the New York National Guard he wanted to be commissioned to lead a regiment, citing three years’ service in the state militia and acting “as sheriff in the cow country” in the Dakota Badlands.16