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

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  “The outcome of the Payn contest is a complete vindication of the governor’s way of accomplishing results,” Steffens’s Commercial Advertiser declared. “Could the governor have accomplished any more than he has if he had declared open war on the organization?” The Evening Post remained dissatisfied. Although Hendricks’s appointment promised an “honest administration of the Insurance Department,” the Post declared, the governor should have selected his own man “without consulting the organization, and he could thus have dealt the Republican machine such a blow as it has never suffered. The moral courage of the Governor at Albany was not equal to the physical courage of the Colonel before Santiago.”

  Roosevelt’s stormy relationship with Senator Platt troubled him far less than the perpetual hail of invective from fellow reformers. “Could they assail such a man more viciously and persistently than they have assailed him?” the Commercial Advertiser queried in his defense. “Are they not making it possible for the politicians to say: ‘We gave the reformers a governor who secured reforms and who would not do what we wished him to do: they fell upon him because he did not get reforms in their way, not because he did not get reforms.’ Why not simply choose one of our own machine men from here on in? They surely won’t attack him more fiercely than they have Roosevelt.”

  Even as he excoriated “the dogs of the Evening Post” for their attacks, Roosevelt preserved his friendship with the Post’s longtime editorial writer, Joseph Bucklin Bishop. “I value you too much to go into recrimination,” he wrote to Bishop in the wake of another derogatory Post editorial. “Now, I have a proposal to make. Wouldn’t you like to come up here and meet some of the ‘wild beasts’?” During his weekends in New York, Roosevelt encouraged Bishop to visit at Bamie’s Madison Avenue town house so they could air their disagreements. “I will explain to you the merits of the police bill, if it passes,” he suggested, “and you shall explain to me its demerits, if it fails.” Their lively correspondence mollified rancor that might have hardened into lasting hostility. After being quoted that he was uncertain which he regarded “with the most unaffected dread—the machine politician or the fool reformer,” Roosevelt hastily assured Bishop that he was “emphatically not one of the ‘fool reformers.’ ”

  In late 1899, after sixteen years at the Post, Bishop made the wrenching decision to leave the newspaper. His standing there had deteriorated after he declined to follow “positive orders to suppress the truth” concerning Roosevelt’s accomplishments. “The policy of the Evening Post,” he was informed, “is to break down Roosevelt.” Consequently, Roosevelt was thrilled when Bishop joined Steffens at the Commercial Advertiser. “You are about fourteen different kinds of a trump,” Roosevelt told him. “I thank Heaven for the Advertiser continually.” With both Bishop and Steffens writing for the well-regarded paper, Roosevelt now had two advocates who might promote vital support among the practical reformers.

  In the months that followed, the friendship between Bishop and Roosevelt deepened. Roosevelt sought Bishop’s advice on speeches, appointments, and legislation. He invited him to stay overnight in the governor’s mansion, met with him regularly over meals in Manhattan, and exchanged letters two or three times a week. “Good Lord, what an interesting correspondence we have had at times!” Roosevelt remarked. Their friendship remained strong even when Bishop publicly disagreed with the governor and told his readers why. “I need not tell you that no criticism of yours can alter in the least my affectionate regard for you,” Roosevelt assured Bishop. “You have shown yourself a friend indeed, and above all, when you differ I know you differ because you honestly think you must.”

  Roosevelt’s ability to countenance criticism in the interest of friendship also marked his relationship with the humorist Finley Peter Dunne. Dunne’s weekly columns in the Chicago Times-Herald, featuring his adopted persona, the irreverent Irish bartender Martin Dooley, placed him among the nation’s most popular and influential literary figures. Dunne later recalled that his “first acquaintance with Col. Roosevelt grew, strangely enough, out of an article that was by no means friendly to him.” In the fall of 1899, a copy of The Rough Riders, Roosevelt’s wartime memoir, came across Dunne’s desk. “Mr. Dooley’s” book review in Harper’s Weekly mocked Roosevelt’s propensity for placing himself at the center of all the action: “Tis Th’ Biography iv a Hero be Wan who Knows. Tis Th’ Darin’ Exploits iv a Brave Man be an Actual Eye Witness,” Mr. Dooley observes. “If I was him, I’d call th’ book, ‘Alone in Cubia.’ ” Three days after this satirical assessment amused readers across the country, Roosevelt wrote to Dunne: “I regret to state that my family and intimate friends are delighted with your review of my book. Now I think you owe me one; and I shall exact that when you next come east you pay me a visit. I have long wanted the chance of making your acquaintance.”

  “I shall be very happy to call on you the next time I go to New York,” Dunne replied. “At the same time the way you took Mr. Dooley is a little discouraging. The number of persons who are worthwhile firing at is so small that as a matter of business I must regret the loss of one of them. Still if in losing a target I have, perhaps, gained a friend I am in after all.” The humorist never had to make the choice he feared; he continued to lampoon the nation’s premier target without losing Roosevelt’s friendship. “I never knew a man with a keener humor or one who could take a joke on himself with better grace,” Dunne recalled. For years, Roosevelt told and retold the story of meeting a charming young lady at a reception: “Oh, Governor,” she said, “I’ve read everything you ever wrote.” “Really! What book did you like best?” “Why that one, you know, Alone in Cuba.”

  IN JUNE 1900, AS ROOSEVELT’S first term as governor began to wind down, Lincoln Steffens wrote a lengthy political analysis for McClure’s. He described Roosevelt’s tenure as “an experiment”—a test to determine whether a leader could serve both the party machine and the good of the state, whether he could simultaneously maintain his ideals and get things done. Steffens vividly depicted the fights over the insurance commissioner and the franchise tax, both of which ended in Roosevelt victories. It remained unclear, however, whether the Roosevelt experiment itself would succeed. Despite an ostensible truce between the governor and Boss Platt, wrote Steffens, “the organization doesn’t like Mr. Roosevelt as Governor, neither does ‘Lou’ Payn, neither do the corporations. The corporations cannot come out openly to fight him; they have simply served notice on the organization that if he is renominated they will not contribute to campaign funds.”

  Publicly to deny the popular governor a second term would cast the organization in a starkly negative light. The “obvious solution,” Steffens predicted, “would be to promote” Roosevelt to “the most dignified and harmless position in the gift of his country”—the vice presidency. “Then everybody could say, ‘We told you so,’ for both the theorists and the politicians have said that it is impossible in practical politics to be honest and successful too.” This astute piece, together with several of Steffens’s previous articles on Roosevelt, initially attracted Sam McClure’s attention. “Your TR article is a jim-dandy,” McClure told Steffens, resolving then and there to bring him from the Commercial Advertiser to his own publication. “I could read a whole magazine of this kind of material. It is a rattling good article.”

  Roosevelt first became aware of Platt’s unwelcome “solution” in late January 1900, when three high-ranking representatives from the Republican National Committee came to Albany. They cautioned that he “would be tempting Providence to try for two terms” as governor, emphasizing the near certainty that he would “hopelessly” lower his standing “with either the independents or the party men” before a second term was out. Only “great luck,” they claimed, had enabled him to get by thus far “without cutting [his] own throat.” On the other hand, the vice-presidential nomination was a fait accompli if he decided within the next few weeks. Disconcerted by the drift of the conversation, Roosevelt informed the committeeme
n that he had absolutely no interest in the position. The vice presidency, he told Platt the next day, is “not an office in which a man who is still vigorous and not past middle life has much chance of doing anything. As you know, I am of an active nature.” He had “thoroughly enjoyed being Governor” and strongly desired a second term. “As Governor,” Roosevelt added, “I can achieve something, but as Vice-President I should achieve nothing.”

  Henry Cabot Lodge questioned Roosevelt’s rationale, concurring with the committeemen that his friend was “tempting Providence” by remaining in New York. He would be wiser to accept the political haven of the vice presidency, “the true stepping stone . . . either toward the Presidency or the Governor Generalship of the Philippines.” Roosevelt conceded that “in New York with the republican party shading on the one hand into corrupt politicians, and on the other hand, into a group of impracticables . . . the task of getting results is one of incredible difficulty, and the danger of being wrecked very great.” Nevertheless, this very challenge rendered the work both more important and absorbing. He could not bear to be a mere “figurehead,” with no other task than presiding over the Senate.

  Moreover, he confided to Lodge, “the money question is a serious one with me.” As governor, he made $10,000 a year and was “comparatively well paid, having not only a salary but a house which is practically kept up all winter.” Between the remnant of his inheritance and the few expenses in Albany, he had been able to save money for the first time in years. For Edith, perpetually worried about family finances, this stability was a great “comfort,” especially since their older children would soon start private school. The vice president’s salary was $2,000 less and no house was provided. Furthermore, the Roosevelts would be expected to entertain as lavishly as their predecessors, men frequently selected based on their resources and affinity for the social side of the office. Even if his family lived simply, Roosevelt concluded, the position “would be a serious drain” for him, causing both him and his wife “continual anxiety.”

  In addition, Roosevelt did not perceive the vice presidency as a likely avenue to the White House; a student of history, he was well aware that over sixty years had passed since a sitting vice president had been elected to the presidency. His chances in 1904 would be far better if he served as governor of the most populous state in the Union than if he languished in “oblivion” as vice president.

  Despite these objections, Roosevelt reasoned, “if the Vice-Presidency led to the Governor Generalship of the Philippines, then the question would be entirely altered.” That post was the one he desired above all others, even a second gubernatorial term. From the moment the United States acquired the islands as a provision of the treaty in 1899 ending the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt had coveted the job of creating a new government in a Philippines free of Spanish tyranny. The vigorously paternal leadership he envisioned would “prove to the islanders that [his country] intended not merely to treat them well, but to give them a constantly increasing measure of self-government” until they could “stand alone as a nation.”

  During the acrimonious Senate debate over ratification of the peace treaty, Roosevelt had expressed nothing but contempt for anti-imperialists who justly argued that acquisition of the Philippines would signal “a violent departure from the established traditions and principles of our republic.” They are “little better than traitors,” Roosevelt flatly told Lodge, while his public rhetoric made the alternatives stridently clear. “We shall be branded with the steel of clinging shame if we leave the Philippines to fall into a welter of bloody anarchy,” he proclaimed, “instead of taking hold of them and governing them with righteousness and justice, in the interests of their own people even more than in the interests of ours.”

  Serving as the civilian leader on the islands “would not be pleasant,” Roosevelt told Maria Storer, “for I should have to cut myself off from my family,” who would surely not relocate to the war-torn Philippines. Yet he considered the task “emphatically worth doing” and was increasingly convinced that “the chief pleasure really worth having for any man is the doing well of some work that ought to be done.” Moreover, Roosevelt’s evolving doctrine of sacrifice and satisfaction applied to nations as well as individuals. In a widely quoted speech delivered in Chicago in April 1900, he insisted that “if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and win for themselves the domination of the world. . . . It is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.”

  McKinley had assured Lodge that Roosevelt was “the ideal man to be the first pioneer Governor” but explained that the appointment would not be made until American troops stationed in the Philippines suppressed the native uprising that had followed the treaty. Known as the Philippine Insurrection, that conflict had erupted when the Filipinos learned, after decades of fighting for independence, that they had been betrayed into exchanging the rule of Spain for American occupation. With 35,000 additional troops authorized by Congress, Roosevelt projected that within two years the rebellion would be crushed, a necessary step before the United States could execute its avowedly beneficent intentions. As governor of New York, he would be free to instantly resign and assume the pioneering post, whereas he would be irreversibly “planted” in the vice presidency for four years. Although he hated to counter Lodge’s judgment on a matter of such importance, Roosevelt decided to “declare decisively” that he did not want the post of vice president.

  Lodge reluctantly accepted Roosevelt’s decision but warned that if he attended the Republican Convention in June, continued refusal in the face of popular clamor for his nomination would damage his future prospects. “There are lots of good men who are strongly for you now who will not like it,” Lodge cautioned. Though Roosevelt acknowledged his friend’s admonitions, he was constitutionally incapable of forgoing involvement. He allowed himself to be chosen as one of four delegates-at-large from New York and made plans to bring Edith, Corinne, and her husband, Douglas, to Philadelphia.

  Three weeks before the convention opened, Judge Alton Brooks Parker was a guest of the Roosevelts at the governor’s mansion. Over dinner, Edith expressed her excitement over her first national convention. “You will have the most wonderful time of your life,” Judge Parker promised. “You will see almost all the Republican Senators and Members of Congress, many of them with brilliant careers in the public service. And . . . you will see your handsome husband come in and bedlam will at once break loose, and he will receive such a demonstration of applause from the thousands of delegates and guests as no one else will receive. . . . Then, some two or three days later, you will see your husband unanimously nominated for the office of Vice-President.”

  “You disagreeable thing,” Edith interrupted. “I don’t want to see him nominated for the vice-presidency.” Parker, who regarded Edith highly, instantly regretted his words when he saw how “very anxious” she was that his “prophecy should not come true.” For Edith, the vice presidency foretold only burdensome expenses and a stilted social life filled with formal receptions and idle chatter. Most important, she and Theodore had had more time together in the gubernatorial mansion than they had in years. She was by his side when he made his rounds to local fairs and Pioneer picnics. “I really think she enjoyed it as much as I did,” Roosevelt proudly reported to Lodge after an eight-day stretch of “the county fair business.” Sagamore Hill beckoned when the legislature adjourned in summer and was close enough to Albany to provide a romantic escape, even in the fall.

  Judge Parker joined the Roosevelts at another dinner party a few days after his disconcerting conversation with Edith. “You gave my wife a bad quarter of an hour the other night,” Roosevelt told him. “Did you mean all you said to her?” Parker replied that he meant “every word,” adding that Roosevelt’s only possibility of evading the vice-pres
idential nod was to avoid Philadelphia altogether and deliver elsewhere a categorical refusal of the nomination.

  By the time the convention opened in late June, Roosevelt was no longer certain how to proceed. As he pondered his future, his doubts grew: even if he secured the gubernatorial nomination for a second term, there was at least “an even chance” that he would be beaten. And even if he did win, he could easily “come a cropper” with any subsequent misstep that would signal “in all probability the end of any outside ambition.” Nevertheless, he continued to prefer the hazardous pursuit of a second term to being buried alive in the vice presidency.

  The moment Roosevelt arrived in Philadelphia, the stampede for his nomination began—just as Lodge and Judge Parker had predicted. Entering the crowded lobby of the Hotel Walton around 6 p.m., he was met by “vociferous applause” and thunderous cries of “Teddy, Teddy, Teddy.” When the raucous crowd launched into a chorus of “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” journalists noted, “Roosevelt blushed, doffed his hat and bowed his acknowledgments as he recognized the tune played after his charge up San Juan Hill.”

  He had scarcely finished breakfast the following morning, the New York Tribune reported, when “he had reason to suspect that something of importance affecting his political fortunes had happened in the course of the night”: one state delegation after another “invaded” his room, announcing that he was their unanimous choice for vice president. Throughout the western states, where Roosevelt was regarded as one of their own, the enthusiasm was overwhelming. Corinne was with her brother when the Kansas delegation arrived. “Round and round the room they went,” she recalled, chanting, “We want Teddy, We want Teddy, We want Teddy,” to the accompaniment of “fife, drum and bugle.” Similar demonstrations of support came from California, Colorado, the Dakotas, and Nevada.