LATE THAT SUMMER, COLONEL ROOSEVELT boarded a private railroad car secured by The Outlook to begin a three-week speaking tour through sixteen states, including Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota. As he headed west for his first public appearances since returning from Africa, one political question was on everyone’s mind: “On which side will the Colonel now align himself? What changes have taken place in his philosophy?” A resounding answer came on August 31, in Osawatomie, Kansas, as Roosevelt spoke at a ceremony dedicating the John Brown Memorial Park. The festive occasion, which brought more than 30,000 people, resembled that of “a county fair,” with fireworks, a drum and fife corps, vendor booths, and food stands. Climbing onto a kitchen table that doubled as a speaking platform, Roosevelt delivered the most radical speech he had ever made, placing him ipso facto in “the front rank” of the insurgent forces. Entitled “The New Nationalism,” the speech had gone through several drafts, with language and ideas provided by Gifford Pinchot, William Allen White, and The New Republic editor Herbert Croly, whose recent book, The Promise of American Life, had attracted Roosevelt’s attention.
“The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage,” Roosevelt proclaimed. Such an approach, he explained, “regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property.” While he still stood for “the square deal,” he now recognized that “fair play under the present rules of the game” was not enough; the rules themselves had to be “changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.”
For this generation, Roosevelt maintained, “the struggle for freedom” demanded a fight for popular rule against the special interests. Though “every special interest is entitled to justice,” he declared, “not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office.” To drive these “special interests out of politics,” he called for the direct primary and for laws forbidding corporations from directly funding political objectives. “Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered—not gambling in stocks,” Roosevelt further contended, calling for both an income tax and an inheritance tax on large fortunes. Finally, he pressed for new laws regulating child labor and women’s work, enforcing better working conditions, and providing vocational training. “No matter how honest and decent we are in our private lives,” he concluded, “if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation.”
As the crowd thundered its approval, Kansas governor Walter S. Stubbs jumped on the table. “My friends,” he exclaimed, “we have just heard one of the greatest pronouncements for human welfare ever made. This is one of the big moments in the history of the United States!” Seated amid the emotional crowd, Gifford Pinchot was overjoyed, later declaring to Roosevelt that he was “the leader to whom all look.” Headlines in progressive papers trumpeted Roosevelt’s “Advanced Insurgent Stand,” suggesting that the insurgent movement would now be “materially strengthened.” During the remainder of his western tour, Roosevelt was repeatedly greeted with “frenzied applause” and “overpowering demonstrations of affection and devotion.” No man in the present generation, one reporter suggested, “has ever been honored with so magnificent a tribute.”
Whereas westerners ecstatically embraced Roosevelt’s new radical stance, easterners reacted with “consternation and horror.” The New York Sun called the New Nationalism doctrine “more nearly revolutionary than anything that ever proceeded from the lips of any American who has held high office in our Government.” Conservative commentators warned against “this new Napoleon,” who threatened to destroy the constitutional separation of powers. Steering clear of such incendiary labels, moderate and even some liberal Republicans criticized Roosevelt for making only “slight mention” of the president during his strenuous tour, regarding “his silence” as a “most adroit form of attack,” ultimately designed to diminish Taft and raise his own prospects for 1912.
Reading reports of Roosevelt’s speeches, Taft was genuinely disturbed. “He is going quite beyond anything that he advocated when he was in the White House,” he told his brother Charley, “and has proposed a program which it is absolutely impossible to carry out except by a revision of the Federal Constitution. He has attacked the Supreme Court which came like a bolt out of a clear sky, and which has aroused great indignation throughout the country on the part of conservatives.” Writing in a similar vein to Horace, he reported that Roosevelt’s “wild ideas” had “frightened every lawyer” and startled every decent “conservative” in the East. Horace was saddened to see lines being drawn that positioned his brother “on the other side of the fence” from moderate progressives, making it seem as if he were defending the Old Guard and expounding the “kind of politics” he had always fought against. While Taft’s positions had not materially changed since his days as a cabinet officer, Horace worried that many “good men fighting against machine politics” now regarded him as a member of the opposition.
Taft believed that with each “riotous reception” Roosevelt received, “his reasons for thinking I would not do as a candidate in 1912” had multiplied. “His present mental condition,” he told Horace, “rejects me entirely and I think he occupies his leisure time in finding reasons why he is justified in not supporting me.” He had heard from several sources, he told Charley, that Roosevelt was still angry over the fact that “I dared to include you in the same class with him as assisting me in my canvass for the presidency. I venture to think that swell-headedness could go no further than this.” Gossipmongers exacerbated Taft’s concerns, reporting letters they had seen in which Roosevelt described him as utterly unfit for the presidency, suggesting that he must be challenged for the nomination.
Archie Butt watched and worried as Taft’s bitterness toward his predecessor grew; loyal to both men, Archie found the prospect of an open rupture heartbreaking. Taft sympathized with his aide’s dilemma, observing, “I know how it distresses you, Archie, to see Theodore and myself come to the parting of the ways.” Recognizing that it pained Archie to listen to conversations critical of Roosevelt, Taft greatly admired the “dignified silence” he maintained. “Your silence will never be misconstrued by me,” Taft promised. With each passing month, he had come to rely more and more on Archie. “He told me,” Archie recorded in September, “that he always loved to see me come and hated to see me go.” Archie’s reflections make clear that this feeling was reciprocated. “In many ways,” Archie wrote, “he is the best man I have ever known, too honest for the Presidency, possibly, and possibly too good-natured or too trusting or too something on which it is hard just now for a contemporary to put his finger, but on which the finger of the historian of our politics will be placed.”
Nellie, too, had grown increasingly dependent on Archie Butt. Though she had learned to communicate her thoughts and make her wishes known to family members, she remained incapable of conducting “a connected conversation with strangers.” When the British ambassador and his wife called on the president and first lady, Butt served as “the buffer” between Nellie and Mrs. Bryce, enabling the flow of conversation whenever Nellie came “to a standstill.” During a garden party when she “became separated” from the president, Butt again came to her rescue; being on her own, she told her son Robert, “was pretty awful,” until Archie escorted her back to the mansion. After a series of fainting spells, Nellie’s doctor advised her to reduce the rigorous schedule of musicales and garden parties she had planned for the 1910 social season. She refused, preferring, he interpreted, “to die in harness” rather than “remain in the background as an invalid.” Assessing the full social schedule planned for the coming winter and spring, Helen Taft decided to assist her mother at the White House rather than return to Bryn Mawr in the fall.
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sp; Within the family circle, Nellie became less anxious about her inability to articulate her thoughts. On the contrary, she tended to blurt out whatever came to her mind without the restraint she had characteristically exercised. During a luncheon conversation, for example, she suddenly mentioned Mabel Boardman, head of the American Red Cross and a longtime family friend. Speaking with excessive emphasis, she told her husband he would never marry Miss Boardman. If he became a widower, she predicted, he would desire “something young and prettier.”
Unsurprisingly, much of the first family’s conversation in the months following Roosevelt’s return centered on divining what he might do. After reading an account of Roosevelt’s opposition to Ballinger, Nellie offered a prescient comment to her husband: “I suppose you will have to fight Mr. Roosevelt for the nomination, and if you get it he will defeat you. But it can’t be helped. If possible you must not allow him to defeat you for the renomination. It does not make much difference about the reelection.” Taft agreed with Nellie’s assessment, surmising early on that Roosevelt would indeed challenge him in 1912. Numerous newspapers suggested that he should “step out of the way” for the former president, but he believed that “having once been nominated and elected,” he was under obligation to his supporters to run for renomination—even if he faced certain defeat, which he would accept “like a gentleman.”
RETURNING FROM HIS WESTERN TOUR in early September, Roosevelt had only two weeks to prepare for battle against Sherman and the Republican bosses at the state convention. The state party was “on the Eve of one of the bitterest factional fights” in a generation, and Roosevelt’s contest with Sherman for the temporary chair stood at the center of the proceedings. The great underlying issue, Boss William Barnes declared, is “whether the Republican Party is to remain the party of conservatism or be carried away with radicalism.”
Roosevelt felt that the conflict was beneath him. “Twenty years ago I should not have minded the fight in the least,” he told Lodge. “It would have been entirely suitable for my age and standing. But it is not the kind of fight into which an ex-President should be required to go.” Nonetheless, he confessed, “I could not help myself.” Lloyd Griscom admitted to Roosevelt that he was having trouble rounding up votes for him among “good honest” party loyalists, who sympathized with his opposition to the bosses but were upset with his seeming hostility toward the president. A meeting with Taft to demonstrate they were “on good terms,” Griscom advised, would be helpful. Roosevelt readily agreed, recognizing that a show of unity might “turn the scale” in a contest as close as this promised to be.
Griscom arranged a luncheon in New Haven, where Taft was attending a meeting of the Yale Corporation. After a general conversation with Griscom and Taft’s newly appointed private secretary, Charles Norton, Taft and Roosevelt were left alone. Roosevelt later said he “made a point of being as pleasant as possible,” but Taft saw beneath the mask, later divulging to Archie that he felt Roosevelt was “not genial and quite offish.” Taft recognized immediately that Roosevelt was strategically waiting to bring up the New York situation so he could later claim that the president “had spoken first.” His calculation worked. As the meeting drew to a close, Taft volunteered that he hoped Roosevelt would beat the bosses and was glad to offer his assistance.
Unlike Taft, his secretary was willing to engage in the political game, creating what Roosevelt considered a “very irritating experience.” Norton, “a little too slick for genuine wisdom,” told the newspapermen that the Colonel had requested the meeting to stave off trouble in New York and needed the president’s backing. Roosevelt’s opponents jumped on the story as a signal that he was worried about his chances at the convention. At once, Roosevelt put out a statement “emphatically” denying that he had sought the meeting or asked anything of Taft. At Roosevelt’s bidding, Griscom followed up with a statement declaring that the meeting was his idea. Regardless of these attempts to reformulate the story, Roosevelt complained to Lodge, a general perception remained that he had come “to beg for assistance”—for this, he blamed Taft as well as Norton. As a result, Archie Butt lamented, Roosevelt and Taft grew “farther apart than ever.”
The auditorium at the Saratoga town hall was jammed with 7,000 men and women on September 27 when Roosevelt came down the aisle. His appearance provoked a round of “riotous cheers” as delegates and spectators “shrieked and yelled and waved their hats and bonnets.” When Vice President Sherman arrived shortly afterward, “the scene was repeated,” setting the stage for a divisive public battle. The Old Guard had selected Colonel Abraham Gruber, “a little roly-poly” man, to deliver the attack against Roosevelt. Unable to make his way through the crowd, Gruber was “practically lifted over the heads of the army of humans and passed up to the platform.” Labeling Roosevelt “an enemy of the nation” and a threat to “public safety,” Gruber’s mean-spirited diatribe provoked such deafening “catcalls” that he could not continue until Roosevelt jumped up, shouting, “I ask a full hearing for Col. Gruber.”
Roosevelt’s supporters were anxious when the balloting began, but he emerged victorious, receiving 567 votes against Sherman’s 445. In a conciliatory speech intended to unify Republicans, Roosevelt listed the accomplishments of the last Congress, giving credit to Republican lawmakers and “to our able, upright, and distinguished Pres. William Howard Taft.” Once installed as temporary chair, Roosevelt mustered the votes to get his fellow progressive Henry Stimson the nomination for governor and to pass a fairly progressive platform, including a plank calling for direct primaries. Parts of the platform disturbed him—including the endorsement of Taft in 1912 and approval of the tariff—but he believed that he had come out as well as possible.
While Roosevelt was at Saratoga, Taft was hosting a four-day sleepover for the members of his cabinet at the White House. Having spent the summer in Beverly, the president wanted to catch up on each department’s work and make plans for his annual message. “The house party has been a great success,” he reported to Nellie. “We have had a jolly time on the one hand, and we have been very hard working on the other.” Normally, the unique situation of a cabinet house party would have attracted considerable newspaper attention, but all eyes—including those of the president and his cabinet—were directed to Saratoga and Roosevelt’s fight against the Old Guard. “Bulletins were brought to the President as they arrived,” Archie reported, and everyone “spent most of the day hearing and discussing the news from New York.” On the day the platform was approved, Taft wrote to Nellie in Beverly, commenting, “I hope you saw the proceedings of the Saratoga Convention and the very satisfactory resolutions endorsing your husband. Roosevelt made a speech praising me also, which must have gone a little hard with him, but which indicated that he found it necessary.” Overall, Taft’s White House party was a distinct success, as evinced by a gracious note that George Wickersham wrote to Nellie: “We had a delicious table and nothing was lacking but the actual presence of its mistress to make the White House a perfect place of abode. It was a charming idea of the President to invite the Cabinet to stay there with him. It has served to draw us more together and to unite us absolutely in an enthusiastic love and admiration of our Chief.”
Taft’s surmise that necessity, not desire, had compelled both Roosevelt’s speech and his acceptance of the tariff plank proved correct. Throughout his long career, Roosevelt had accepted the need for compromise. Though unhappy about the tariff plank, he believed he “should have lost everything” had he demanded its elimination. Hard-line insurgents fiercely disagreed with Roosevelt’s flexibility. Gifford Pinchot refused to back the ticket, considering endorsement of the tariff offensive and objecting to Roosevelt’s characterization of Taft as upright. Roosevelt fired back at progressive ideologues, defending Taft’s honor even while questioning his leadership. “I think it absurd to say that Taft is not upright,” though he may be a failed leader. To complaints by William Kent, a Republican congressman from California, that Stimso
n “was not radical enough,” Roosevelt countered: “Among all men who are prominent here, Harry Stimson is the only man who is anywhere near as radical as I am.” In a letter to his son Theodore Junior, Roosevelt poured out his frustrations: on the one hand, he pointed out, the traditional elements of the Republican Party—club members, big business, and Wall Street—“have been nearly insane over me.” Yet, at the same time, “the wild-eyed radicals do not support us because they think we have not gone far enough. I am really sorry to say that good Gifford Pinchot has practically taken his place among the latter,” he noted, finally recognizing the rigidity of Pinchot’s views.
A week after the convention, Roosevelt reconnected with Ray Baker, inviting him to lunch at Oyster Bay. “I had one of the freest talks with him I ever had,” Baker recorded in his journal. “Much of our talk covered the Saratoga fight. I told him frankly that I had thought that a defeat there on the platform would have been better for him than an organization victory.” Appealing to Baker as “a reasonable exponent of the extreme left wing of the party,” Roosevelt defended his actions and “spoke exultantly” of Stimson’s candidacy. When the discussion turned to Taft, he made it clear that “they had wholly parted company,” fixating again on the letter Taft had written after his election, thanking both Charley and himself in equal measure! His pride clearly wounded, he proceeded to describe the humiliating reports that followed his meeting with Taft in New Haven. “It happened once: but never again! Never again!” When Baker asked if he intended to be a candidate in 1912, he answered frankly, “I don’t know.” At the present, he maintained that he was “not seeking a nomination,” but “circumstances might force me to be a candidate.”
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 93
