Theodore Rex (74 page)

“MR. PRESIDENT, I HAVE THE HONOR TO PRESENT …”
Mark Hanna and members of the Republican National Committee, 11 December 1903
(photo credit 19.1)

Roosevelt was overjoyed. This boded well for a favorable decision in the spring. In other good news, Nicaragua became the first Latin American nation to recognize Panama.
All the world’s major powers had already done so except Britain and Japan, and their announcements were due at any moment.

Further presents crammed his presidential stocking. The Senate voted for Cuban reciprocity, 57 to 8.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons confirmed a thirty-thousand-dollar contract for the publication of a new edition of
The Works of
Theodore Roosevelt
in fourteen volumes. Another thirty thousand dollars was deposited to his account in New York as the bequest of a deceased uncle. Although the most cash the President generally saw was what Edith put in his pocket, he understood that in his forty-sixth year, he was beginning to be rich.

Better than money, his greatest dream in life seemed more and more realizable. According to the New York
Herald
, twenty-three states had already pledged him 496 votes at next June’s Republican National Convention—eleven more than he needed to be nominated. And ten months remained for him to persuade the American people that he was no longer “His Accidency,” but a substantial statesman deserving their vote of confidence.

THE SEVENTEENTH OF
December 1903 was a workday much like any other for Roosevelt. He faced, at carefully timed intervals through the morning, a newspaper owner from upstate New York, a counsel to the Hague tribunal, a consul from Shanghai, an aspirant postmaster from Missouri, an old hayseed from Oklahoma, the secretary of the Postal Progress League, the Attorney General of the United States, two doctors, three reverends, six senators, fifteen railway inspectors, and uncounted congressmen. At one o’clock, he was to conduct his usual barbershop
levée
. Root, Lodge, and Cortelyou were scheduled to join him for lunch, along with Winthrop Murray Crane. There would be precious little time for exercise in the afternoon, since he had bills to sign and letters to dictate, and appointments every hour until six o’clock. Then he must play bear with Archie and Quentin, spend some time with Edith, and dress for the Cabinet dinner. And the Odells and Mellens would be staying the night.

While Roosevelt talked to the consul from Shanghai, two brothers on a windswept beach in North Carolina shook hands. Then one of them lay down beside some covered ribs in front of a propeller motor. It sparked to life. Tremulous and spindly, a matchbox of spars and muslin accelerated along a rail, and stepped into the air. Its wings rippled on an invisible swell, like wet leaves on water. The swell surged to ten feet, then fifteen feet, before gently subsiding. Ecstatic, the flying machine kicked off and soared, again and again and again.

HENRY ADAMS ATTENDED
Roosevelt’s annual Diplomatic Reception on 7 January 1904, and was disturbed by signs of a developing autocracy—to say nothing of a nervous system that seemed to be beyond self-discipline. The President accosted him with a war whoop and ordered him upstairs for supper:

Another veteran of quieter times visited Washington that month and found that it was no longer the genteel city he remembered. “
I am glad to leave,” Charles G. Dawes wrote in his diary, after seeing both Mark Hanna and the President. “The air is full of intrigue and striving and change.”

ON THE AFTERNOON
of 27 January, Roosevelt sent a White House carriage and a company of cavalry to Sixth Street Station. Crowds collected along Pennsylvania Avenue. Such trappings usually heralded a visiting head of state, although none had been announced. When the procession clattered and jingled back downtown, the carriage rode much lower on its springs. Inside sat an enormously corpulent man of forty-six, his jowls tanned and his mustache bleached by years of Pacific sun. He smiled with enchanting sweetness, waving a cushioned palm, his pale blue eyes squeezed between chuckling rolls of fat. He was the retiring Governor of the Philippines, and now the successor to Elihu Root as Secretary of War: William Howard (“Big Bill”) Taft.

Merely to look at him was to be warmed and impressed. Taft had none of Root’s austerity or Roosevelt’s restless energy. He lounged comfortably at any angle, and spoke calmly in all circumstances. At 330 pounds,
he was periodically drowsy from too much food.
Yet he was not lazy; once he got under way, he had the ponderous momentum of an elephant. His gestures were slow, but full of power. He bore with no complaint huge loads of work, and produced commensurately. Whether he dictated a document or wrote it by hand, the words flowed in their hundreds and thousands, bland but never specious, unsparkling yet clear. His was not the vocabulary of a calculating politician. Taft wrote, thought, and acted like a judge.

The Supreme Court was his admitted dream. “As far back as I can remember, I believe my ambitions were of a judicial cast,” he told a reporter, after checking into the Arlington Hotel. He did not mention that Roosevelt had twice offered him a seat on the Bench, and that he had declined only out of a sense of “duty” in the Philippines. Still less would the elephant allow that Mrs. Taft (perched small and determined in his howdah) was nudging him in another direction.

The reporter, Kate Carew of the New York
World
, asked, “Which would you rather be, Chief Justice of the United States, or President of the United States?”

Taft quaked with self-protective laughter. “Oh, ho, ho! Of course I couldn’t answer that question.” He flushed with merriment, while she thought,
He must have been a very pink and white baby
.

“
Who do you suppose,” Miss Carew pursued, when the heavings subsided, “will be the Republican candidate for President this year?”

“
PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT!
” Taft boomed, puffing out his cheeks.

“And who in 1908?”

“Oh,” he said, smiling, “that is too far ahead.”

“But I had read somewhere that perhaps you would be.”

Taft began to talk about golf.

TWO DAYS LATER
, the outgoing Secretary of War attended his last Cabinet meeting. He appeared to be struggling with his composure as Roosevelt thanked him for staying on until Taft could relieve him. Root had a public reputation of being “the coldest proposition that ever came down the pike.” But friends knew the warmth of his bottled-up emotions and the precision of his wit, which Owen Wister nicely described as “humor in ambush.” The crack about the President’s culpability for “rape” was already part of Administration lore, as was the cable Root had sent to Manila, after hearing that Taft had taken a twenty-five-mile ride:
HOW IS THE HORSE?

Roosevelt rambled on affectionately until Root stood up, unable to bear more. He crossed to Taft’s left, symbolically shedding power. “Mr. President,” he said. His eyes filled, and he stopped.

It was the little parlor in Buffalo all over again. Then, however, Root had been taking charge of a young and nervous beneficiary. Now he was quitting a leader who could do without him. “
I thank you for what you have been good enough to say, Mr. President. This, of course, has been the great chapter in my life.…” He could not go on. “You know, sir, what I would say.”

The following evening, Root attended a Gridiron Club dinner in his honor at the Arlington. Roosevelt was there, along with the full Cabinet; even Senator Hanna limped downstairs. A performance group threw satiric barbs. Taft (giggling and guffawing, prodigiously duplicated in mirrors around the room) was warned that he might catch cold in Root’s chilly aura. If so, he must stand close when Mark Hanna finally swore allegiance to Theodore Roosevelt. The President’s glow of joy would thaw him.

Roosevelt and Hanna, separated by white linen and bowls of roses, laughed with the rest. But the latter looked far from happy. He ate and drank nothing, and there were dark smudges under his eyes.

“
How is your health, Senator?” somebody asked.

“Not good.”