The American Vice Presidency (41 page)

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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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In a private letter to a friend, Roosevelt declared of the prospect, “I like life very much. I have always led a joyous life. I like thought and I like action, and it will be very bitter to leave my wife and children; and while I think I could face death with dignity, I have no desire before my time has come to go out into the everlasting darkness. So I shall not go into a war with any undue exhilaration of spirit or in a frame of mind in any way approaching recklessness or levity.”
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When the war came, Roosevelt was given the rank of lieutenant colonel
in a cavalry regiment under the command of Colonel Leonard Wood, a greatly admired friend. Quickly trained in San Antonio and shipped via Tampa to Cuba, the volunteers were a mix of western cowboys and Indians and eastern playboy horsemen, soon dubbed the “Rough Riders.”
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They subsequently took part in the famous charge up San Juan Hill with Roosevelt on horseback in the lead, and press reports of his daring and heroism soon made him a national hero.

When the short and victorious war ended in August, the Republican Party in New York, seeking a candidate for governor in the fall of 1898, cast a sharp eye on the returning Roosevelt. But the state party boss, Tom Platt, was not at all certain he wanted this reform-minded dynamo in the seat of power in Albany and a prospective challenger to his party leadership. Platt finally agreed to back Roosevelt on the promise that he would be consulted on key appointment and policy decisions.

In the fall campaign against the Democratic judge Augustus Van Wyck, Roosevelt whistle-stopped across upstate New York with uniformed Rough Riders prominently in view, regaling large crowds. He won the election on sheer personal magnetism, and it was not long until Platt began to think of getting him out of Albany by running him for vice president in 1900. Roosevelt’s closest political friend, Lodge, liked the idea. “I do not pretend to say that the office in itself is suited to you and to your habits,” he wrote to Roosevelt, “but for the future it is, in my judgment, invaluable. It takes you out of the cut-throat politics of New York, where I am sure they would have destroyed your prospects, if you had remained two years longer, and it gives you a position in the eyes of the country second only to that of the president.”
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When Vice President Garret Hobart died in November 1899, Roosevelt’s name was increasingly heard as McKinley’s next running mate. But he told Lodge of the prospect, “I am a comparatively young man yet and I like to work. I do not like to be a figurehead. It would not entertain me to preside over the Senate.”
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In early February 1900, Roosevelt informed reporters, “Under no circumstances could I or would I accept the nomination for the vice-presidency.” At one point he told Platt, “The more I have thought it over the more I have felt that I would a great deal rather be anything, say a professor of history, than vice president.” Platt, to such observations, reflected,
“Roosevelt might as well stand under Niagara Falls and try to spit the water back as to stop his nomination.”
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Soon, however, Roosevelt was saying, “I believe that I would be looked upon as rather a coward if I didn’t go,” in reference to the nominating convention, and by late spring he wrote to Lodge, “I did not say that I would not under any circumstances accept the vice presidency.” While still denying interest, he went to the convention and called on several state delegations wearing an old army cap, which skeptics came to call “an acceptance hat.”
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Hanna by now had become dead-set against having the free-spirited and freewheeling Roosevelt on the ticket. As a stampede for him began to mount, Hanna was in despair, asking other convention delegates of the prospect of Roosevelt becoming vice president, “Don’t any of you realize there’s only one life between that madman and the presidency?”
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To the satisfaction of New York boss Platt, the ticket of McKinley and Roosevelt was nominated unanimously, shunting the unmanageable Rough Rider off the New York stage and more than ever into the national spotlight. Roosevelt readily and enthusiastically took up the role of active campaigner, telling Hanna, “I am as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit,” which the campaign manager did.
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Roosevelt made 573 speeches in 567 towns in 24 states crisscrossing the country for more that 21,000 miles. He repeatedly identified the Democratic presidential nominee, Bryan, as his opponent, taking him on in defense of American expansionism and the war with Spain. He campaigned defending gold in the Northeast and imperialism across the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains, where his rugged outdoorsman role played particularly well. At first he resisted the barnstorming, arguing, “It does not seem to me that a canvass from the rear end of a railway train, as a kind of rival to Bryan, is dignified, and therefore a wise thing for me.”
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But Hanna insisted, and the trip proved to be an excellent vehicle for the former cowboy, lashing out repeatedly against Bryan and silver as he flashed his fierce, toothy glare at mesmerized audiences. On Election Day, the Republican ticket coasted to victory. Hanna, still depressed about Roosevelt now a heartbeat from the presidency, wrote to McKinley, “Your duty to the country is to live for four years from next March.”
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After their inaugurations, Roosevelt’s reservations about having to
preside over the Senate proved to be unwarranted. The usual winter special session lasted only four days and adjourned until the following December. But McKinley seldom consulted Roosevelt on policy and appointments, instead generally looking upon him with a certain wariness toward his combustible nature.

At the end of summer, he and McKinley each undertook a tour, the president visiting the Pan-American Exposition, at Buffalo, on September 6, and Roosevelt visiting Lake Champlain, in Vermont. After a leisurely lunch, Roosevelt was summoned to the telephone. It was Buffalo calling, to tell him that President McKinley had just been shot in the chest and stomach by a young anarchist, later identified as Leon Czolcosz, and was undergoing surgery. Roosevelt left at once for Buffalo, not knowing whether McKinley would survive, and on arrival he maintained a bedside vigil.

The chest wound was not serious but the other was. The next morning, however, the president seemed to be doing better, and after the weekend Roosevelt was told he need not stay, and for public consumption it would be better that he not. Thereupon, expecting McKinley’s recovery, Roosevelt departed to a cabin in the Adirondacks for a short stay with his awaiting family. Six days after the shooting, with McKinley seemingly on the mend, the Roosevelts began a hiking party. But early the next afternoon a telegraph messenger found the hikers and brought Roosevelt the news: McKinley had died. Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States, even before the formal taking of the oath of office.

Some years earlier, he had written that a vice president “should so far as possible represent the same views and principles which have secured the nomination and election of the president, and he should be a man standing well in the councils of the party, trusted by his fellow party leaders and able in the event of any accident to his chief to take up the work of the latter just where it was left.”
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But Roosevelt, reformer at heart and with aggressive foreign policy notions, was not McKinley. He had no intention of being a mere caretaker of his predecessor’s agenda, and his personal flare for leadership produced considerable reforms in politics, including trust-busting and federal regulation of the railroads. On his first day as president, he told reporters at the White House, “I want you to understand at the start—I feel just as much
a constituently elected President … as McKinley was. I was voted for as Vice-President, it is true, but the Constitution provides that in the case of the death or inability of the President, the Vice-President shall serve as President. And, therefore, due to the act of a madman, I am President and shall act in every word and deed precisely as if I and not McKinley had been the candidate for whom the electors cast the vote for President. That should be understood.”
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Once again, a man who had accepted running for the vice presidency without enthusiasm had found that decision to be the most critical of his political career. He embarked on one of the most colorful presidencies in the nation’s annals. In December 1901, with Roosevelt in only his second month as president, the Senate approved the second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, in which the British agreed to allow the United States on its own to build and fortify a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Then, in November 1903, Roosevelt encouraged an insurrection that produced the independence of the Republic of Panama and paved the way for the start of construction of the Panama Canal across the Central American isthmus, perhaps Roosevelt’s greatest foreign policy initiative.
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