The Illusion of Victory (75 page)

Everyone saw the
World
stories and photographs as a Wilson declaration of readiness to run for a third term. Seeming to confirm this new ambition was a statement from William Gibbs McAdoo, withdrawing from the race for the Democratic nomination. On Wall Street, brokers reported Wilson had become the odds-on favorite among the remaining candidates. Evidence that four more years in the White House were precisely what Wilson had in mind is a document in his papers entitled “Third Inaugural.” Random notes thanked the American people for the “overwhelming honor” they had conferred on him and outlined the principles that would govern his new term. The illusion of regained power continued to mesmerize the president.
⁴⁶

The opening scene of the Democratic Convention, which met in San Francisco on June 28, 1920, suggested that Wilson might realize the first step in his third-term fantasy. Moments after the chairman gaveled the conclave to order, a searchlight illuminated a huge portrait of Wilson, draped with American flags. A gigantic demonstration erupted with thousands of delegates prancing in the aisles, waving their state standards. Only the members of the New York delegation remained in their seats, morosely silent. The hardheaded men of Tammany, Irish-Americans almost to a man, wanted no more to do with Woodrow Wilson.

Two members of the delegation thought differently: Mayor George Lunn of Schenectady and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. They asked the state chairman if they could join the celebration. With his permission, they headed for the aisle—until Roosevelt decided to take the New York state standard with him. Judge Jeremiah T. Mahoney, who held it, resisted, and several of his friends rushed to assist him. Mahoney turned for advice to the boss of the party, Charles Murphy, who nodded his approval to let Roosevelt have his way. The assistant secretary joined the tumult in the aisles, waving the prize in triumph.

Roosevelt’s private publicity machine swiftly converted the small clash into an epic encounter, in which FDR flattened two Tammany stalwarts with rights, lefts and uppercuts. The man who was there, Judge Mahoney, said the whole thing lasted “about four seconds.” Roosevelt contributed to the myth, telling one reporter it had been “a bully fight.”

Roosevelt had come to the convention thirsting for political advancement. He entertained the New York delegates aboard one of the battleships of the Pacific fleet. He agreed to make a seconding speech on behalf of New York’s favorite son, Governor Alfred E. Smith, whom Murphy planned to nominate for president, although he knew he did not have a chance at this convention. With Wilson an albatross around their necks, Murphy considered the Democrats’ cause hopeless and was thinking ahead to 1924.
⁴⁷

Convention chairman Homer Cummings followed the demonstration with a keynote speech that made a point of proclaiming the president had approved the address in advance. In a play for a sympathy vote, Cummings blamed Wilson’s collapse on Republican harassment. Lodge and his friends had “physically wounded” the president, putting Wilson in the company of such presidential martyrs as Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Cummings taunted the Republicans for their evasive platform, calling their Chicago conclave “not a convention but an auction.” he deplored the nation’s failure to join the League of Nations and uphold Wilson’s promise to make the world safe for democracy. The speech was clearly tailored to the president’s plan for a great and solemn referendum.
⁴⁸

Since Wilson continued to say nothing explicit about being a candidate, William Gibbs McAdoo reentered the race at the behest of his friends. Unfortunately for poor “Mac,” he became the lightning rod on which anti-Wilson Democrats vented their disillusion with the party’s putative leader. A. Mitchell Palmer soon dropped out of the running. He had looked silly when he predicted a massive wave of terror bombings on May 1, the great Communist-Socialist feast day, and not even a firecracker exploded. Against McAdoo the anti-Wilson men pushed Governor James A. Cox of Ohio, who called for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment as proof of his bold statesmanship.

Postmaster General Burleson, who had been Wilson’s chief lieutenant on party politics, called the White House, pleading for a McAdoo endorsement. Wilson became so enraged, he seemed in danger of another cerebral thrombosis. He ordered Chairman Cummings to bar Burleson from the leadership of the convention and vowed to fire him the moment he returned from San Francisco.
⁴⁹

Wilson’s game plan gambled on a deadlock. His man in San Francisco was his new secretary of state, Bainbridge Colby, a virtual cipher in foreign policy but a gifted writer and speaker. Dazzled by his ascent to power, Colby had become a Wilson worshipper. He saw nothing seriously wrong with the mentally and physically crippled man who presided at cabinet meetings. Wilson had given him a secret code to communicate directly with the White House. On July 2, Colby sent a wire that Tumulty, unacquainted with the code, passed on to the president.“THE OUTSTANDING CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CONVENTION IS UNANIMITY AND FERVOR OF FEELING FOR YOU. . . . I PROPOSE UNLESS OTHERWISE DEFINITELY INSTRUCTED TO MOVE SUSPENSION OF RULES AND PLACE YOUR NAME IN NOMINATION.”
⁵⁰

Edith Wilson did not know that her co-conspirator, Admiral Cary Grayson, had defected from this ultimate delusion of glory. His medical training finally in charge of his conscience, Grayson had urged Senator Carter Glass of Virginia to save Wilson from “the juggling of false friends.” The admiral must have known when he said this that the foremost false friend was Edith Wilson. Tumulty, who was with Grayson when he spoke to Glass, added his own fervent agreement. Another account has Grayson bringing the same message to Robert Woolley, a Democratic publicist, who told him not to worry about it. Wilson did not have a chance of being nominated.
⁵¹

In San Francisco, Glass spread the word to Homer Cummings, Burleson, Josephus Daniels and other insiders that Grayson had finally told the truth: Wilson could not survive a campaign, much less four more years in the White House. With the convention on its twelfth ballot and no clear-cut leader emerging, Ray T. Baker, a California Democrat, telephoned Tumulty, revealing Bainbridge Colby’s plan. A frantic Tumulty begged Edith Wilson to stop the secretary of state. She coldly ignored his note. A second plea also went unanswered.

But Grayson’s message had taken on a life of its own in San Francisco. On July 4, when the insiders learned Colby’s intentions, they summoned him to a hotel room and all but dismembered him with raging denunciations of his idiocy. The mortified Wilson-worshipper later said they made him feel “like a criminal.” He dolefully informed Wilson that the insiders had vetoed his plan because they did not think the president would get enough votes to win the nomination.
⁵²

For another three days, McAdoo and Cox struggled to win a two-thirds majority. Finally Cox pulled ahead and on the forty-fourth ballot won the nomination. While this struggle absorbed everyone’s attention, the cadre of friends and allies Franklin Roosevelt brought with him had been working the hotel rooms and state caucuses, urging FDR as the perfect choice for vice president, no matter who won. He had made a good impression on everyone in his seconding speech for Al Smith. He was from the crucial state of New York, projected youth, was a Wilson man—and the name Roosevelt was a proven vote getter. The day after Cox became the standard bearer, the brash thirty-eight-year-old assistant secretary of the navy was chosen by acclamation as his running mate.

In the White House, the news of the Cox-Roosevelt ticket produced a string of curses from the president that left his valet in a state of shock. Never before had he heard Wilson say anything more violent than an occasional damn or hell. Cox, a total neophyte in foreign policy, had been the president’s least favored candidate. Wilson had told Josephus Daniels that Cox’s nomination would be a joke. As for Roosevelt, Wilson considered him disloyal for his political flirtations with his cousin Theodore and his dinner with Viscount Grey. The president sent Cox a perfunctory telegram offering “hearty congratulations and cordial best wishes.” For FDR, he downgraded the congratulations to “warm” and the wishes to “good.”
⁵³

On Sunday, July 18, 1920, candidates Cox and Roosevelt paid an obligatory visit to the White House. Many of Cox’s inner circle had advised against it. They saw their only chance of victory in a campaign that somehow distanced Cox from Wilson. But Cox felt this was impossible, and scheduled the visit. By this time, the euphoric flurry that had produced Wilson’s illusory hopes for the Democratic nomination had collapsed into the deep depression that was the president’s prevailing mood. The two nominees waited for about fifteen minutes while Wilson was rolled out onto the South Portico. The president’s mouth drooped, his long jaw sagged almost to his chest, his staring eyes were fixed on the ground. A shawl covered his useless left arm and paralyzed side.

The two candidates were stunned by his appearance.“He’s a very sick man,” cox whispered to Roosevelt as they approached him. Cox’s eyes grew moist. Mrs. Wilson later recalled the shock and sympathy on Roosevelt’s face.

“Thank you for coming,” wilson said in a weak, strained voice. “I’m very glad you came.”

During the brawl over the league, Cox had tried to stay aloof from the struggle. As governor of Ohio, he had no direct stake in it. Now, the sight of Wilson swept aside all equivocations. “Mr. President,” he said.“We are going to be a million percent with you and your administration—and that means the League of Nations.”

“I am very grateful,” wilson said in the same sad, wavering voice.“I am very grateful.”

Back in the West Wing, Governor Cox sat down at Tumulty’s desk and drafted a statement affirming that the League of Nations was the primary issue of the campaign and he was in favor of its ratification on Woodrow Wilson’s terms.
⁵⁴

The great and solemn referendum was on its way.

The Democratic candidates had little choice, when it came to issues. The Eighteenth Amendment was a tar baby that already threatened them with ruin. Although the party platform finessed the issue by trying to ignore it, everyone knew that Cox and Roosevelt were both wets. Their stand put William Jennings Bryan and his followers, all drys to the last man and woman, in a funk. Bryan left San Francisco declaring, “My heart is in the grave.” He retired into silence and declined to say a word for the ticket.
⁵⁵

The disappointed man in the White House did not do much more for the Cox-Roosevelt team. A few days after the candidates’ visit, Wilson unleashed a ferocious diatribe against Roosevelt to Josephus Daniels, who had his own reasons for disliking his assistant secretary. Everyone but Wilson—with the possible exception of Cox and Roosevelt—seemed to know the Democrats did not have a chance. When the secretary of the navy tried to tell Wilson the truth, the president cried, “Daniels, you haven’t enough faith in the people!”
⁵⁶

Also in the running as the candidate of the Socialist Party was Convict Number 9653 in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Better known as Eugene V. Debs, the man Wilson stubbornly called a traitor to his country, ran on a very simple platform. Wilson was “pro-British and a tool of Wall Street,”
and so was his League of Nations. For added appeal, Debs called for immediate recognition of Irish independence, something neither of the major parties had been willing to do.
⁵⁷

In August, a national German-American Conference met in Chicago. They disliked the platforms of both major parties and regretted the lack of a “fearless and patriotic” candidate such as Robert La Follette. But they still recommended voting for Harding out of fear that a switch to a third party might permit Cox to win and put “another proxy of Great Britain” in the White House. Such a calamity would put the seal of “popular approval” on Wilson’s administration, which they characterized as “the most un-American in the making of our country.” George Sylvester Viereck, who wrote the conference’s resolutions, assured Frank Walsh, still crusading against Wilson for the Irish-Americans, that 5 to 6 million German-Americans were certain to vote for Harding.“We have decided there must not be another Democratic president for a generation,” Viereck told Walsh.
⁵⁸

Italian-Americans were equally hostile to Cox and Roosevelt. Their newspapers called Wilson an enemy of Italy. In New York, 20,000 Italian-Americans, led by Fiorello LaGuardia, denounced the “Wilsonian peace.” The Federation of Italian Societies in America urged its members to “forget this year any political affiliation and vote for Harding.”
⁵⁹

The Irish-Americans hated Wilson with an even more vindictive passion, but they had very little enthusiasm for Harding. The Republican candidate had declined to vote for various Senate resolutions calling for Ireland’s independence. If Cox had somehow distanced himself from Wilson, he might have retained their traditionally Democratic loyalty. But the candidate’s embrace of Wilson sealed his fate with most Irish-American leaders.“Cox wears Wilson’s collar on the League of Nations,” John Devoy wrote in the
Gaelic American
.
⁶⁰

From Ireland came news that all but finished Cox with Irish-American voters. Terence MacSwiney, the lord mayor of Cork, began a hunger strike when he was arrested by the British for backing the embattled Irish republic. As MacSwiney neared death, prominent Catholic churchmen and Irish-American leaders bombarded Wilson and the State Department with pleas for intervention. They only succeeded in arousing the president’s antipathy to hyphenated Americans. Wilson called their appeals “grossly impertinent” and “a piece of confounded impudence.”
⁶¹