Theodore Rex (83 page)

Parker’s words were rather less surprising than his tone, which came as a cold slap in the convention’s hot, weary face. Sheehan and other leaders worked desperately to assure delegates that the judge meant no “dictation.” He was just merely behaving like a man “of rectitude and honor.” There was no move to withdraw the nomination, but the rest of the proceedings were anticlimactic.
An eighty-year-old multimillionaire, Henry G. Davis of West Virginia, was endorsed for Vice President, in hopes that he might contribute to the campaign. Then a thousand uninspired Democrats headed for their hotel rooms.

ROOSEVELT WAS FULL
of admiration for Parker’s telegram. “It was a bold and skillful move,” he wrote Henry Cabot Lodge. He doubted that the judge had any personal principles on the subject of gold. In waiting until the last minute to instruct the convention, Parker had “become a very formidable candidate and opponent.”

Professionals in both parties were similarly impressed. As Roosevelt predicted, the New York
Evening Post
endorsed Parker in near-adulatory terms. Other New York newspapers to support him were the
Times, Herald, World
, and
Staats-Zeitung
. The Brooklyn
Eagle, Boston Herald, Detroit Free Press
, Milwaukee
Journal
, and—worryingly—the
Springfield Republican
followed suit. Every one had supported McKinley in 1900.

Time would tell if the Parker wave represented a temporary swell, or some real shifting of the political current. Many warm, placid weeks lay ahead, before political activity picked up again in September. Almost all of the official campaigning would be d
one by the two national committees and their treasurers and copywriters and speakers. Roosevelt and Parker were required to do nothing, except make one acceptance speech and write one acceptance letter apiece.

Both candidates were expected to sit out the planning phase of the campaign in their respective retreats—although
Roosevelt had scheduled a midsummer visit to Washington, to confer with party tacticians. In the meantime, clams were spouting in Cold Spring Harbor, and the corn was green on Sagamore Hill; distant picnic spots beckoned, and the waters of the bay cried out for the splash of oars.

Even from the austere heights of Esopus, New York, the Hudson showed more than a hint of blue.

ON 27 JULY
, fifty-four solemn Republicans creaked up Sagamore Hill in a dusty procession of buggies. Despite the heat, they all wore neckties and stiff
collars, and their trousers were ironed to knife-edges—even, incredibly, those of Speaker Cannon. One and all were solemn, for they were enacting the party’s most hallowed ritual: a formal notification of nomination to its presidential candidate.

“FIFTY-FOUR SOLEMN REPUBLICANS.”
Roosevelt being notified of his nomination, 27 July 1904
(photo credit 22.1)

Roosevelt awaited them on the broad porch, surrounded by his wife and a clutch of children. He wore a frock coat and white waistcoat. The visitors respectfully banged the dust from their hats before mounting the steps to shake his hand. William Loeb brought out a low stool for Cannon to stand on. The Speaker teetered awkwardly, and drew a typed speech from his pocket. “It’s seven minutes long,” he apologized.

As he read a condensed version of the Chicago platform, the sea breeze brought up scents of hay. Flags snapped on the house’s high roof. Roosevelt swayed with pleasure, patting one of his nephews on the head. He kept glancing toward Edith, aloof in filmy white lace. “
That’s perfectly true,” he interrupted at one point, “perfectly true.”

When the President’s turn came, Alice Roosevelt, unnoticed till now, eased through the crowd and stood slightly behind him, where he could not see her. Her eyes never left his face. He spoke for twelve minutes, and
used the word
power
a lot.
She laughed with delight at every burst of applause. Later, as the younger Roosevelts served croquettes, ice cream, and lemonade on the lawn, she moved gracefully about, beguiling man after man with her twenty-year-old body and gray-blue, almost phosphorescent eyes.
Something flickered at her wrist. A bright green snake twined round her fingers and wriggled up the front of her dress.

Roosevelt paid no attention. He was more interested in checking whom Governor Odell was talking to, on a secluded bench in the garden. Alice was not the only one of his children to wear reptiles next to the skin. She was, however, the only one who resented him—though loving him with equal violence. Her attitude toward herself was equally confused. “I feel that I want something, I don’t know what.” At times, in her padlocked diary, she fantasized symbols of escape: a roadster, a rich husband, a world tour, a London season. Roosevelt’s “political” reasons for refusing to indulge her drove her to such paroxysms of rage that her handwriting degenerated into a near-maniacal scribble. At other times, like this, she luxuriated in his aura of power, much as the snake enjoyed the warmth of her own bodice.

“
When I come down to bed rock facts,” Alice told herself, “I am more interested in my father’s political career than anything in the world. Of course I want him re-elected … but there again, I am afraid it is because it would keep me in my present position.”

ROOSEVELT’S THOUGHTFUL OBSERVANCE
of Governor Odell (parchment-pale, rumpled, and glowering) in the garden betrayed his worry that the dour
politico might prove a liability in the election. Since both presidential candidates happened to be New Yorkers, the Empire State’s vote was bound to be unusually partisan.

“BEGUILING MAN AFTER MAN WITH HER TWENTY-YEAR-OLD
BODY AND … ALMOST PHOSPHORESCENT EYES.”
Alice Roosevelt, 1904
(photo credit 22.2)

Odell had proved to be a gifted administrator, pushing through wider reforms than Roosevelt himself had done, saving more money, and overhauling
the party machinery. Politically, however, the Governor was being overtaken by accelerating trends that he was powerless to understand, much less control. He still thought that labor should defer to capital, that New York City and New York State had more things in common than not, that party discipline guaranteed straight-ticket voting. These nineteenth-century notions were challenged by evidence that New York State’s independent vote was growing and might well return a Democrat to Albany, if not to Washington, D.C.

After two terms, Odell was not popular enough to run again. But having painstakingly made himself party boss, he wanted to remain so. Much to the disgust of Democrats, he had forced the state Republican Committee to elect him its chairman.
This brazen mixing of executive politics and electioneering was sure to be a campaign issue, particularly if Odell tried to choose his own successor. Roosevelt dreaded the prospect of having to carry a heavy puppet, should the presidential race become close. New York State represented the nation’s largest block of electoral votes.

It was vital, therefore, to find a gubernatorial candidate who would be perceived as a Roosevelt Republican. Odell did not object, as long as he was consulted. He agreed with the President that one New Yorker, above all others, had the integrity and stature to sweep the state. Unfortunately, Elihu Root was adamant about remaining in private life. “I must ask my friends to accept as final the refusal of the nomination.” To make things doubly plain, he stayed away from Sagamore Hill.

The press noted Root’s absence from the notification ceremony, as did other national strategists. At their behest, Roosevelt wrote his old friend and proffered the most glittering of grails:

Root politely declined. He told Henry Cabot Lodge that after serving at the national level he had developed a “perfect loathing and disgust” for the “sordid details of state politics.” He suspected that Governor Odell’s inheritance might be corrupt. Five years of overwork under two Presidents had left him drained. He was almost sixty. Even if the grail were offered him, he would be sixty-three before he could hold it. More to the point, he simply did not want it.