Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [105]
ONE THING THE COLONEL had not lost was his power over audiences.
Carnegie Hall was crammed to the door when he rose to speak there on the night after the North Dakota primary. It was his first public appearance in almost a month. Arcs of women in evening dress glittered in the first and second tiers (Edith and Ethel looking down from box 61), standees crammed even the upper levels, and the stage behind him groaned with representatives of the New York Civic Forum. Outside in the street, five thousand disappointed attendees milled around, hoping he would address them later.
Noticing William Barnes, Jr., and a henchman, Timothy L. Woodruff, in the orchestra section, Roosevelt began by remarking that if Lincoln’s formula of government by the people was to be abandoned for minority rule, he knew who its chief exponents would be in New York State. “It will be Brother Barnes and Brother Woodruff.”
Barnes glared at him from the parquet, but the audience rose in a standing ovation when Roosevelt continued, “I prefer to govern myself, to do my own part, rather than have the government of a particular class.” For the rest of the evening he was in complete control. He rephrased, but at the same time reaffirmed, all the points he had made at Columbus, emphasizing that he was advocating the recall only of judicial decisions that took elite advantage of the Constitution. “The courts should not be allowed to reverse the political philosophy of the people.” He named Taft as the nation’s top reactionary in favor of oligarchy rule.
Roosevelt’s sharp voice scratched every sentence into the receptivity of his listeners, and his habit of throwing sheet after sheet of manuscript to the floor seemed to mime points raised and dealt with. His peroration brought even Barnes to his feet in applause:
The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won. In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us is “Spend and be spent.”
We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men.
Afterward in one of the political clubs, Barnes was defensive. “Roosevelt, confound him, has a kind of magnetism that you cannot resist when you are in his presence!”
BARNES RECOVERED from the magnetism in time to hand the Colonel another defeat in the New York primary on 26 March. Republicans amenable to Party discipline voted two to one for Taft. Those of more independent temper appeared to have stayed home.
It turned out that hundreds of Roosevelt supporters had gone to the polls in New York County, only to be frustrated by mysterious equipment failures and closings. Others had been handed preposterously long ballots folded like concertinas, with up to three feet of blank space separating the Roosevelt ticket from its emblem. People tore off what they thought was waste paper, then found themselves unable to vote for the Colonel. The sole delegate he won in the city of his birth was an unopposed candidate in Brooklyn. Statewide, he netted seven delegates to Taft’s eighty-three. Every winner of a state committee seat or district leadership was a machine man. And when, later that same evening, the Indiana and Colorado GOP conventions elected their delegates-at-large, all were instructed for Taft.
The net results were so damaging that it availed Dixon little to complain that the New York vote was “a joke.” Taft now had a roster of 265 pledged delegates, with 539 needed to win. Roosevelt had 27.
He received the news of his triple defeat while traveling west aboard the Chicago Limited. Already he had concluded that his only chance of avoiding catastrophe was to forget about ex-presidential dignity and campaign in person, as