Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [109]
THE EXTRAORDINARY VEHEMENCE with which Taft and Roosevelt defended themselves in Massachusetts indicated that the nomination battle had entered its critical stage. Taft was not as far ahead as his late-April total of 432 delegates seemed to imply. All had been pledged or instructed in states where the Party still controlled its own representation. Consequently they were less reflective of the vox populi than Roosevelt’s 208 delegates, elected for the most part in direct primaries. Massachusetts, a conservative state about to mount its own primary for the first time, offered Taft his best chance yet to demonstrate that ordinary voters were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
VOTE OF BAY STATE MAY BE DECISIVE, The New York Times proclaimed before the election, suggesting that it might end the brief Roosevelt boom. Taft was reportedly hoping to sweep all thirty-six delegates. If so, he was disappointed. The vote, on 30 April, was indecisive. He won a small statewide majority of 3,622, but that allowed him no more delegates than Roosevelt, at eighteen each. The draw was broken by eight delegates-at-large, who pledged themselves to the Colonel.
Roosevelt, overjoyed but noting Taft’s larger vote, was quick to take moral advantage of it. “In this fight,” he announced, “I am standing for certain great principles.… Foremost of these is the right of the people to rule.” He said he would order his delegates-at-large to switch their allegiance to the President.
By early May, with only four weeks of active campaigning left and 540 delegates needed to win the nomination, The New York Times estimated Taft’s complement at 468, Roosevelt’s at 232, and La Follette’s at 36. Senator Cummins of Iowa had a favorite-son slate of 10. The newspaper forecast that Taft would soon capture Nevada and Arkansas, followed by the primary states of Maryland and New Jersey. These, plus a swath of far-western states—Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming—should yield him over a hundred more delegates, and eliminate his challengers well before June.
The Times acknowledged, however, that a large number of delegates were neither pledged nor instructed, but just “leaning” toward one candidate or the other. Its editorial tilt was clear. There was no mention of the Colonel’s strong prospects in California and Minnesota, nor of his popularity in Ohio—birthplace of so many presidents (Taft included), and the most delegate-rich state of all. A primary was due to be held there on the twenty-fifth. Even if Taft won elsewhere as the Times projected, failure to hold his native soil would almost certainly end his hopes of reelection.
Over the next week, Roosevelt captured Maryland, Kansas, and Minnesota. Arkansas held two state conventions, one instructing its slate for him and the other for Taft. So another brace of rival delegations was added to the swelling number that intended to contest seats at the national convention. Roosevelt’s campaign team, ecstatic, calculated the President’s strength at only 175 bona fide delegates. This was a gross underestimate. But when, on 14 May, Roosevelt went on to sweep California, Taft put aside affairs of state for a final desperate stand in Ohio. “If I am defeated,” he wrote his brother Horace, “I hope that somebody, sometime, will recognize the agony of spirit that I have undergone.”
TAFT’S TENDENCY TO whine was accompanied by a genius for political gaffes. His latest was, “I am a man of peace, and I don’t want to fight. But when I do fight, I want to hit hard. Even a rat in a corner will fight.”
The unfortunate metaphor stuck as his train raced from corner to corner of Ohio, and Roosevelt’s followed suit. Both candidates smelled blood. Their vocabulary of personal invective got terser and uglier. Taft called the Colonel a “dangerous egotist” and “bolter.” Roosevelt replied with “puzzlewit,” “reactionary,” and “fathead,” and convulsed a crowd in Cleveland by comparing the President’s brain unfavorably with that of a guinea pig. La Follette, vying for attention, weighed in