Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [120]
A golden bear materialized beneath her, in the shape of the mascot of the California delegation. She reached out and cuddled it as it rose on the top of a proffered totem, whereupon the poles of other Roosevelt delegations joined in and jiggled up and down in phallic rivalry. The woman in white vanished for a minute. When she reappeared on the floor, it seemed improbable that the Coliseum could contain more sound. She marched up the main aisle, flushed with excitement, followed by stampeding delegates in an unconscious parody of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. As William Jennings Bryan watched from the press box, perhaps remembering a far-off day when he had stimulated almost as great a riot, she was hoisted giggling onto a shelf of shoulders and carried to the rostrum. Elihu Root tolerantly let her take control of the proceedings.
She did so without the aid of the gavel or megaphones, merely waving a long-gloved arm to increase or decrease the applause inundating her. When she again brandished Roosevelt’s portrait—looking rather tattered now—the cries of “We want Teddy!” broke out with renewed force. It took fifty minutes for the tumult to die down and for the woman to be coaxed, as gently as possible, back into her box.
Hadley rejoined Root and Watson onstage. His luster of an hour before had been much diminished. As Roosevelt’s floor leader, he had to regret that he had agreed to let the credentials committee decide the matter of the contested delegates. If his alternative list could have been resubmitted to the whole convention, at this moment of maximum affection for the Colonel, it would almost certainly have been approved, with Roosevelt cleared for nomination, and he generally accepted as the likely next vice president of the United States.
Under the circumstances, the best Hadley could do was persuade Governor Charles S. Deneen of Illinois to move that none of the seventy-two men whose seats were being contested should be allowed to participate in the election of members of the still-unconstituted committee. Nor should they be allowed to approve or disapprove the committee’s report, when it was issued. The morality of this was to prevent any possibly fraudulent delegate from voting on the rightness of his own case, or the cases of his seventy-one contested colleagues.
Watson countered by moving to lay Deneen’s amendment on the table.
By no flicker of expression did Root, gavel in hand, reveal that he recognized that the determining moment of the convention had arrived. He ordered a roll call on Watson’s motion. “That question is not debatable.”
Hadley tried to debate it anyway. “I wish to ask if the individuals whose titles to seats are here challenged are to vote upon this motion.”
“The chair will rule upon that question at the conclusion of the roll call.”
As the roll slowly proceeded, the heat of the demonstration went out of the room, and instinctual loyalties reasserted themselves. There were minor variations on yesterday’s vote—Wisconsin announced itself as “solid this time” against Taft—but at the end of the call, the President’s strength had increased by nine votes, to 567 over Roosevelt’s 507, with four abstentions.
It was small comfort to Hadley and Flinn that their candidate was now only thirty votes short of being nominated, since Taft could afford to lose plenty and still defeat the Colonel. And here was Root moving in for the kill. “No man can be permitted to vote on the question of his own right to a seat in the convention,” he said. “But the rule does not disqualify any delegate whose name is upon the roll from voting on the contest of any other man’s right, or from participating in the ordinary business of the convention so long as he holds his seat.”
Otherwise, Root pointed out, any minority could assure control of a deliberative body by bringing in enough rebels, under a surprise resolution, to transform themselves