Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [121]
As the realization spread that Roosevelt had no hope of seating any more delegates, his dispirited supporters in the galleries streamed out of the hall, not bothering to hear who had been appointed to the various operational committees. They knew now that the White House would control all agenda concerning credentials, permanent organization, rules, and resolutions.
THAT NIGHT THE WOMAN in white, identified as Mrs. W. A. Davis of Chicago, was brought to the Congress Hotel to meet the Colonel. He emerged briefly from his conference room, where urgent discussions were under way, and acknowledged her contribution. “It was a bully piece of work,” he told her, then hurried back inside.
Had he been under less nervous strain, he might have thanked her more profusely. But throughout the day Roosevelt had been resisting moves to get him to withdraw in favor of Hadley, or even La Follette or Cummins, along with blandishments to keep him from bolting. He said he would not give way to any candidate unless the temporary roll was purged. And he told some furtive Old Guard emissaries, offering him a face-saving number of delegates if he would stay in the convention, that under no circumstances could he subscribe to the renomination of William Howard Taft.
He seemed convinced that the President was personally responsible for every dubious name on the roll. Thugs every one of them, they had stuck together in vote after vote on the individual state and district slates, completing the organization of the convention and proving that crime did pay in Republican politics. Or so it seemed to Roosevelt, in his red rage against Elihu Root as a “receiver of stolen goods.” There could be no debate on the subject: his old friend was his mortal enemy. Having won the chair through the machinations of Rosewater, Watson, Barnes, and other unconvicted felons, Root had shut out the legitimate delegates on Hadley’s list, all of them radiant with righteousness. Convention attendees who thought they had seen a solemn, impartial statesman on the podium were therefore subject to group delusion. Roosevelt did not need to have been there, or even listen down his telephone wire: he knew what venality looked and sounded like.
Party regulars and progressive rebels crammed his suite until well after midnight, alternately preaching loyalty and revolt. “I never saw the Colonel so fagged,” Henry Stoddard wrote afterward. “For hours, his fighting blood had been at fever heat.” At one point, Roosevelt sent for Edith and asked, “I wonder if it would be better for Hadley to head the Party.”
Her reply was unhelpful. “Theodore, remember that often one wants to do the hardest and noblest thing, but sometimes it does not follow that it is the right thing.”
The last of his visitors was Senator Borah, a man so divided that the cleft on his chin, lining up with his center part and frown, seemed to separate him into halves. He dragged Roosevelt into the bathroom and said, “This far I have gone with you. I can go no further.”
Borah made it clear that many progressives like himself would be loath to risk their political careers by bolting to a third party that might not last. Roosevelt emerged from the bathroom looking furious. But he was plainly wavering.
It was now nearly two o’clock in the morning, and the suite was almost empty. Would-be bolters had gone to the Florentine Room to hold a defiant rally against the GOP organization. Their cheers and oratory could be heard down the corridor. Three tired intimates remained: Stoddard, Frank Munsey, and George Perkins. They urged Roosevelt to go on with his fight.
“My fortune, my magazines and my newspapers are with you,” Munsey said. Perkins pledged his own wealth.
Roosevelt’s moment of decision arrived when a delegation from the Florentine Room burst in to request