Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [64]
Roosevelt felt he had not done enough. As soon as he had extricated himself from his current political embroilment, he intended to collaborate with Edmund Heller on a volume of life histories of African game animals that would last in libraries long after the New Nationalism had become old.
ROOSEVELT AND TAFT were so clearly on divergent roads by mid-September (the former calling for authority to be centered in the executive, the latter for its enshrinement in the judiciary) that Party intermediaries felt it was crucial for them to meet again, in a show of Republican unity. Lloyd Griscom arranged a lunch rendezvous at Henry White’s summer house in New Haven, Connecticut, on 19 September. Roosevelt crossed Long Island Sound by motorboat. It was a stormy voyage, into which the press did not fail to read portents, but he received a pleasant reception from Taft and a small group of friends and aides.
Covers were laid for six. By prearrangement, the President and the Colonel were left alone at the end of the meal, and the dining room door was locked. “I suppose it is the New York situation you want to discuss,” Taft said. He allowed that he was willing, after all, to support Roosevelt’s bid for the chairmanship of the Saratoga convention, now only one week away. But the White House would not oppose any gubernatorial candidate or policy initiative that might result if he lost. Roosevelt, for his part, was unwilling to beg any further favor. When after a considerable time they emerged, it was evident that their polite estrangement continued. They parted with strained joviality, and contrary impressions as to why they met and what they each had said.
To Roosevelt’s annoyance, Charles D. Norton, the President’s devious young secretary, authorized a wire report stating that the Colonel had come to New Haven hat in hand. Taft, genuinely concerned about Barnes manipulating the convention, had agreed to support Roosevelt’s candidacy over that of his own vice president, James S. Sherman.
Roosevelt indignantly denied Norton’s wire, annoying Taft in turn. The President complained to Archie Butt that Roosevelt had been “offish” during their meeting, while lecturing him on the need to keep the GOP intact. “If you were to remove Roosevelt’s skull now, you would find written on his brain ‘1912.’ ”
Yet the owner of the skull in question recoiled from the prospect of a petty political battle in Saratoga. “Twenty years ago I should not have minded it in the least,” Roosevelt wrote Henry Cabot Lodge. “It would have been entirely suitable for my age and standing. But it is not the kind of fight into which an ex-President should be required to go.”
NOW HERE HE WAS, in his thirtieth year as a practicing Republican, positioning himself, as he had in 1880, against the lowliest type of machine politicians. He climbed aboard a train full of convention delegates heading up the Hudson Valley, and confessed to a sense of déjà vu. “It reminds me of the old days when I was first elected to the Assembly.” He introduced Lawrence Abbott to a red-faced old ward heeler from the Twenty-first District of Manhattan. “I want you to know my friend, Joe Murray. He started me in politics. Take him into the smoking room and get him to tell you the story.”
Saratoga’s pink, High Victorian town hall overbore the modest resort as much as the State Capitol dominated Albany. Its chandelier-hung auditorium and thirty-foot stage looked more appropriate for plays than politics, and indeed functioned as a theater for much of the year. On the opening day of the convention, 27 September, the thespian in Roosevelt rose to the challenge of impressing a thousand fellow Republicans that he, not Sherman, was best qualified to chair the proceedings.
He did it by exuding such jovial, uninhibited charisma that all eyes were drawn to him when the list of candidates was announced. William Barnes, Jr.—pale, long-fingered, weary-looking—made the mistake of asking the