FDR - Jean Edward Smith [58]
The Republicans meanwhile were self-destructing. TR and President Taft traded barbs throughout 1911 and then broke irrevocably in February 1912. The issues were initially political. TR pressed a reform agenda; Taft preferred the status quo. But the dispute soon became personal. Taft denounced Teddy and his supporters as “neurotics” who sought to “pull down the pillars of the temple of freedom.” TR dismissed Taft as a “blackguard,” a “fathead,” and a “puzzlewit” with an intellect slightly less developed than a guinea pig’s. “My hat is in the ring and the fight is on,” he told a crowd of cheering supporters on February 21, 1912.31
The GOP convened in Chicago in mid-June. Taft forces controlled the convention machinery; TR commanded the party’s rank and file. “It is a marvelous thing” wrote Franklin, “that [Cousin Theodore], acting with the support of untrained militia, has succeeded in overcoming the well-organized opposition of the trained soldiers of the Republican Party.”32 Almost, but not quite. The credentials of some two hundred delegates were contested, and the Taft forces prevailed in virtually every case. That ensured the president’s renomination. TR charged that the deck had been stacked and dramatically instructed his delegates to walk out of the convention. “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord,” said Theodore, with his penchant for understatement. Seven weeks later TR accepted the nomination of the newly formed National Progressive party and, as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., observed, took the social conscience of the Republican party with him. Claiming to be “as fit as a bull moose,” he posed a threat of unknown dimensions to both parties.33
Woodrow Wilson believed his election was preordained.34 His campaign staff was less convinced. And with TR added to the race and threatening to siphon off a sizable portion of the progressive vote, all bets were off. The rupture of the Democratic party in New York now took on alarming proportions. If Taft had been the only opposition, FDR’s Empire State Democracy and half a dozen other splinter groups could have been tolerated. Wilson could oppose bossism and let the devil take the hindmost. But now every vote counted, and the Wilson campaign could not afford to alienate Tammany and the regular party organization. For his part, Charles F. Murphy was a constant Democrat. Candidates come and go, but the party continues. He had no difficulty supporting the ticket, even though he had opposed Wilson at the convention.
Wilson and Murphy made no explicit deal. But FDR soon found himself outmaneuvered. The issue came to a head in early October, when the state Democratic party met in Syracuse to nominate its candidate for governor. Murphy supported another term for the complacent John Dix and had the votes to win, though it would likely split the party. Wilson opposed Dix and demanded an open convention. The delegates, he told The New York Times, “must be left free from personal control of any sort.”35
With barely a month before the election, neither Wilson nor Murphy could afford a total break. So while Wilson continued to attack the New York machine publicly, Colonel Edward M. House, his principal adviser and alter ego, negotiated with Murphy to find a compromise candidate: “some unobjectionable Tammany man … who could not bring discredit upon the party,” as House expressed it.36 The charade that followed was