Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [37]
The backward logic of this idea made his head spin—even more so considering that it was being foisted on the public as his own legislative legacy. And what rubbed him even rougher was the “TAFT 2012!” slogan that had been emblazoned across McCursky’s shirt, not to mention the shirts of at least two people Taft had seen in the diner at the next booth over.
But that wasn’t all that was on his mind. Even earlier that morning, back in the hotel room, Taft had unzipped his small leather bag of toiletries to find … himself. That is, Abby’s Taft doll. Not her old rag doll, but the fancy new plastic one—the one that had come in a box labeled “Presidential Action Figure Special Edition!”—that he’d gotten her for Christmas. It seemed she had smuggled it inside his luggage, along with a note that read: “Dear Grandpa, I hope you have a nice trip. Here’s someone to keep you company. Don’t forget about us. We’ll miss you. Love, Abby.”
The note was in the little girl’s shaky handwriting, but he could hear her voice saying the words as if she were on his lap. Her precocity knew no bounds! A Taft to the core. Yet, for some reason, Abby’s small, sweet gesture only made him feel more moody than buoyed.
It didn’t help that Chicago, as magnificent as it still seemed to be, held a bittersweet aftertaste for Taft. It was there in the summer of 1912 that the Republican National Committee had awarded him the party’s nomination, a decision overwhelmingly unfavorable to Teddy Roosevelt, who had decided to try to take the White House back from Taft. Taft had stayed in D.C. during the convention in Chicago, but Teddy—in a fiery breach of protocol, which should have surprised no one—appeared in person and finally broke all friendship ties with Taft. “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord,” Teddy had cried to his dwindling faithful, casting Taft as Satan in his thespian drama-mongering. Taft tried to keep the party together after that, pledging conciliation rather than alienation. But one thing he couldn’t do was reach out to Teddy, not after he began his preposterous run as a third-party candidate, which ultimately split the GOP vote, making way for wooden Woodrow Wilson to waltz right in. That summer in Chicago back in ’12 was, by all outward appearances, Teddy Roosevelt’s Waterloo. But it was also Taft’s—and, as he’d come to understand it, the beginning of the end of Republican progressivism as a whole.
“Bill? You okay?” Kowalczyk’s voice broke him out of his cloudy daydream. He realized that he’d pulled Abby’s Taft doll out of his jacket pocket—just so the white-whiskered head was peeking out—and had been staring at it.
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just … my mind is wandering, that’s all.”
“I’ll say,” Kowalczyk said, opening his door and putting on his sunglasses. “We’ve been parked in front of this hot dog joint for five whole minutes already, and you haven’t even twitched a muscle.”
Taft looked at the comically rotund head of the doll made in his image, the vapid grin sculpted into his tiny plastic face. “To be perfectly honest, Kowalczyk, I seem to have lost my appetite.”
Kowalczyk stared at him with an unreadable expression. He shut the car door. “Know what? I’ve got an idea.” He put the key back in the ignition and shifted into reverse. “Over the past five days we’ve eaten at Friendly’s,