The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [262]
He was always at his best in situations of this kind. Something about united opposition stimulated his adrenaline and accelerated the natural rapidity of his mind. As he launched into the main body of his speech, beginning with a ferocious attack upon Senator Hill, he gave off a clean glow of health and strength. His skin stretched brown and taut around the muscular neck; his eyes shone clear blue through flashing pince-nez; he crouched slightly forward, as if posing for a spring. There was something canine about his eager alertness. A Chicago correspondent, searching for similes, tried “mastiff,” but then settled on “greyhound, crossed with a terrier.”106
Senator Hill has done me the honor to take me as the antitype of his political methods and political views, and has singled me out for attack in connection with the Excise Law. Senator Hill’s complaint is that I honestly enforce the law which he and Tammany put on the statute books … [His] assault upon that honest enforcement is the admission, in the first place, that it never has been honestly enforced before, and, in the next place, that he never expected it to be … It is but natural that he and Tammany should grow wild with anger at the honest enforcement of the law, for it was a law which was intended to be the most potent weapon in keeping the saloons subservient allies to Tammany Hall.
With a law such as this, enforced only against the poor or the honest man and violated with impunity by every rich scoundrel and every corrupt politician, the machine did indeed seem to have its yoke on the neck of the people.
But we throw off that yoke, and no special pleading of Senator Hill can avail to make us put it on … Where justice is bought, where favor is the price of money or political influence, the rich man held his own and the poor man went to the wall. Now all are treated exactly alike.107
With Commissioners Parker and Andrews nodding approval on either side of him, and applause mounting as his sincerity filled the room, Roosevelt argued that honest enforcement of an unpopular law was the most effective way to bring about its repeal. Legislators should think twice in future about passing laws to favor some voters, then neglecting them to please others. Abuse of the statute-book was a mockery of civilization. Inevitably it led to anarchy and violence. Using one of his typically brilliant, if far-fetched analogies, he compared the excise phenomenon with the lynchings phenomenon in the Deep South. In each case the tyranny of a small, powerful mob had brought about a perversion of the law; in each case the authorities accepted the perversion on the grounds that it represented “popular sentiment.” To those who advised him to pay heed to the latter, Roosevelt cried: “My answer is that I have to do with popular sentiment only as this sentiment is embodied in legislation.” Insisting that he was not against the Germans, nor the Catholics, but acting on behalf of all good Americans, he concluded emphatically: “It is the plain duty of a public officer to stand steadfastly for the honest enforcement of the law.”108
It was a classic Roosevelt performance: aggression, vehemence, frankness, and authority, expressed in sentences a child could understand. The applause was long and respectful, and he sat down looking “exceedingly pleased” with himself.109 Commissioner Parker rose to make a few remarks of support, and the evening ended with three hearty Teutonic cheers for the reform Police Board. The Chicago correspondent went home to report that Theodore Roosevelt was “undeniably the biggest man in New York, if not the most interesting man in public life.”110
AMONG OTHER SUPERLATIVES lavished on Roosevelt next morning was a telegram from the venerable Senator George F. Hoar, patriarch of the Republican party:
YOUR SPEECH IS THE BEST SPEECH THAT HAS BEEN MADE ON THIS CONTINENT FOR THIRTY YEARS. I AM GLAD TO KNOW THAT THERE IS A MAN BEHIND IT