The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [375]
It was also true that there was a growing vice-presidential boom for the Governor in Washington. Lodge had intensified his efforts to swing the nomination for Roosevelt, to the extent of going to the White House and asking McKinley point-blank for the chairmanship of the convention. The President, taken aback, agreed at once. Lodge also got the impression that McKinley was “perfectly content” to have Roosevelt on the ticket.32 But then McKinley also seemed to be perfectly content with everything.
Lodge’s own correspondence with Roosevelt dangled a tempting bait, conditional on his acceptance of the nomination: the chance to become the first Governor-General of the Philippines. He informed his friend, with what truth one cannot tell, that McKinley would be favorable to the appointment, once the current native insurrection against U.S. rule was crushed.33 That might take another year or two, during which time Roosevelt, as Vice-President, would remain close to McKinley’s elbow, and be available for instant nomination whenever the insurgent general, Emilio Aguinaldo, surrendered.
It so happened that no job, short of the Presidency itself, so appealed to Roosevelt. Convinced as he might be that Cuba deserved its freedom from Spanish rule, he was equally convinced that the Philippines needed the benison of an American colonial administration. “I … feel sure that we can ultimately help our brethren so far forward on the path of self-government and orderly liberty that that beautiful archipelago shall become a center of civilization for all eastern Asia and the islands round about.…”34
However, this bright vision was, he sensed, altogether too remote to pursue by the devious route Lodge recommended. Pressed to give his friend a decision on the Vice-Presidency, he wrote on 2 February: “With the utmost reluctance I have come to a conclusion that is against your judgment.” Then, with recourse to his favorite metaphor:
American politics are kaleidoscopic, and long before the next five years are out, the kaleidoscope is certain to have been many times shaken and some new men to have turned up.… Now the thing to decide at the moment is whether I shall try for the Governorship again, or accept the Vice-Presidency, if offered. I have been pretty successful as Governor … There is ample work left for me to do in another term—work that will need all of my energy and capacity—in short, work well worth any man’s doing … But in the Vice-Presidency I could do nothing. I am a comparatively young man yet and I like to work. I do not like to be a figurehead. It would not entertain me to preside in the Senate … I could not do anything; and yet I would be seeing continually things I would like to do … Finally the personal element comes in. Though I am a little better off than the Sun correspondent believes, I have not sufficient means to run the social side of the Vice-Presidency as it ought to be run. I should have to live very simply, and would be always in the position of “poor man at a frolic.” … So, old man, I am going to declare decisively that I want to be Governor and do not want to be Vice President.35
Lodge’s reaction to this flat refusal was ambiguous, while Senator Platt proved deaf to Roosevelt’s heavy hint, “Now, I should like to be Governor for another term.…”36 On 3 February, Roosevelt discovered why. The big insurance companies of New York, furious over his ouster of Payn, had “to a man” joined the franchise corporations already prevailing upon Platt to kick the Governor upstairs. This