The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [360]
In Louisiana, unlike Florida, Roosevelt received no immediate criticism for his federal reserve. With the presidential election just a month away, the saving of these barrier islands hardly constituted news outside New Orleans and Mobile. (And even in those communities its news value was scant.) Still deeply disliked in the South for having brought Booker T. Washington into the White House, Roosevelt knew that Louisiana’s nine electoral votes would go to the Democrats. Virtually the entire “old Confederacy”—with the exception of West Virginia and Missouri—ended up voting against Roosevelt. Bristling because southern newspapers derided him for not really having fought on San Juan Hill, Roosevelt wrote to a friend that Jefferson Davis was nothing more than an “unhung traitor,” worse than Benedict Arnold. Advocates of states’ rights were the bane of Roosevelt’s political existence. He also got into scrapes with North Carolina’s tobacco lobby and Colorado’s timber industry; they wanted his hide because of his ceaseless attempts as president to interfere with their profits.
Even though Roosevelt was popular nationally, he wasn’t particularly loved by the Republican Party bosses. They’d have preferred Mark Hanna as their nominee. The advantage of Roosevelt as a presidential candidate in 1904 was that he was unhampered by any quid pro quos. Grumbling against Roosevelt usually had to do with his reformist viewpoint. A tough, tireless, bruising campaigner, Roosevelt wrote in early 1904 that to “use the vernacular of our adopted West, you can bet your bedrock dollar that if I go down it will be with colors flying and drums beating and that I would neither truckle nor trade with any of the opposition if to do so guaranteed me the nomination and election.” While stumping, he often resembled a boxer more than a politician, punching one fist into the other to make a salient point. Full of anticipation, Roosevelt rolled into Chicago that June, dressed like a rancher and boasting of his successes in Panama and Cuba; regarding conservation, however, only the Newlands Act was cited as a chief accomplishment. There was no mention of new national parks, forests, or bird reservations. Choosing the conservative Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana as the vice-presidential nominee, Roosevelt was immediately embraced by the old guard in Chicago. By ensuring support from the Republican conservatives, Roosevelt improved his chances for victory in the fall.
Fairbanks was another Ohio Valley frontier type, who was born in a log cabin and moved west to Indiana for better farming opportunities. At six feet four inches tall, he towered over Roosevelt; and he always looked dignified in his proper Prince Albert coat even while feeding hogs at the Tarrant County Fair. Roosevelt wasn’t enthusiastic about Fairbanks, considering him an old guard type in the viselike grip of big business. Also, Fairbanks tended to mumble and was something of a bore. But in the vetting process, Roosevelt had learned that Fairbanks had few if any negatives. He proved to be an excellent choice. For all of their differences, Fairbanks was an ardent conservationist, the founder of the Indiana Forestry Association, and an angler of sorts. And Fairbanks brought both ideological and geographical balance to the ticket. While Roosevelt campaigned with fist pounding a palm, Fairbanks spoke in a clipped, un-spontaneous, dullish way. As a team Roosevelt-Fairbanks became known as “the Hot Tamale and the Indiana Icicle.”52
Roosevelt chose Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana as his running mate in 1904. Although Fairbanks was a conservative,