Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [206]
“BEGUILING MAN AFTER MAN WITH HER TWENTY-YEAR-OLD
BODY AND … ALMOST PHOSPHORESCENT EYES.”
Alice Roosevelt, 1904 (photo credit 22.2)
Odell had proved to be a gifted administrator, pushing through wider reforms than Roosevelt himself had done, saving more money, and overhauling the party machinery. Politically, however, the Governor was being overtaken by accelerating trends that he was powerless to understand, much less control. He still thought that labor should defer to capital, that New York City and New York State had more things in common than not, that party discipline guaranteed straight-ticket voting. These nineteenth-century notions were challenged by evidence that New York State’s independent vote was growing and might well return a Democrat to Albany, if not to Washington, D.C.
After two terms, Odell was not popular enough to run again. But having painstakingly made himself party boss, he wanted to remain so. Much to the disgust of Democrats, he had forced the state Republican Committee to elect him its chairman. This brazen mixing of executive politics and electioneering was sure to be a campaign issue, particularly if Odell tried to choose his own successor. Roosevelt dreaded the prospect of having to carry a heavy puppet, should the presidential race become close. New York State represented the nation’s largest block of electoral votes.
It was vital, therefore, to find a gubernatorial candidate who would be perceived as a Roosevelt Republican. Odell did not object, as long as he was consulted. He agreed with the President that one New Yorker, above all others, had the integrity and stature to sweep the state. Unfortunately, Elihu Root was adamant about remaining in private life. “I must ask my friends to accept as final the refusal of the nomination.” To make things doubly plain, he stayed away from Sagamore Hill.
The press noted Root’s absence from the notification ceremony, as did other national strategists. At their behest, Roosevelt wrote his old friend and proffered the most glittering of grails:
The Republicans of this country are turning their eyes towards you as being the man who, by present appearances, would, if elected Governor of New York, become the foremost Republican in the land, and the natural leader of the party.… You would become the man likely to be nominated by the Republicans for the Presidency in 1908.
Root politely declined. He told Henry Cabot Lodge that after serving at the national level he had developed a “perfect loathing and disgust” for the “sordid details of state politics.” He suspected that Governor Odell’s inheritance might be corrupt. Five years of overwork under two Presidents had left him drained. He was almost sixty. Even if the grail were offered him, he would be sixty-three before he could hold it. More to the point, he simply did not want it.
ON THE DAY AFTER the notification ceremony, Roosevelt returned to the capital he had so recently quit. With what John Hay described as “cheery cruelty,” he insisted that his Cabinet officers break their vacations and join him. Questions of labor and monetary policy had to be discussed before he could issue his acceptance letter, and another potential Mediterranean crisis, this time in Turkey, required group attention. Mrs. Roosevelt’s added presence indicated that he was in no hurry to go home.
Washington sweltered and stagnated. Dust settled on doorsteps in the northwest sector, etching the panels of barred doors. For block after block, blinds filled every window, giving the city an empty, eyeless look. John Hay took afternoon drives in vain search of breezes. Eastward along Pennsylvania Avenue, the air boiled silently over the sidewalks. Capitol Hill floated like a mirage about to slide over the horizon. It was too hot for birds to sing. The trees around the White House rang with beetles.
Inside, the big stone mansion was cool and fragrant with cut flowers. Roosevelt worked mornings only, debating what to do about a meat workers’ strike in Chicago, and about a treaty-breaking refusal