Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [274]
Taft was warm dough to Root’s cold iron. He presented no hard edge to the public, or indeed to the President, who imagined that the dough could be permanently imprinted “T.R.” There were other possible Republican candidates, of course, such as Speaker Cannon and Senator Foraker on the right, and Senator Beveridge on the left. Roosevelt was not averse to flattering any of them in front of reporters, but as long as Chief Justice Fuller stayed alive, he saw his successor in Taft.
The Washington Post joked that he did not really need one. “There is but one man who can prevent the Republican party from nominating Theodore Roosevelt for re-election in 1908, and that man is Theodore Roosevelt himself.”
JOSEPH B. FORAKER gave early notice of being as much a presidential scourge in the next session of Congress as he had been during the last. In an unctuous telegram received just before Roosevelt’s departure from Oyster Bay on 28 September, he wrote, “I fear it may be unwelcome to call your attention to the fact that under our treaty with Cuba … consent is given to the United States, not to the President, to intervene on certain specified grounds.” Congressional approval was required before troops could be sent and local authority usurped. “Pardon me for saying this is an awfully serious matter, with far-reaching serious consequences.”
Roosevelt could not deny the treaty, nor the serious view Foraker took of everything, even jokes. He replied with polite restraint. “I am sure you will agree with me that it would not have been wise to summon Congress to consider the situation in Cuba, which was changing from week to week and almost from day to day.… You, my dear Senator, are the last man to advocate my playing a part like President Buchanan or failing to take the responsibility that the President must take if he is fit for his position.” So far, he had taken only “tentative” steps toward intervention, and would look to Congress for a “permanent policy” in December. In the meantime, he reserved his right to intervene directly if necessary. There had been a near-total breakdown of government in Havana, with Estrada Palma insisting on full American control rather than any power-sharing with the insurrectos.
Privately, Roosevelt seethed at the censorious tone of Foraker’s telegram. The Senator had known him since his first participation in a Republican presidential convention, at Chicago in 1884. They had been fellow sponsors of a resolution nominating a black man as temporary chairman of the proceedings. Since then, their relations had been formal rather than friendly, although Foraker had supported Roosevelt’s nomination for the vice presidency and publicly praised him for entertaining Booker T. Washington. Now, however, Foraker had presumed to question his authority as Commander-in-Chief.
“He is a very powerful and very vindictive man,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge, “and he is one of the most unblushing servers and beneficiaries of corporate wealth within or without office that I have ever met. It is possible that he has grown to feel so angry over my course, that is, over my having helped rescue the Republican party and therefore the country from the ruin into which, if he had his way …”
Lodge was so used to Theodore’s eruptions that he did not notice, or choose to notice, incipient signs of executive paranoia. He was more concerned with protecting the President in the event of any open clash with Foraker. After many years of side-by-side service in the Senate, Lodge knew that “Fire Alarm Joe” could be a dangerous adversary.
Foraker was now sixty years old. Tall and spare, with steel-gray hair and more steel, apparently, infusing his spine, he personified the railroads he defended. As a result, he was often caricatured as the ultimate Old Guard reactionary. If Roosevelt’s predominant humor was blood, Foraker’s was phlegm: his coldness repelled as much as it intimidated. Only