Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [286]
Service was halted, and Blythe rose to announce the President of the United States. Diners laid down their forks in surprise.
Roosevelt began cordially enough, with compliments to his hosts, then swung on a “Millionaire’s Row” of financiers and lectured them on corporate control. His manner became peremptory. Men of wealth, he said, were going to have to learn to live with the reforms undertaken by his Administration. (J. Pierpont Morgan listened glowering, three places to his left.) The only alternative was a takeover of Wall Street by “the mob, the mob, the mob.”
Then, picking up his souvenir program, Roosevelt read aloud, “J. B. Foraker sez, sez he, ‘All coons look alike to me.’” He threw the booklet down in disgust. “Well, all coons do not look alike to me.”
These words were delivered in a near shout. Roosevelt stared straight into Foraker’s eyes and launched into a passionate rationale for his Brownsville action. The shad grew cold as he attacked Foraker for questioning an executive decision by the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army. Senate debate on the subject was “academic,” because he had “all power” vested in himself in such matters. And “all” meant what it said. Nobody else had any power of review of the discharges.
Diners from the back of the room stood up and crowded the aisles. Foraker sat fidgeting. After half an hour, Roosevelt ended with a few conciliatory words, and sat down amid cheers.
Blythe was faced with the choice of proceeding with the evening’s set program, already in disarray, or honoring the American rule that nobody ever speaks after the President. He elected to abandon form altogether. Once, as a boy, he had driven twenty-nine miles in a springless wagon to hear “Fire Alarm Joe” orate. He had an idea that Foraker might respond if asked to do so with the right combination of wit and suddenness.
“The hour for bloody sarcasm having arrived,” Blythe announced, “I take the liberty of calling upon Senator Foraker for some remarks.”
Foraker stood up, stark white in the face. He said that he was “embarrassed” at having to follow the President. But, Roosevelt having so clearly singled him out by word and gesture, he would respond.
The sarcasm most people were waiting for did not materialize at once. (Neither did the next course.) Foraker spoke at length in defense of his own hands-off attitude to corporate control, earning napkin waves of approval from Millionaires’ Row. Then at last he mentioned the word Brownsville, and proceeded to justify his nickname.
Never before, at the Gridiron or anywhere else, had a President been challenged before an audience. Foraker was an unusually handsome man, more than six feet tall, and his unsmiling demeanor and effortless command of language made everything he said sound oracular. Napkins fluttered elsewhere in the room as he observed, in the words of the Fourteenth Amendment, that “all persons” looked alike to him, black or white, male or female, old or young.
He noted that the President had said earlier, in reference to big businessmen, that “no man was either so high or so low that he would not give him the equal protection of the law if innocent of offense against the law.” If so, where was equal protection for the innocents of Brownsville? Roosevelt had himself admitted that many “absolutely innocent” soldiers had been branded as criminals in his discharge order. First Sergeant Mingo Sanders, with twenty-six years of service and a record of bravery in battle, was left dependent and disgraced “when he was nearing the time when he would have a right to retire on pay, without honor”—even though Foraker knew, and had reason to believe Roosevelt knew, “that he was as innocent of any offense against the law of any kind whatever as the President himself.”
Roosevelt half rose from his seat. Blythe had to restrain him, saying that he would have “a chance for rebuttal” after the Senator finished. Foraker proceeded to squander his great moment, going on so long that Roosevelt again tried to interrupt, and was again held back.