Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [287]
Foraker grew maudlin. There had been a time, as the President well knew, “when I loved him as though one of my own family.” He still had “an affectionate regard for him,” and had for the most part “cordially supported all the measures of his Administration.” At last he sat down. Such a hubbub ensued, with members crowding to congratulate him, that Blythe’s gavel was unable to restore calm. Then Foraker heard a familiar high-pitched voice, and saw the President standing, appealing to be heard.
The noise subsided to a buzz that continued throughout Roosevelt’s rebuttal. It muted what was, to attentive listeners, an exquisitely lethal moment, when he suggested that Foraker’s defense of the Brownsville rioters was consistent with the Senator’s enthusiastic backing, some years before, of a convicted double murderer for United States Marshal.
It was now nearly midnight, and 266 uneaten dinners had coagulated in the Willard kitchen. The buzz of conversation continued, but an air of unresolved disharmony hung over the tables. Uncle Joe Cannon got up in an attempt to clear it. “If the floor of this great hall should suddenly cave in, and all the people here be precipitated to the cellar … it would not deter the progress of the United States.”
There was little applause. Roosevelt sat fiddling with a fork until Blythe called for a concluding song, then declared the Twenty-second Annual Dinner of the Gridiron adjourned.
WHATEVER SHAKY REPUTATION for confidentiality the club had managed to preserve after Roosevelt’s “Man with the Muckrake” speech was demolished by the Roosevelt-Foraker clash. A detailed account, with “exit interviews,” was published in The Washington Post. The scandal was immense, the political consequences immediate.
“IF THE FLOOR OF THIS GREAT HALL SHOULD SUDDENLY CAVE IN …”
Speaker Joseph Cannon, ca. 1907 (photo credit 28.1)
Roosevelt jeered at Winthrop Murray Crane’s concern that the alienated Foraker would cause “a split” in the Republican Party, big enough to elect a Democrat in 1908.
“I call that a splinter,” he said.
Far from aggravating the party’s inner tensions, he felt that he had moved at just the right time to prevent a split. Fate had conspired to put in his way a provocative cartoon caption, a row of financiers, and Foraker himself—the man most likely to get Wall Street’s vote in 1908, if something lethal was not done to him soon—in front of the most power-packed audience Washington could muster. It had been a rhetorical opportunity irresistible even to a President who loved to eat. His lecture to the plutocrats and segue to an attack on Foraker had branded the Senator as an apologist for wealth, if only by association. Conversely, by his reiteration of the War Department’s case against the Twenty-fifth Infantry, he had shown himself to be someone who stuck to moral principles. Distasteful though the spectacle of a President and Senator squabbling had been to some guests, Roosevelt’s “favorite audience”—a mythical grizzled farmer reading a newspaper at fireside—would probably see a confrontation of Right v. Wrong, or Executive v. Legislative, or Authority v. Anarchy, or whatever other antitheses suggested themselves.
Closer to home, political professionals saw an effective blow in favor of Taft against Foraker for the nomination in 1908. The Secretary (who had accompanied Roosevelt to the Gridiron dinner) was actually a reluctant party to the Brownsville discharges. He had been on vacation at the time of the incident, and the first prosecutorial steps had been taken in Oyster Bay. Taft’s subsequent attempt to suspend the discharges and get a “rehearing” of the evidence against the soldiers had been prompted by an emotional appeal on their behalf from the president of the National Association of Colored Women. Most recently, he had annoyingly drawn Roosevelt’s attention to a conflict in the testimony of the eyewitness who “saw” black soldiers kill Frank Natus, and suggested that the Senate be informed.
These scruples were, however, kept confidential, so Taft had come away from the New Willard