Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [317]
Edith was not impressed. She had met Bryan at the Governors’ Conference and decided that American voters had been right in rejecting him for the presidency twice already. “A trifle too fat and oily for the fastidious,” she wrote her sister-in-law.
Oily or not, Bryan was by no means unattractive to voters. He was an orator of legendary eloquence, unlike Taft, whose platform manner was awkward and gaffe-prone. (The Grand Army of the Republic had not appreciated his reminder, on Memorial Day, that General Grant had had a drinking problem.) Bryan, a genuine man of the people, was able to empathize with his audiences “one on one,” whereas Taft the judge manqué always sounded as if he was handing down majority opinions.
Democratic campaign planners felt that Taft’s biggest asset—his presidential backing—had counted more at the Republican Convention than it would on Election Day. By then, Roosevelt would be, ideologically, a spent force, and unless Taft built a big new political personality for himself, voters might well decide that twelve years of Republican continuity were enough.
Bryan, besides, had already had plenty of experience in leading his own party. Taft’s behavior after drafting his acceptance speech indicated a certain lack of confidence after years of submitting to Roosevelt’s will. Instead of heading straight home to Cincinnati to confer with his family and advisers, he took a detour to Oyster Bay, disastrously announcing that he needed “the President’s judgment and criticism.” Roosevelt received him at Sagamore Hill on 24 July, made a few changes to the speech, wished him well, and sent him on his way.
As Taft headed west, another visitor came to spend a few nights with the Roosevelts en famille, accompanied by Assistant Treasury Secretary Beekman Winthrop. Captain Archibald Butt, he of the glittering, much-befrogged soldierly presence at the Conservation Conference, had with astonishing speed become the President’s closest companion. Other military and naval aides had come and gone at the Roosevelt White House—among them an extraordinarily handsome West Pointer named Douglas MacArthur—but “Archie” combined personal charm and professional efficiency to such a degree that he was already indispensable.
Large, strong, plumpish, and always beautifully turned out, whether in dress blue or mufti, he was forty-two years old, unmarried, and devoted to his widowed mother, to whom he wrote almost daily. As a youth, he had been the Washington correspondent of a small group of Southern newspapers, and shown a distinct gift for social reporting. He had carried his writing habit into the Army, with vague thoughts of one day collecting and publishing extracts from his letters for publication. To such a natural scribe, appointment to the Roosevelt White House was a privilege worthy of St.-Simon. Mrs. Butt, a Georgian lady of unreconstructed views, was finding that her son was the best-informed gossip in the United States.
JULY 25, 1908
My dear Mother:
The greatest surprise to me so far has been the utmost simplicity of life at Sagamore Hill. I am constantly asking myself if this can really be the home of the President of the United States, and how is it possible for him to enforce such simplicity in his environment. It might be the home of a well-to-do farmer with literary tastes or the house of some college professor.…
There was no one at the house when we got there. Mrs. Roosevelt had been out to see some sick neighbor and the President was playing tennis. They both came in together, however, he in tennis garb and she in a simple white muslin with a large white hat of some cloth material, with flowers in it, a wabbly kind of hat which seemed to go with trees and water. He welcomed us with his characteristic handshake and she most graciously and kindly. The President was so keen for us to take a swim that he did not give us time to see our rooms before we were