Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [324]
Bryan was gracious, even self-mocking after his third failed run for the White House. He said he identified with the legendary Texan drunk who tried to get into a bar, and was escorted out. Trying again, he was hustled out; trying yet again, he was thrown out. “I guess,” said the drunk, brushing dust from his clothes, “they don’t want me in there.”
ANY HOPES ROOSEVELT might have had that Taft would return to Washington to plot an ideologically continuous transition were disappointed when the President-elect headed straight back to Hot Springs to play golf. In his first public statement after arriving there, he announced, “I really did some great work at sleeping last night.”
Meanwhile, Roosevelt was composing an early valedictory for himself, addressed to George Otto Trevelyan:
Of course, if I had conscientiously felt at liberty to run again and try once more to hold this great office, I should greatly have liked to do so and to keep my hands on the levers of this mighty machine. I do not believe that any President has ever had as thoroly good a time as I have had, or has ever enjoyed himself as much. Moreover I have achieved a greater proportion than I had dared to think possible of the things I most desired to achieve.… Whatever comes hereafter, I have had far more than the normal share of human happiness.… But I am bound to say in addition that I cannot help looking forward to much enjoyment in the future. In fact, I am almost ashamed to say that while I would have been glad to remain as President, I am wholly unable to feel the slightest regret, the slightest sorrow, at leaving the office. I love the White House; I greatly enjoy the exercise of power; but I shall leave the White House without a pang, and, indeed, on the contrary, I am looking forward eagerly and keenly to being a private citizen again, without anybody being able to make a fuss over me or hamper my movements. I am as interested as I can be at the thought of getting back in my own house at Sagamore Hill, in the thought of the African trip, and of various things I intend to do when that is over.
He was not short of job opportunities. A large corporation offered him its presidency, at a salary of one hundred thousand dollars. The newspaperman Carr V. Van Anda offered him the editorship of a new metropolitan daily, to be formed out of a merger of the New York Sun and New York Press. The New York World suggested that he run for the Senate. Henry Adams thought he should emulate John Quincy Adams and become a Congressman. Philander Knox suggested he be made a bishop, to gratify his need to preach. A New York publisher made “a dazzling offer” for an exclusive on his postpresidential writings. G. P. Putnam’s tried to persuade him to complete his historical saga, The Winning of the West. Scribner’s offered him $25,000 for the story of his African adventure, McClure’s, $72,000, and Collier’s, $100,000. Lecture invitations came in sackfuls.
As before with the Nobel Prize, Roosevelt let his conscience, rather than greed, guide him. He had long ago been approached by the father-and-son team of Lyman and Lawrence Abbott to join their magazine, Outlook, as a contributing editor writing on current affairs. Lyman, an ordained clergyman with a strong social conscience, had been particularly persuasive. Although Outlook was not a wealthy periodical, its middle-class, mildly progressive profile appealed to Roosevelt. He gratefully remembered its support during the crises and controversies of his presidency—support that, by such a definition, had been continuous for seven years. Many magazines less loyal to him now wished to be generous, in exchange for what he could do for their circulation figures. For that reason if for no other, Roosevelt decided to accept Outlook’s offer. And in another gesture of loyalty, he signed a first-serial-and-book-rights deal with Charles P. Scribner’s Sons for fifty thousand dollars plus 20 percent royalties. In both cases, he could easily have doubled or tripled the money elsewhere. But, as he said to his editor at Scribner