Theodore Roosevelt by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online

have much preferred the governor-generalship of the Philippines. But Lodge, who saw himself, and with every justification, as the guardian of his friend’s career, insisted that the vice presidency was the right next step, and Roosevelt was nominated, elected, and rendered twenty-sixth president of the United States by the bullet of Leon Czolgosz on September 14, 1901.
    William McKinley, in his first term and in his brief interrupted second, had been a conservative president, the choice and favorite of large industrial and financial interests, and his successor by no means shared this esteem. Indeed, the right wing of the Republicans had conspired to get rid of him, and now, as Mark Hanna wailed: “Look what we’ve got! That damned cowboy is president of the United States!” Certainly, they saw Roosevelt as a threat, but it is not clear that they saw him as a progressive, or what they would have termed a socialist, threat. It is more likely that they saw him, as in Hanna’s eyes, as an irresponsible and unpredictable cowboy with a wild record of persecuting businesses for minor infractions of the law and a distressing tendency to call for taxes on corporations.
    Just when in his career, then, did TR gain his reputation as a social reformer? None of his three closest friends and advisers, Lodge, Root, or William Howard Taft, were noted liberals.
    Elihu Root, who until their breakup in 1912 was the most respected of the three by TR, though Lodge was always the most intimate, was a witty sardonic man who was never afraid to puncture any man’s bubble, including Roosevelt’s, with a lethally aimed barb. A brilliant Wall Street corporation lawyer and a stalwart of the Republican Party, he had first come to TR’s close attention when he was retained to straighten out the near scandal aroused in the gubernatorial campaign by the discovery that Roosevelt had given his residence as the District of Columbia in a tax return. Edmund Morris has described Root’s method of work so well that I quote it in full:
    Root set to work on Roosevelt’s affidavits and correspondence. Analysis of the latter showed that the candidate was more sinned against than sinning; he had received foolish advice from family lawyers and accountants, despite repeated pleas to them to protect his voting rights. But the cold evidence was embarrassing. Roosevelt had definitely declared himself the resident of another state during the required period of eligibility. Root decided to prepare a brief on varying interpretations of the word resident, mixing many “dry details” with sympathetic extracts from Roosevelt’s letters, plus a lot of patriotic “ballyhoo” calculated both to obfuscate and inspire.
    It is not hard to imagine what TR may have suffered from Root’s sarcastic remarks as he explained this brief to his client, but he was always to take Root’s cracks with commendable equanimity, realizing that his candor was an integral part of his sagacity. And Root’s devotion to and admiration of Roosevelt was strong and constant. Even Edith, who did not like Root because he had once expressed satisfaction that her husband had damaged an arm on one of his overly athletic excursions around Washington, agreed that he was a valuable adviser, in that nothing deterred him from speaking his mind.
    Root, as the counsel for giant business interests, was hardly a liberal cabinet member in either of the offices he held, War and State, but he was a sane and solid administrator, later an able senator, and he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Nor was Lodge anything like a radical, though his respect for an earlier and more ethical and gentlemanly generation of Boston merchants, including his own forebears, had engendered a certain lofty scorn for the cruder new rich of his day. And Taft, who seemed to have proved himself a staunch supporter of Roosevelt’s Square Deal, was to veer to the right when he