Theodore Rex (77 page)

“AS ALWAYS WHEN THE PRESIDENT WAS HAPPY
HIS HAPPINESS TOUCHED THOSE AROUND HIM.”
Theodore and Edith Roosevelt receiving at a White House garden party
(photo credit 20.1)

The Kaiser could yet turn nasty if Roosevelt did not make good his own Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, and place Santo Domingo under American receivership. Juan Franco Sanchez, the Dominican Minister of Foreign Affairs, was in Washington practically begging for annexation. Roosevelt saw political problems if he agreed. Any new protectorate, coinciding with his acquisition of the Canal Zone, was likely to reactivate the pesky Anti-Imperialist League, and give the Democrats a major campaign issue. Cuba was
libre
and the Philippines, thanks to Taft, pretty well pacified; his own youthful appetite for empire was gone.

He searched for a simile strong enough to express his distaste for another
insular possession: “
I have about the same desire to annex it as a gorged boa constrictor might have to swallow a porcupine wrong end to.”

TWO MONTHS AFTER
Mark Hanna’s death, the question of who should be the new chairman of the Republican National Committee had not been resolved. Elihu Root, prospering hugely as a Wall Street attorney, declined to serve. Three other candidates pleaded ill health: Henry Clay Payne of Wisconsin, Winthrop Murray Crane of Massachusetts, and the septuagenarian Cornelius N. Bliss of New York. The last, a veteran of McKinley’s first Cabinet, had such excellent corporate connections, not to mention “stainless honor and purity,” that Roosevelt urged him to reconsider. Bliss said he would think about it.

In the meantime, the President felt free to set his own Republican agenda, in a series of indiscretions calculated to heave fresh sod on Hanna’s grave. He preached conservation to the National Wholesale Lumber Dealers’ Association, and political morality to Republican professionals. He meddled in the gubernatorial politics of New York and Missouri, ordered a draft platform for the convention, considered and approved a mysterious proposal to translate American campaign literature into Bohemian, and grossly flattered the first national assembly of American periodical publishers: “It is always a pleasure for a man in public life to meet the real governing classes.”

Hearing that some desperate Democrats were trying to persuade Grover Cleveland to run against him, he circulated among newspaper editors (“for your private use”) a note from the former President that appeared to support his labor policies during the coal strike.
Cleveland fumed with rage: “I am amazed at Roosevelt.… There are some people in this country that need lessons in decency and good manners.”

“
Theodore thinks of nothing, talks of nothing, and lives for nothing but his political interests,” Henry Adams noted. “If you remark to him that God is Great, he asks naïvely how that will affect his election.”

Old Guard Republicans worried about the undignified spectacle of a President campaigning for his own office. He was supposed to put himself in the hands of party professionals. McKinley had successfully sat out two campaigns at home in Canton, Ohio; here was “Teddy” virtually setting up pre-convention headquarters in the White House.

The most that conservatives could do, until the party organized itself at the national convention in June, was beg Roosevelt not to go public with his spring exercise schedule, lest tabloid newspapers beholden to William Randolph Hearst depict him as a clown, or worse still, a snob. Skinny-dipping in Rock Creek Park, rough-riding on Bleistein, and tennis—that effete, Anglophile pastime of the rich—all carried a high degree of political risk. Aides
shuddered at the memory of last year’s tour-bus megaphones on West Executive Avenue.

Reluctantly, in view of the marvelous weather, the President continued to exercise indoors. After some vain efforts to strangle his Japanese wrestling instructor, he managed three new throws that were “perfect corkers.” As a result, he was mottled all over with bruises, and lame in both big toes, the right ankle, left wrist, and thumb.

HIS SIGNATURE FINGERS
still worked, however. On 28 April he scrawled
Theodore Roosevelt
at the bottom of the last sheet of legislation to come his way before Congress adjourned: “An Act to Provide for the Temporary Government of the Canal Zone at Panama, the Protection of the Canal Works, and Other Purposes.” Simultaneously in Paris, documents confirming the sale and conveyance of French rights were signed. Thus, as the largest real-estate transaction in history was consummated, the largest engineering project in history was begun.

Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who had waited in New York for this moment, sailed for France. His last request of Panama was that the diplomatic salary he had declined should be put toward a monument to Ferdinand de Lesseps, the canal’s progenitor. For better or worse, the completed waterway (he could see it already, blue and brimming from Gatun to Balboa) would be identified with a more contemporary hero. Both men would always, for him, merit
the supreme adjective
great
.

“
I HAVE TAKEN
possession of, and now occupy, on behalf of the United States, the Canal Zone and public land ceded by the Republic of Panama,” Roosevelt announced.

By terms of treaty and act, he could exercise as much military, civil, and judicial authority as he liked in the Zone. But he immediately delegated this authority to his Secretary of War. Taft was a proven, brilliant colonial administrator, sensitive to native pride. The Panamanians, who showed early signs of being temperamental neighbors, would be soothed by him. “A more high-minded and disinterested man does not live,” Roosevelt wrote fondly.

He sent Taft an official letter, stipulating a government and constitution for the Zone in precise, peremptory language. Power was to be invested in a new, seven-man Isthmian Canal Commission, already appointed. This would be chaired, as the old commission had been, by Admiral John G. Walker. Major General George W. Davis, USMC, was appointed Governor of the Zone. All but one of the other Commission members were engineers.

Roosevelt ordered Taft to “supervise and direct” this body, as he had the Philippines Commission. On the plainly administrative level, it could be
trusted to regulate, recruit, survey, purchase, and disburse. The basic privileges of the Bill of Rights were guaranteed to all inhabitants of the Z
one, except—as he robustly specified—“idiots, the insane, epileptics, paupers, criminals, professional beggars [and] persons afflicted with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases.” For good measure, he threw in felons, anarchists, and
insurrectos
.

Sanitary reform along the lines of General Wood’s pioneering work in Havana was “a matter of first importance,” the President wrote. “I desire that every possible effort be made to protect our officers and workmen from the dangers of tropical and other diseases, which in the past have been so prevalent and destructive in Panama.”

ON 10 MAY
, Cornelius Bliss formally declined the party chairmanship. A few days later, J. Hampton Moore, leader of the youth-oriented National Republican League, hurried to Washington to press the name of Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania. Roosevelt could not see Moore until the late afternoon.

“
You might as well know,” the President said, “that I shall recommend George B. Cortelyou.”

Shadows stole across the lawn outside, darkening the Executive Office windows. Moore stared at Roosevelt, trying to gauge his expression. Was that a smile, or a grin? Perhaps he was baring his teeth in anticipation of a fight, because this appointment was sure to upset the Republican Old Guard. They would want to know how an impoverished ex-stenographer, not quite forty-two, could possibly raise millions of dollars from the likes of J. P. Morgan, let alone manage the immense complexity of a national campaign.

Roosevelt seemed to have no such doubts. He rambled on about how young Republicans might help him win in November. Both he and Moore were aware that, even as they talked, an Old Guard stalwart lay near death in the reddening hills of western Pennsylvania.
Senator Matthew Quay, master manipulator of so many national conventions, had bought his last delegate. So had Mark Hanna, already nothing more than a name set in stone in Cleveland.

Farther west still, in Wisconsin, the political careers of John Coit Spooner and Henry Clay Payne were in decline. Governor LaFollette had completed his takeover of that state’s organization, and was threatening to send a radical delegation to Chicago. “
The last consignment of Great Captains of the Republican Party are passing into the twilight,” the New York
Sun
mourned. Even that venerable newspaper, expositor of corporate conservatism for so many years, had had its day. Its famous symbol—an orb half hidden behind a black mountain—looked more like dusk than dawn.