Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate BiographyThayer, William Roscoe
History
Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography
Thayer, William Roscoe
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
persons who have examined the Recording Angel's book (and
research students of that original source never return), was
another towering figure whom Roosevelt had to get along with. He
found out how to do it, and to do it so amicably that it was
reported that he breakfasted often with the Ohio Senator and that
they even ate griddle-cakes and scrapple together. The Senator
evidently no more understood the alert and fascinating young
President than we under stand what is going on in the brain of a
playful young tiger, but instinct warned him that this mysterious
young creature, electrified by a thousand talents, was dangerous
and must be held down. And so with the other members of the
Republican Machine which ran both Houses of Congress and expected
to run the undisciplined President too. Roosevelt studied them
all and discovered how to deal with each.
At the beginning of the year 1904, everybody began to discuss the
next Presidential campaign. Who should be the Republican
candidate? The President, naturally, wished to be elected and
thereby to hold the office in his own right and not by the chance
of assassination. Senator Hanna surprised many of the politicians
by bagging a good many delegates for himself. He probably did not
desire to be President; like Warwick he preferred the glory of
king-maker to that of king; but he was a shrewd business man who
knew the value of having goods which, although he did not care
for them himself, he might exchange for others. I doubt whether
he deluded himself into supposing that the American people would
elect so conspicuous a representative of the Big Interests as he
was, to be President, but he knew that the fortunes of candidates
in political conventions are uncertain, and that if he had a
considerable body of delegates to swing from one man to another,
he might, if his choice won, become the power behind the new
throne as he had been behind McKinley's. And if we could suspect
him of humor he may have enjoyed fun to a mild degree in keeping
the irrepressible Roosevelt in a state of suspense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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