By John Steele Gordon Although Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan came from the same New-York-centered, upper-class milieu, they had very different views on how the world should work. This became crystal clear on Feb. 19, 1902. That was the day that the Roosevelt administration announced that it was suing under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, previously thought a dead letter, to break up the newly formed Northern Securities Co.That company, midwifed by Morgan, was a vast transportation empire that would allow someone to journey, in the words of journalist Ray Baker, from England to China on regular lines of steamships and railroads without once passing from the protecting hollow of Mr. Morgans hand. Astonished by this unexpected turn of events, the banker hurried to Washington and famously said to Roosevelt: If we have done anything wrong, send your man to my man and they can fix it up. The remark encapsulated Morgans view of how things should be run: gentlemen reaching quiet deals to allocate profit and power for the benefit of all. But Roosevelts attorney general, present at the meeting, replied: We dont want to fix it up. We want to stop it. And stop it they did, after a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court. As Roosevelt explained, the suit served notice on everybody that it was going to be the Government . . . who governed these United States, not a capitalist plutocracy. In her very readable book The Bully Pulpit, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin explores how that moment came to be and how the debate about the role of government in regulating the economy developed over the next decade. She does this through the prism of the extraordinary relationship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, who were first close friends and political allies and then bitter political enemies. The American economy had been transformed in the decades after the Civil War as it grew from a still basically agrarian one to an industrial giant. Companies of unprecedented size and financial power, such as Standard Oil, had evolved, but the rules needed to ensure that their power was held in check had lagged far behind. The Democrats, whose base was in the impoverished rural South and the immigrant-filled big cities, wanted to tax the rich and empower labor unions but leave the corrupt big-city machines such as New Yorks Tammany Hall alone. The Republicans, whose base was the increasingly prosperous middle class and Midwestern farmers, were the party of capital. It advocated political reform but favored laissez-faire economic policies. Yet there was a wing of the Republicans, the Progressives, who wanted to reform capitalism and clean up political corruption. Roosevelt and Taft were firmly in that camp. As Ms. Goodwin amply demonstrates, Roosevelt was among the most remarkable personalities in world history, and one the country found quite irresistible. He remains a familiar and revered figure to this day, one of only a handful of presidents known by a nickname. (In fact, Roosevelt hated the nickname Teddy—his friends and family called him Theodore—but he has long since lost that battle with history.) Almost maniacally active, Roosevelt would not only rise politically from being the youngest member of the New York State Assembly to the youngest president; he would be a rancher, explorer, soldier and author of 40 books and innumerable magazine articles before dying at the young age of 60. He was, in many ways, the first modern president. His predecessor, William McKinley, had not campaigned for office and seldom met the press. But Roosevelt loved contact with the people and met frequently with journalists, whose company he enjoyed. He also traveled around the country to campaign for ideas, such as adding new national parks. In 1903, he took a nine-week, 14,000-mile train journey across much of the U.S., inviting journalists to accompany him part way. Whenever Roosevelt spotted a group of men or women waving from a distance, Ms. Goodwin writes, he raced out [to the rear platform] to lift his hat and return the greeting. His handpicked successor as president, William Howard Taft, was a different man. An immensely gifted lawyer and jurist, he disliked public speaking and the hurly-burly of politics. His ambition since his youth had been to have a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Like Roosevelt, Taft had been raised in privilege. His father, Alphonso, a lawyer like so many in the Taft family, had served as U.S. attorney general and secretary of war under President Grant and minister to both Austria-Hungary and Russia. Taft was a big man, half a head taller than Roosevelt, and he struggled with his weight all his life. While Roosevelt loved vigorous sports such as tennis, Taft played golf. And he had a much more easygoing personality; his friends described him as safe and comforting, not adjectives often applied to Roosevelt. The most important difference between them, as Ms. Goodwin astutely points out, is that while Roosevelt was driven by a fierce inner ambition, Taft was driven by a need to please others, first his father and then his politically ambitious wife. Regardless, Taft and Roosevelt became firm friends almost from the moment they met in Washington at the beginning of their political careers. When Roosevelt became president after McKinleys assassination in 1901, he pushed Taft forward. McKinley had appointed Taft the first governor-general of the Philippines, a job he loved, but Roosevelt wanted him back in Washington and offered him a seat on the Supreme Court. Taft very reluctantly refused, saying his job in the Philippines wasnt finished. Soon, however, Roosevelt named him secretary of war and made him, in effect, assistant president. Roosevelt, joking about Tafts weight, said that he felt free to leave Washington with Taft sitting on the lid. Roosevelt relentlessly advanced reform in many aspects of American life, from slaughterhouses to corporate governance to setting standards for food and medicine. Ms. Goodwins discussion of these issues allows her to introduce an additional theme: the development at this time of a new form of journalism and a coterie of its practitioners, known as the muckrakers (a phrase coined by Theodore Roosevelt), such as Ida Tarbell and William Allen White. But despite the growing popularity of the causes Roosevelt championed, Congress increasingly balked, and he had little success in his last two years in the White House. He had promised, after his election in 1904 not to seek another term—a promise he later deeply regretted. But he felt obliged to keep it and encouraged Taft to succeed him in 1909, as he sailed off to a yearlong safari in Africa. Roosevelt, a born mountain climber, was deeply unhappy that he had no more mountains to climb after the White House and increasingly moved toward the extreme Progressive wing of the Republican Party. Taft did not follow him. As Ms. Goodwin makes clear, Taft thought that the time had come to perfect the necessary regulatory machinery and to craft amendments that would ensure proper enforcement. Roosevelt, by contrast, wanted action on child labor and womens work and began advocating social-engineering schemes, such as an income tax and an inheritance tax (although the government was running surpluses) and more political reform, such as direct primaries. The Republican Party was soon deeply divided. In 1912, Roosevelt tried to wrest the nomination from Taft, but the party machinery was still firmly in the hands of the old guard and Taft won. Roosevelt bolted and formed the Bull Moose Party. His once bosom friend was now his enemy. He described Tafts acceptance speech as fatuous, inadequate, conservative. The result, of course, was to hand the 1912 election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who won with a mere 41.8% of the popular vote. It took years before the old friends reconciled. Ms. Goodwin touchingly describes the scene, in 1918, when they did. Taft learned that Roosevelt was dining alone in the hotel where Taft was staying in Chicago. A thoroughly decent and forgiving man, Taft immediately went to the dining room and greeted Roosevelt, who returned the greeting warmly. The other diners stood and applauded. A few months later Roosevelt died in his sleep. As Vice President Thomas Marshall wrote: Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight. Two years later, Taft achieved what had always been his highest ambition when President Warren Harding appointed him Chief Justice of the United States. He would serve for nine years in a post he vastly preferred to the presidency. Doris Kearns Goodwin tells this tale with her usual literary skill and deep research. Its true her discussion of muckraking goes on far too long, distracting from the main story. But though The Bully Pulpit is a long work, it is well worth the time, for Ms. Goodwin not only sheds light on the birth of the modern political world but chronicles a remarkable friendship between two remarkable men. — Mr. Gordon is the author of Hamiltons Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 20:03:23 +0000
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