F rom the first , Theodore Roosevelt’s third-party campaign was crippled. Many of those who had urged him to challenge Taft— including five of the seven Republican governors— backed off when he became a Bull Moose. Those who did rally to him were devoted but disorganized and often amateurish. Taft mostly stayed off the campaign trail, convinced his cause was hopeless, but he issued statements denouncing what he saw as Roosevelt’s dangerous radicalism. “One who so lightly regards constitutional principles , and especially the independence of the judiciary,” was unfit for the presidency, he said, adding, “I say this sorrowfully, but I say it with the conviction of the truth.” Conservative newspaper publishers, Republican and Democratic alike, shared Taft’s alarm. TR, said the Houston Post, had been “the first president whose chief personal characteristic was mendacity, the first to glory in duplicity, the first braggart, the first bully.” Roosevelt and Wilson each traveled the country by train, and TR sometimes delivered thirty whistle-stop speeches a day, shadowboxing through the caboose to maintain his energy before stepping out onto the platform. He professed to love what he called “the deluge of travel and dust.” Again and again, he denounced his Democratic opponent as a secret advocate of state’s rights, a false progressive masquerading as a friend of an active federal government. But when an aide suggested that something be made of rumors concerning the married Democratic candidate’s relationship with a divorcée, TR laughed it off: “You can’t cast a man as Romeo who looks and acts so much like an apothecary clerk.” Both he and Wilson shared Wilson’s view that “the President is at liberty in both law and conscience to be as big as he can,” and both men lashed out at the giant trusts and monopolies at every stop. But Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” called only for their regulation, while Wilson’s “New Freedom ” seemed to suggest that his policies would actually break them up. Ward, Geoffrey C.; Burns, Ken (2014-09-09). The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (Kindle Locations 2458-2475). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 04:10:57 +0000