Read Online Roosevelt by James MacGregor Burns - Free Book Online
Authors: James MacGregor Burns
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extensive activity in local volunteer firemen’s associations had given him strategic contacts in every locality. But he had one crucial weak point. In his two terms in the senate he had generally lined up with the Old Guard.
Faced with this situation, Roosevelt decided to make bossism versus clean government the issue. It was easy for him to do this; he was equipped to do little else. At Groton and Harvard, politics had been pictured for him as a battleground of good men against bad. Clean government rather than progressive government had been the battle cry of his father and other Cleveland Democrats. What could be more natural than to pitch his campaign on this note? To be sure, Roosevelt exploited the Republican cleavage between standpatters and progressives. But even though this was 1910, progressivism was not the issue on which the young politician based his campaign.
Quite the contrary. Roosevelt’s essential strategy was to blur over the progressive-conservative split and to direct his appeals as much to Republicans and independents as to Democrats. This nonpartisan strategy took these forms:
He denounced Democratic and Republican bosses with equal fervor.
He talked in generalities, avoiding specifics that might leave him in a partisan posture.
He virtually ignored the state Democratic ticket and party record.
He played up his relationship with Uncle Ted. “I’m not Teddy,” he started off at one meeting. “A little shaver said to me the other day that he knew I wasn’t Teddy—I asked him ‘why’ and he replied: ‘Because you don’t show your teeth.’ ”
He shunned national issues that might split the voters along party lines. “I have personally never been able to see that the National politics of a candidate for a State or local office makes very much difference,” he wrote later to a Republican.
He allied himself with “good” Republicans. After Roosevelt haddenounced Schlosser for blocking the reform measures of Charles Evans Hughes, Republican governor of New York at this time, Roosevelt was asked if he favored Hughes’s policies. “You bet I do,” he shot back.
This strategy was pointless, however, unless Roosevelt solved the basic problem facing all campaigners—getting through to the people, establishing contact with them. He began with the handicap of not being well known even in his home town of Hyde Park. To cover his huge, 25,000-square-mile district by horse and buggy would be hopeless. He met the problem head on in Rooseveltian fashion. There was only one automobile in the area—a big red Maxwell, with shining brass lamps but lacking windshield or top. This Roosevelt hired and decorated with flags and bunting. Cars at the time were unpredictable and they scared farmers’ horses, but the Maxwell covered much of the area at twenty-five miles an hour and attracted a good deal of attention. So successful was this method that a charge by Representative Hamilton Fish (father of Roosevelt’s New Deal opponent) that Roosevelt was not even a bona fide resident of the district fell rather flat.
Roosevelt was not yet an orator. “He spoke slowly,” his wife remembered later, “and every now and then there would be a long pause, and I would be worried for fear he would never go on.” But he quickly picked up political gimmicks. He remembered to speak a good word for the particular town he was in. He learned quickly to adapt his arguments to his audience. Like a good salesman he brought up his own candidacy only after establishing a bond between his audience and himself on other matters. Already he was using the phrase “my friends.” Sometimes there were traces of the oratorical techniques to come, such as his use of the repetitive phrase when he said that he did not know whether Schlosser (Roosevelt had not yet learned the importance of ignoring his opponent’s name) represented the local boss or represented only Schlosser, but “I do know that he hasn’t represented me and
Faced with this situation, Roosevelt decided to make bossism versus clean government the issue. It was easy for him to do this; he was equipped to do little else. At Groton and Harvard, politics had been pictured for him as a battleground of good men against bad. Clean government rather than progressive government had been the battle cry of his father and other Cleveland Democrats. What could be more natural than to pitch his campaign on this note? To be sure, Roosevelt exploited the Republican cleavage between standpatters and progressives. But even though this was 1910, progressivism was not the issue on which the young politician based his campaign.
Quite the contrary. Roosevelt’s essential strategy was to blur over the progressive-conservative split and to direct his appeals as much to Republicans and independents as to Democrats. This nonpartisan strategy took these forms:
He denounced Democratic and Republican bosses with equal fervor.
He talked in generalities, avoiding specifics that might leave him in a partisan posture.
He virtually ignored the state Democratic ticket and party record.
He played up his relationship with Uncle Ted. “I’m not Teddy,” he started off at one meeting. “A little shaver said to me the other day that he knew I wasn’t Teddy—I asked him ‘why’ and he replied: ‘Because you don’t show your teeth.’ ”
He shunned national issues that might split the voters along party lines. “I have personally never been able to see that the National politics of a candidate for a State or local office makes very much difference,” he wrote later to a Republican.
He allied himself with “good” Republicans. After Roosevelt haddenounced Schlosser for blocking the reform measures of Charles Evans Hughes, Republican governor of New York at this time, Roosevelt was asked if he favored Hughes’s policies. “You bet I do,” he shot back.
This strategy was pointless, however, unless Roosevelt solved the basic problem facing all campaigners—getting through to the people, establishing contact with them. He began with the handicap of not being well known even in his home town of Hyde Park. To cover his huge, 25,000-square-mile district by horse and buggy would be hopeless. He met the problem head on in Rooseveltian fashion. There was only one automobile in the area—a big red Maxwell, with shining brass lamps but lacking windshield or top. This Roosevelt hired and decorated with flags and bunting. Cars at the time were unpredictable and they scared farmers’ horses, but the Maxwell covered much of the area at twenty-five miles an hour and attracted a good deal of attention. So successful was this method that a charge by Representative Hamilton Fish (father of Roosevelt’s New Deal opponent) that Roosevelt was not even a bona fide resident of the district fell rather flat.
Roosevelt was not yet an orator. “He spoke slowly,” his wife remembered later, “and every now and then there would be a long pause, and I would be worried for fear he would never go on.” But he quickly picked up political gimmicks. He remembered to speak a good word for the particular town he was in. He learned quickly to adapt his arguments to his audience. Like a good salesman he brought up his own candidacy only after establishing a bond between his audience and himself on other matters. Already he was using the phrase “my friends.” Sometimes there were traces of the oratorical techniques to come, such as his use of the repetitive phrase when he said that he did not know whether Schlosser (Roosevelt had not yet learned the importance of ignoring his opponent’s name) represented the local boss or represented only Schlosser, but “I do know that he hasn’t represented me and
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