Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 and 1905
Electoral Brawlage, #26
“Electoral Brawlage” examines the first inaugural address of each president in U.S. history, with some commentary and analysis. Check back on Mondays for more.
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A Dozen Years on Average
While the scope of this project normally lays with a president’s first inaugural address, Teddy’s ascension to the Presidency took an abnormal path. William McKinley’s first-term VP, Garrett A. Hobart, died in 1899 of heart disease, and at the time there was no legal mechanism for a president to replace his #2. That would come in the 1960s with the ratification of the 25th Amendment.
The 1900 GOP convention selected Teddy as the new V.P. candidate; he was popular, and a rising star in New York, an important state—though he rankled the in-state party machine. More on that in a second. McKinley-Roosevelt won 1900 with an electoral breakdown of 292-155 over William Jennings Bryan, who apparently didn’t learn his lesson the first time.
On September 6, 1901, a Polish-American anarchist shot McKinley twice in the stomach, and he died a week later from gangrene. The assassin thought that killing the president would advance the cause of anarchy. All it advanced was several thousand volts of electricity through his worthless anus when he got the chair two months later. I hope the sponge was dry.
Between Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, America had now lost three presidents to assassination in 36 years. Think about it: there were people who lived through all three of those and it had become, to some extent, normal. That would be like me at age 6 seeing Bush 41 get plugged, then twelve years later Bush 43, then twelve years later Obama. Not a great norm to establish.
The Youngest President
Teddy Roosevelt was six weeks shy of turning 43 when he assumed office, making him the youngest to ever take the job. (JFK was 43 when he was elected, so he holds an adjacent record.) Obviously it wasn’t a time for celebration, but rather it was a whirlwind of things for him, catapulting this Spanish-American War veteran and former N.Y. governor into the big chair just one year after being picked at the convention.
“I shall take the oath at once in accord with the request of you members of the Cabinet, and in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, the prosperity and the honor of our beloved country.”
You can read the full text of his 1901 assumption remarks here, about halfway down the page. It’s short.
This is regarded historically as an ironic twist, because Teddy rocked the boat in New York politics, and the Republican establishment wanted to shut him up and neutralize his influence. Crowbarring him into the V.P. slot would allow the party to use his celebrity and image for its own purposes while removing him from hands-on power. Teddy wanted to run for higher office later and stay in New York as governor, and the convention results forced him down another road.
Fate intervened, and a moronic anarchist merely caused a progressive Republican to skyrocket into the most powerful job in the world. Good job, retard.
The 1904 Election
I started including these pictures because the image speaks for itself. (We used to be a proper country, etc.) Teddy finished McKinley’s term without a VP for the aforementioned reasons. When he ran in 1904 he picked Charles Fairbanks (Indiana) as his running-mate. The Democrats nominated Alton B. Parker (New York) and Henry G. Davis (West Virginia). Roosevelt/Fairbanks took 32 states to Parker/Davis’ 13, with an Electoral breakdown of 336/140.
The popular vote was an eighteen-point chasm (56.4 to 37.6), or a difference of over two and a half million. Out of a voter base of around thirteen million, that’s not just a beatdown, that’s a prison shower. We won’t see these numbers again for a few cycles. FDR will do it in the 30s, LBJ in the 60s, Nixon in the 70s, and Reagan in the 80s. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The 1905 Inaugural
At long last we arrive at the speech. When we pine for leaders of yesteryear who talk about the American character in spiritual terms, who lay out a philosophy of virtue that captures who we are in our souls, this is the kind of leadership we’re looking for. The speech itself is short, and doesn’t tie itself to the events of the time, but rather the enduring nature of the vision we ought to hold for ourselves and for the world. Some selections:
No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness.
…
Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither…But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves.
…
If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn.
…
Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged.
…
…we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal…
Go read the whole thing. Let me know what you think.
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