Gore Vidal - Empire

Even so, Hay wrote, in large letters, “The Square Deal,” with slightly embellished capitals; then he ran his pen through the phrase. He was not up to such a speech. Let Theodore do his own ranting. At the last Cabinet meeting, Root had declined the honor of serving as campaign manager; and Theodore had been plainly rattled. The post had gone to the secretary of commerce (a needless new department, created by Roosevelt), Mr. Cortelyou, a soothing presence, and reminder of McKinley’s golden age, now as remote to Hay as Lincoln’s time of blood. There would be no talk of a square deal at St. Louis.

Hay stared out the window, as one lonely village after another moved by the train’s window, an endless cyclorama of sameness. The pale spring light made the houses seem more than ever shabby, in contrast to the bright yellow-green foliage of trees and spring wheat. Was it April 15 or 16? he wondered. Without Adee-or a newspaper nearby-he never knew the date any more. If it was April 15, then it was the thirty-ninth anniversary of the murder of Lincoln. Hardly anyone was left from that time. Mary Todd had died, mad, at Springfield in 1882; her death long since preceded by that of the beloved child Tad. Only the eldest son, Robert Lincoln, survived; a chilly railroad magnate, largely indifferent to his father’s memory. Once Hay and Nicolay had finished their life of Lincoln, Hay’s connection with Robert was, for all practical purposes, at an end. They were no longer comfortable with each other; yet thirty-nine years ago, they had been drinking together when the White House doorkeeper had rushed into the room, with the news. “The President’s been shot!” And together they had gone to the boardinghouse near Ford’s Theater, to watch the Ancient die.

Hay was beginning to find concentration difficult. Usually, the familiar act of setting pen to paper caused him to think precisely. But now he wool-gathered, lulled by the regular metallic clicking of the train’s wheels on the rails. Foreign affairs would be a safer subject than the evanescent square deal. The war between Russia and Japan was of great significance; but how was he to explain it to the public, when he could never explain it to the President? He found alarming the fact that Kaiser and President were growing altogether too friendly; they were not unalike in their sense of imperial charismatic mission. Each tended to regard the collapse of the Tsar’s eastern empire as a good thing. On the other hand, Hay thought that a victorious Japan in the Pacific would mean nothing but trouble for the United States, and its new bright Pacific empire.

“Open Doors,” Hay wrote, without his usual pride in the famous histrionic formula that had worked once; and might again. Dare he mention the mysterious enlargement of the German fleet? Was there, as some suspected, a German plot to destroy the British empire, and undermine the United States by means of all those-how many millions now?-German immigrants, with their own newspapers, communities, nostalgia? But the President put no credence in such a plot. He thought he understood the Kaiser and the Germans. Hay knew that he understood this barbaric tribe; and Hay feared them. With Russia crippled by Japan to Germany’s east, the Kaiser could move west. “Piece,” wrote Hay; was he losing his mind? He crossed out the word; wrote “peace”; then “meat.” At least he spelled that right. Ever since the tainted-meat scandal during the war with Spain, government action had been called for, and, finally, Roosevelt had come up with a Meat Inspection Act, which Congress had rejected. This was definitely good government, but Hay rather doubted if he could extract much rhetorical magic from the subject.

Henry Adams coughed politely. “Do I intrude on the creative process?”

“I was trying to make lyrical the Meat Inspection Act. But nothing scans.” Hay shut the notebook. A steward appeared with tea. “Mrs. Hay says you are to drink this, sir.”

“Then I shall.”

Hay and Adams stared out the window, as if expecting to see something of great interest. But all was a sameness, thought Hay.

“Theodore Rex worries about his-Rexness,” said Hay, at last.

“No need, even with Mark Hanna dead.” The monster of corruption had died in February, busy collecting a war-chest for the nomination not of himself but of Roosevelt. The two enemies had long since come to an understanding. As for the Democratic side, their paladin William C. Whitney had also died in February. Without Whitney, there was no one-except Hearst-who could finance a winning campaign. Everything would flow Roosevelt’s way; yet Adams was puzzled. “Why didn’t Root take on the job as campaign manager?”

Hay took morbid pleasure in his reply. “He was-is, perhaps, still-convinced that he has a cancer of the breast.”

Adams’s look of surprise was highly pleasing. “Surely, only the ladies have been chosen for this especial mark of God’s favor.”

“The ladies-and Elihu Root. Anyway, he had a tumor removed, and I’m sure he’s all right now. What a president he might have made.”

“Why do you say ‘might have’?”

“He is a lawyer, too much involved with the wicked corporations and trusts. And then the miners’ strike…” The miners’ strike of 1902 had caused so much panic in the land that Roosevelt had threatened to take over the mines, as receiver; since public opinion was on the side of the miners, the threat was popular. Although public opinion was seldom heeded, Roosevelt feared that demagogues like Bryan and Hearst might try to unleash the mob, and so, to forestall revolution, he sent Root to force the ownership, J. Pierpont Morgan himself, to give the miners a wage increase while keeping them to a nine-hour day in hazardous conditions. Roosevelt took the credit for settling the strike. Root took the blame from both workers and owners for an unsatisfactory settlement; and lost forever the presidency.

“To what extent does your brother, Brooks, influence Theodore?” When in serious doubt, Hay believed in directness.

Henry Adams cocked his head, rather like a bald, bearded owl. “You are with His Majesty every day. I am not.”

“You see Brooks…”

“… as little as possible. To see him is to hear him.” Adams shuddered. “He is the most bloodthirsty creature I have ever known. He wants a war, anywhere will do, as long as we end up as custodian of northern China. Domestically, ‘We must have a new deal,’ he wrote me, so we shall have to suppress the states in favor of a centralized dictatorship at Washington. Does he write Theodore often?”

Hay nodded. “But I am not in their confidence. I don’t love war enough. What shall I say in St. Louis about our enormous achievements?”

Adams smiled, showing no teeth. “You can say that the most marvellous invention of my grandfather, the Monroe Doctrine, originally intended to protect our-note the cool proprietary ‘our’-hemisphere from predatory European powers, has now been extended, quite illegally, by President Roosevelt to include China and, again by extension, any part of the world where we may want to interfere.”

“This is not the Hay Doctrine,” Hay began.

“This is not the Monroe Doctrine either. But my grandfather’s masterpiece was already coming apart in 1848 when President Polk dared to tell Congress that our war of conquest against Mexico was justified by the Monroe Doctrine. My grandfather, by then a mere congressman, denounced the President on the floor of the House, and then dropped dead on that same floor. When Theodore recently announced that we have an obligation, somehow, inherently, through the Monroe Doctrine, to punish ‘chronic wrongdoers’ in South America, as well as ‘to the exercise of an international police power,’ I nearly dropped dead over my breakfast egg.”