Gore Vidal - Empire

“Quick!” Roosevelt tapped the box on his secretary’s lap. The man opened the box just as the doorman opened the carriage door and the crowd moved forward to see who was inside. Roosevelt took off his bowler; gave it to the secretary; then he took from the black box his famous Rough Rider’s sombrero, which he jammed on his head at an angle. Then with an airy gesture, he pushed up part of the brim and, aching tooth forgotten, he turned on the famous smile, like an electrical light; and leapt from carriage to sidewalk.

The cheering was instant, and highly satisfying to the Governor, who shook every hand in sight, as he made his way into the hotel.

“It’s my impression,” said Blaise to the secretary, “that the Governor is available for the nomination.”

“Whatever the people want, he wants.” The secretary was smooth. “But he does not seek the office, and he will certainly not accept anything from the bosses.”

Although the boss of Pennsylvania, Senator Quay, was not in Roosevelt’s suite to greet him, his deputy, Pennsylvania’s other senator, Boies Penrose, was on hand; and the two men communed in the bedroom while the sitting room filled up with Roosevelt supporters.

Blaise went to his own room, farther along the musty hall, already heavily scented with cigar smoke and whiskey. He prepared his notes; then he went to the telephone room off the lobby and rang Brisbane in New York. “The story is the hat,” said Blaise, highly pleased with himself. For once, he had got the lead into a story right. Brisbane was delighted. “Would you say that it was an acceptance hat?”

“If I don’t say it, you will, Mr. Brisbane.”

“Good work, Mr. Sanford. Keep us posted. Tomorrow’s the day.”

“But-tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Politicians-and Moslems-do not observe the Sabbath. Keep your eyes open. Roosevelt wants to stampede the convention before it starts.”

Sunday the Governor of New York did indeed neglect the Sabbath. As far as Blaise could tell, no church pew held him that day, nor did he, as the Lord enjoined, observe a day of rest. He resembled, in his hotel suite, a Dutch windmill, arms constantly flailing high and low as he made his points; arms descending at regular intervals to shake, vigorously, proffered hands.

Blaise sat, unobserved, in a corner with an elderly political reporter from the Baltimore Sun , who advised Blaise to warn Hearst against buying the Baltimore Examiner . “The paper’s a regular jinx,” said the old man, removing a dented silver flask from his pocket and taking a swig of what smelled like corn whiskey. “Philadelphia’s dry on Sunday,” he said, as if in explanation. Opposite them, back to the window with its view of the surprisingly narrow Broad Street, Roosevelt was spluttering to the delight of delegates whose eyes reflected not only excitement-even lust-but anxiety: the drama was not yet written, and until it was, this entirely self-conscious chorus had no idea whom to laud. If Dolliver, the current favorite, were to be nominated on Wednesday, there would be no chorus in the Roosevelt suite, and the now exuberant windmill in front of the window would no longer revolve once the warm winds of choric frenzy had ceased.

“What is happening?” asked Blaise. When in doubt, ask someone knowledgeable, was Brisbane’s obvious but too often ignored advice to journalists.

“Everything. Nothing. The dude,” he pointed to Roosevelt, “can’t make up his mind. He thinks if he gets to be vice-president he’s done for. They sort of disappear, by and large. He’d like to be reelected governor, but Platt won’t let him. So should he take on Platt? Fight it out? He don’t dare. This is about all he’s got left.”

“He’s still young.” Blaise was now used to referring to the fat little governor, almost twenty years his senior, as “young.”

“He’s aiming to be president next time around. But he knows that every vice-president’s been passed over since Van Buren. But governors of New York are always in line. Now Platt’s kicking him out-or upstairs. That’s why he’s going around in circles.”

Indeed this seemed a proper description of the Governor, who was now, literally, marching about the room in circles, talking, talking, talking. Senator Penrose had withdrawn, having declared that Pennsylvania’s delegation was for Roosevelt. “Machine,” said the old man from Baltimore. “Funny thing for a reformer, to be the number-one choice of the bosses.”

But the next delegation was un-bossed California. There was cheering from Roosevelt’s supporters, and a brilliant smile from the Governor, as he greeted, by name, a number of the Californians. “We’re with Roosevelt all the way!” shouted the chairman of the delegation.

“The West for Roosevelt!” someone else shouted.

“The ‘rest’?” asked the old man, beginning to make notes on his large dirty cuff.

“The West,” Blaise said.

“I’m a bit deaf.” The old man smiled. Huge dentures moved about his mouth. “There’s your key. That’s what Teddy’s looking for. He doesn’t want people to think of him as Platt and Quay’s invention. But to be the candidate of the West…”

“A cowboy…?”

“A cowboy. A Rough Rider. Now he’s getting it together.”

“Can Hanna stop him?”

“Will McKinley stop him? That’s the question.”

“McKinley can keep him from being nominated?”

“McKinley can put him out to pasture for good-in the badlands. But will he?”

Monday morning Blaise was in the crowded hotel” lobby when Mark Hanna made his not-so-triumphant entrance. The once thick-set, rather doughy political manager, made famous by a thousand cartoons of which the wickedest were Hearst’s, was now a stooped haggard figure who walked with a noticeable limp. Behind him, to Blaise’s surprise, was Senator Lodge, Roosevelt’s closest friend, whose support of Secretary of the Navy Long was considered to be no more than a holding operation for an eleventh-hour strike by the Governor. The eleventh hour was now striking. Blaise tried-but failed-to get near Hanna. He caught Lodge’s eye; and received a courtly nod, no more. But then Lodge had always taken the firm line that if a gentleman were to work for Hearst either he was not a gentleman or the word was in need of redefining.

Blaise then retreated to the marble stairs to the mezzanine, where he knew Hanna would be quartered. The day was oppressingly hot; and the smell of the delegates overwhelming. Blaise felt like Coriolanus as, trying not to inhale, he climbed the stairs to the mezzanine, which was filled with huge portraits of McKinley trimmed with red, white and blue bunting. A large placard, over an exit door to a fire escape, announced, humorously, “Republican National Committee.”

James Thorne, a San Francisco Examiner reporter, took Blaise in hand. He was a young, thin, hard man, who did the actual work of the Washington bureau which Ambrose Bierce adorned, weaving his verbal wreaths, in prose and verse, of marvellous poison ivy. “Hanna’s using this room,” said Thorne. “Does he know you by sight?”

“I doubt it.”

“He knows me, so I’m keeping my hat down over my eyes. If I do get kicked out, you’ll take notes, won’t you, Mr. Sanford?”

“I think I probably can,” said Blaise. He was used by now to being treated as a feeble-minded rich boy.

Thorne and Blaise occupied two straight-backed chairs in front of a window. “That’s so the light will be in his eyes,” said Thorne. “He won’t be able to see us. I hope. One thing about a national convention. Nobody’s ever seen anybody before. So you can get away with a lot by just pretending you belong wherever you happen to be.”

Blaise did his best to look as if he belonged in front of an open window in a large room filled with gilt sofas and chairs. In the corner of the room there was-most important of all-a telephone booth. “It’s rigged up to the White House,” said Thorne.