Lion in the White House by Aida D. Donald

Author:Aida D. Donald [Donald, Aida D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-17T01:35:08+00:00

0465010240-Donald.qxd:Layout 1 8/25/08 5:36 PM Page 141

The Accidental President

letter: “I did not believe it would hurt the party. It did not hurt the party. It helped the party.”

Almost from the time of his ascendancy as an accidental president, Roosevelt was concerned about the 1904

presidential election. A satisfactory patronage distribution was a part of any winning strategy, of course, along with the passage of reform laws. Of all the states needed for a successful coalition, his home state was most important. “It was very nearly out of the question that a man can be nominated with his home state against him, and it is practically certain that my State will be against me,” Roosevelt wrote Cabot in late 1901. He also watched as two rival Republicans, Boss Platt and Benjamin Barker Odell, a rising politician, fought for control of the Republican Party.

Odell found that Platt had lied to him and would not be his ally.

During the struggle, Platt told Roosevelt that he would favor him continuing on as president, but Roosevelt did not put much stock in this because he thought Platt, who was not well, would be ousted by 1904. Still, Platt stuck to his plan, and he believed Odell would be more likely to follow him than would Roosevelt. The president calculated that the West and New England appeared ready to back him for the nomination, but “when he [Platt] acts in cold blood he would probably oppose him.”

Odell was put up for the governorship of New York, which he won, so Roosevelt succeeded in knocking together the competing heads of the state Republican Party.

Now the two giants would have to work together. At the time of the rapprochement, a ditty published in a newspaper summed up the triumph:

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