The Republican Campaign
After the partisan conventions
ended, the presidential campaign was relatively uneventful.
As the vice-presidential nominee in 1900, Roosevelt had
undertaken an energetic national speaking tour. In 1904,
he grudgingly accepted the traditional taboo against sitting
presidents openly campaign for reelection. The main
responsibility for electioneering fell to vice-presidential
nominee Charles Fairbanks, who embarked on a campaign swing
through 33 states.
Nevertheless,
Roosevelt managed to remain in the limelight by opening the
White House to the press, making policy statements, and
conducting official duties, all done with his attention-getting
personality. Behind the scenes, he oversaw the campaign
with constant orders to Republican National Committee Chairman
Cortelyou and other staff members, and sent numerous suggestions
to his unofficial organ, the New York Press. In his
formal letter of acceptance, Roosevelt claimed to have remained
true to the principles of President McKinley, attributed
economic prosperity to protective tariffs, promised to adhere to
the gold standard, criticized Democrats for trying to defeat the
Panama Canal treaty, but neglected to mention the
administration’s antitrust policy. As the Wall Street
Journal observed, the letter was written by a candidate
eager to give no offense.
Leading Republicans took direct
shots at Parker and the Democrats. William Howard Taft,
the former governor-general of the Philippines and the new
secretary of war, declared that Democratic and anti-imperialist
criticism of Republican foreign policy had prolonged the
Filipino rebellion. Elihu Root, Taft’s predecessor at
the War Department, argued that Parker’s reliance on the common
law to curb business trusts would in practice sustain their
existence. The president’s campaign made an apparently
successful effort to win the vote of ethnic groups, such as
Germans, Italians, and Irish. Two Democratic newspapers
with Irish-American readerships, the Pilot (Boston) and
The Irish World (New York), endorsed Roosevelt. So did
the usually Democratic New York Sun: “Theodore!
With all thy faults.” Under the direction of Cornelius
Bliss, treasurer of the National Republican Committee, the GOP
raised almost $2.2 million (or $44.1 million in 2002 dollars),
which was over four times more than Democrats collected.
The Democratic Campaign
Unlike Bryan, who had electioneered continuously across the
country during the 1896 and 1900 campaigns, Parker ran an
old-fashioned campaign by receiving delegations at his home in
Esopus, New York, along the Hudson River about 100 miles north
of New York City. Parker’s official letter of acceptance
on September 25 praised the Democratic platform, while
explaining that his “Gold Telegram” was intended to make his
position clear so that voters were not deceived. The
nominee assailed Republican trade protectionism as benefiting
only special interests. Although Parker agreed that
business monopolies were dangerous, he argued against more
antitrust legislation because “the common law as developed
affords a complete legal remedy against monopolies.” The
letter’s ambiguous position on Philippine policy led some to
interpret that the nominee had called for independence, some
that he endorsed the status quo, and others that he was leaving
the question open. Like
Bryan in 1900, Parker condemned the treatment of native
Filipinos under Republican rule, but ignored violence and
discrimination against blacks in the United States.
The acceptance
letter had little effect on the campaign, and signs from most of
the country led party leaders to despair. Democrats could
only be sure of the South, where the Republican plank on voting
rights and Roosevelt’s few favorable policies toward blacks
caused intense anger and fear among white voters. In the
Plains and Mountain States, the 1904 nominee failed to win over
Bryan’s populist constituency. The Great Commoner endorsed
Parker after the convention and belatedly campaigned for him in
October. Meanwhile, Bryan delineated his own
agenda—including government ownership of railroads and
telegraphs, a graduated income tax, and popular election of
federal judges—which signaled to many the beginning of his
campaign for the nomination in 1908. Parker’s campaign
manager, David B. Hill, announced his retirement from politics
in order to save the candidate from guilt by association with
the controversial party boss. Thomas Fortune Ryan
contributed $250,000 of the less than $500,000 ($10 million in
2002 dollars) raised for the Democratic campaign.
At the
insistence of desperate party leaders, Parker undertook a brief
speaking tour in the final weeks of the campaign. The
Democratic nominee charged that large business corporations were
funding the Roosevelt campaign in return for political favors.
Even more seriously, he implied that the firms made the
donations because they were being blackmailed by Republican
National Committee Chairman Cortelyou. Such rumors had
been circulating among Democrats since mid-summer and had
surfaced in the Democratic press and even the Republican New
York Times
in September. The charges had little effect because no
evidence was produced and Parker himself was closer to wealthy
businessmen, such as Ryan and August Belmont Jr., than Roosevelt
was. In fact, some of the largest GOP donors were later
prosecuted by the Roosevelt administration for antitrust
violations.
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