-Caveat Lector-
An excerpt from:
The Ohio Gang
Charles L. Mee, Jr.�1981
M. Evans and Company, Inc.
216 East 49th Street
New York, New York 10017
ISBN 0-87131-340-5
218 pps � out-of-print/one edition
--[6]--
XVI.
The Smoke-Filled Room
"I DON'T EXPECT Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or
third ballot," Harry Daugherty said, shooting his mouth off to some newspaper
reporters a few months before the convention, "but I think about eleven
minutes after two o'clock on Friday morning of the convention, when fifteen
or twenty men, blearyeyed and perspiring profusely from the heat, are sitting
around a table, some one of them will say: 'Who will we nominate?' At the
decisive time the friends of Senator Harding can suggest him and can afford
to abide by the result. I don't know but what I might suggest him myself."
When the newspapermen wrote up their interview with Daugherty, one of them
added that the politicians would be sitting around a table smoking cigars,
and so the legend of the "smoke-filled room" entered the lexicon of American
politics The front-runner for the Republican nomination in 1920 was General
Leonard Wood, a ramrod New Englander who sported a riding crop and declared
himself in favor of a strong central government and opposed to the Communist
menace. He would have made an acceptable Republican candidate except that he
had a taint of Progressivism about him-having been a friend of Teddy
Roosevelt. Although the war against the Progressives was officially ended,
and Teddy Roosevelt was back in the pantheon of party heroes, nonetheless,
the bosses were not eager to embrace a Progressive. When Wood's campaign
manager began to make some deals with the bosses to line up their support,
they started to soften somewhat; but then Wood, in a fit of high-mindedness,
fired his campaign manager for making shady deals. The Old Guard concluded
immediately that Wood was not a reasonable man, and they began to look around
for another candidate, any other candidate, that they could use to stop Wood.
Herbert Hoover was available. He had a good record as administrator of
European relief during World War I; indeed, his name had become a popular
verb: to Hooverize meant to save food. The trouble with Hoover was that no
one knew whether he was a Republican or a Democrat, and the bosses were not
inclined to take any more risks.
Senator Hiram Johnson of California was available. He was a good orator and
an agreeable man. Unfortunately, he insisted on campaigning in a Rough Rider
hat and displaying photographs of Teddy Roosevelt in his campaign
headquarters. He could hardly be considered altogether reasonable.
Frank O. Lowden, the governor of Illinois, had the greatest popular appeal
after Wood and Hoover. Unhappily, as governor he had established a record as
a reformer, and it was not entirely clear that he was a reasonable candidate.
He seemed, however, to want to talk with the bosses, and so the bosses
decided to ease their support behind Lowden-at least for long enough to stop
Wood.
The job of party bosses is not, as is commonly supposed, to choose a
presidential candidate for office. The job of party bosses is to eliminate
unacceptable candidates from the field and then permit a free choice among
the remaining field of reasonable men.
All of the most popular candidates, it seemed, were Progressives in one
fashion or another. Evidently most Americans were eager for some sort of
reform candidate-which made the task of the bosses more difficult. The
primaries helped. As the gaggle of reformers went into the primaries, they
bumped up against one another, split the votes, and made one another appear
to be "weak" candidates. Wood came out of the primaries with the most votes;
he had 124 committed delegates to 112 for Johnson and 72 for Lowden. But
Wood's victory had not been strong enough. The bosses moved with renewed
conviction behind Lowden.
It was then that Harry Daugherty earned his position as campaign manager.
General Wood's campaign manager had raised a lot of money for his candidate
and spent too lavishly. He had done nothing wrong, nothing illegal�but he had
taken too much money from rich easterners. Daugherty found out who had
contributed money to Wood, and slipped the names of these fat cats to Senator
Borah, one of Hiram Johnson's supporters.
In the Senate, Senator Borah gave a blistering speech against Wood's attempt
to "buy" the presidency. Borah called for a special committee to inquire into
the matter of Wood's campaign expenditures.
The Senate committee found that Wood had spent almost two million dollars
that could be accounted for-and probably another six million that could not
be accounted for. Although they found nothing illegal, the sum of money was
shocking. Wood seemed less and less a "popular" candidate, more and more a
candidate of the bankers of the East.
The Senate committee, in order to be evenhanded, reported on the finances of
the other candidates, too. Lowden, they discovered, had only spent $400,000
that they could account for, but some of this money had clearly been spent in
the South for the outright buying of delegate votes at the rate of $2,500
apiece. Lowden's candidacy was severely damaged.
But Johnson's, candidacy was ruined, too. Nothing was found to be wrong with
his finances; but, because it was his friend Borah who had started all the
trouble, the bosses were even more determined to deny him the nomination.
By the time the delegates gathered in Chicago in June, no one much liked any
one of the candidates, although the delegates remained committed to the
leading contenders because they could find no one else they liked either.
Still, the old regulars were resourceful. They could, if nothing else, give
the appearance of being completely in control of the convention so that the
delegates, thinking the bosses were in control, would follow orders; and the
bosses, by seeming to boss the convention, would boss it. They chose Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge, the little goateed autocrat of Massachusetts, who could
not even get his home state to nominate him as a favorite son candidate for
president, to be the permanent chairman of the convention�and Lodge moved the
delegates swiftly through the preliminaries and formalities into the
balloting�where the bosses hoped to arrange a real, or apparent, deadlock.
On the first 'ballot, General Wood unnerved the bosses by getting fully 287.5
votes, fifty more than had been anticipated. Lowden was second with 211; and
Johnson was third with 133.5. (Harding, with his Ohio ballots and a few other
votes, appeared with 65.5 votes down among a welter of favorite sons,
including Nicholas Murray Butler of New York, William Sproul of Pennsylvania,
Coolidge, and even La Follette.)
On the second ballot, some of the votes that were being held back by party
leaders were brought neatly in behind Lowden to make it seem that: a trend
was developing against Wood. Even Daugherty let a couple of votes go to
Lowden, allowing Harding's count to drop to 59. Butler released 10 delegates,
and some of the organization southerners moved in behind Lowden.
Without a moment's hesitation, Lodge took the delegates into the third
ballot, and the bosses moved more votes over to Lowden, 16 of them from
Butler, for a total of 23 new votes for the Illinois governor. But, at that
point the reserves of the bosses had almost run out, and no one was following
the unconvincing "trend." Instead, Wood was gaining handsomely, and on the
fourth ballot, Wood got 314.5 votes, only 177 short of the total needed for
nomination. The Old Guard was able to muster only another 6.5 votes for
Lowden. The offensive was slipping; soon It would falter, and its weakness
would be apparent to all the convention delegates. Wood's momentum needed to
be stopped.
"I move," said Senator Smoot, "that the convention do adjourn until tomorrow
morning at ten o'clock."
"Those in favor," Lodge said immediately, will signify by saying
'Aye.' "
There was a scattering of "Ayes."
"Those opposed, 'No.' "
The coliseum trembled with a booming chorus of "NO!"
"The ayes have it," Lodge said in a voice of profound boredom, put down his
gavel, and walked off the platform.
"There's going to be a deadlock," Smoot said to the reporters who gathered in
bewilderment around him, "and we'll have to work out some solution; we wanted
the night to think it over."
In the Blackstone Hotel, Will Hays, chairman of the national committee,
shared a suite of rooms on the thirteenth floor with George Harvey, a solemn
man who took himself very seriously, the editor of the North American Review,
intimate of J. P. Morgan partners. That night, politicians of all sorts
drifted through the rooms of Harvey and Hays, mostly to confer with Hays.
Having declared a deadlock, the bosses now labored to resolve It. Many names
were mentioned. Harvey thought that Will Hays himself would make a fine
candidate. Someone suggested Charles Evans Hughes of New York. No one seemed
to be anyone's clear first choice.
Senator Knox of Pennsylvania, said Samuel Hopkins Adams, "had a bad heart....
Governor Sproul was too local. Senator Jim Watson was too hidebound a
standpatter.... Geographical considerations worked against Coolidge; he was
too far east. Hoover? What was Hoover?"
"It was," Senator Wadsworth said, "a sort of continuous performance. I was in
and out of the room several times that night. They were like a lot of
chickens with their heads off. They had no program and no definite
affirmative decision was reached." It was a smoke-filled room, very close to
just the sort of thing that Daugherty had in mind, but Daugherty himself was
not there, and the bosses were less in control of things than people usually
imagine.
In the course of the night, Watson of Indiana dropped by, McCormick of
Illinois, Weeks of Massachusetts, and dozens of others. Senator Lodge
stayed-sitting composedly, swinging one leg, boosting no one, embracing no
cause or candidate, but summarizing the points for and against each candidate
as his name was mentioned, shaking his head over one name, pointing out the
unreliability of another. As one after another of the possibilities was
eliminated, only one candidate remained available, the one against whom no
one had a particular objection, everyone's second choice, Warren Harding.
Those who were still in the room at about two o'clock in the morning-Lodge,
McCormick, Calder of New York, Curtis of Kansas, Smoot of Utah, Brandegee of
Connecticut, Watson of Indiana, and Hays and Harvey thought they might give
Harding a run for it the next day. If Harding could not make it in four or
five ballots, then they would have to turn to another.
Harvey called Harding to the suite. Harding, exhausted, rumpled, lacking a
good shave, and having despaired of getting the nomination, was taken aside.
"We think," said Harvey, "you may be nominated tomorrow; before acting
finally, we think you should tell us, on your conscience and before God,
whether there is anything that might be brought up against you that would
embarrass the party, any impediment that might disqualify you or make you I
inexpedient, either as candidate or as President."
Harding, stunned, asked to have a few moments to think it over, and Harvey
left him alone in one of the rooms of the suite. Had it ever been true that
he did not want the nomination, this was his chance to avoid it. Ten minutes
later, Harding emerged from the room. He had thought it over. No, on his
conscience and before God, he could think of nothing.
Harvey quickly called in a couple of reporters and let them have an interview
with Brandegee and some of the other senators. The leaders explained to the
reporters that, since Lowden and Wood were deadlocked, they had decided that
Harding was the "logical" choice of the convention. He could be trusted to
"go along" with Congress, he looked like a president. One of the reporters
was astonished: Harding was barely known outside Ohio. Brandegee said he
would be known after he was nominated. "There ain't any first-raters this
year. This ain't 1880 or any 1904; we haven't any John Shermans or Theodore
Roosevelts; we got a lot of second-raters and Warren Harding is the best of
the second-raters."
Senator Smoot was quick to grant an interview to a reporter from the New York
Telegram out in the corridor. Harding was the man, said Smoot: the bosses
would put him over the next afternoon after giving Lowden a brief run.
The point was to seem to be in charge, to announce at once that the fix was
in, to tell the reporters and spread the word, to make it seem a fait
accompli because the moment was, in fact, extremely perilous. Other meetings
were going on that night. Wood and Lowden might decide to Join forces and
take the nomination as president and vice-president. Or one of them might
join with Hiram Johnson. They were all meeting with one another.
The bosses would have to sustain the deadlock the next day, make certain that
it did not slip, and then gradually, carefully, move a few delegates at a
time behind Harding to make a trend.
At ten o'clock the next morning, Lodge called for the fifth ballot. Wood lost
15.5 votes at once, slipping to 299, and Lowden jumped ahead to 303. Johnson
slipped a few votes, and Harding picked up a few to get a total of 78. The
move had begun slowly, with apparently complete control: no surprises, no
sudden shifts.
On the sixth ballot, Wood's managers called out every last vote they could
get. Lowden and Wood tied at 311.5. Johnson slipped another 23.5 votes to
114. The rumor had begun to spread on the floor that Harding was the choice
of the bosses, that he would be put over after a few more ballots, nothing
could stop him, and the delegates had better jump on the bandwagon. Harding
got 89 votes.
On the seventh ballot, Wood and Lowden continued to hold each other. Wood got
312, Lowden 311.5 Johnson slipped precipitously to 90.5. Harding moved
smartly up to 105. The trend was developing.
The eighth ballot began at about one o'clock in the afternoon. The
temperature in the coliseum was about 100. The delegates were in despair,
moving around looking for air, fanning themselves. They were ready to make a
decision. Wood lost 22 votes, going down to 290. The nearly implacable law of
convention voting is that a leader must remain a leader. A loss of 22 votes
is a countertrend. Wood's candidacy was over. Lowden slipped down to 307. His
candidacy was not demolished, but the loss of a few votes was frightening.
Johnson's delegates were deserting him steadily. Harding came through with a
booming 133.5 votes.
Daugherty thought that the next ballot would establish the break to Harding.
He sent all his men around the hall to bring in the votes that had been held
back or placed elsewhere, hidden behind favorite sons or kept behind Lowden
or Wood. In truth, Harding was attracting individual votes here and there
around the hall�not large blocs of bossed votes, but individual votes of
delegates who believed that the bosses were controlling things. Harding was
winning, but he was not winning because the bosses had begun to move the
votes over to him. He was winning; although none of the delegates knew it,
and Harding himself did not know it, and would not have believed it�on his
own.
One of Lowden's men called for a recess. The moment had come, now that
Harding's nomination was assured, for some last-minute deals. Lodge called
for a vote. Once more there were a few scattered votes in favor of recess,
and a great chorus of noes against recess. Once again Lodge declared that the
ayes had it and adjourned the convention for a few hours.
It was said that a deal would be made to give Hiram Johnson the
vice-presidency, in order to placate the Progressives. It was said that Wood
and Lowden were finally going to join forces to go on the ticket as President
and Vice President. It was said that Lowden was making some sort of deal with
Harding. In fact, nothing happened, except that Harding and Lowden, the two
candidates who had both had, in different ways, the favor of the bosses, met
and shook hands, and Lowden gave the word to release his delegates to
Harding. Lowden had proved himself a loyal party man. He would be offered
many consolations.
The first indication of what had happened during the recess came when the
convention was called back to order, and the roll call for the ninth ballot
reached Connecticut; Senator Brandegee's state, which had been giving 13
votes to Lowden on the preceding ballots. All 13 votes went to Harding. Then,
when Kansas was called, the big break occurred: 20 votes for Harding. "The
Coliseum was in an uproar," Daugherty recalled. "Police were hurled aside
like children. Smoot and Lodge hammered their gavels in vain. When Ohio was
called a hush fell over the sweltering mass. Every man except our delegates
expected, of course, a solid vote at last from Harding's own state. And when
... nine men still voted for Wood the most extraordinary thing happened that
I ever witnessed in a national convention. Their vote was greeted with a
sullen roar of indignation and surprise. Hoots, cat-calls, boos, yells, and
hisses swept through the delegates." Still, by the end of the ballot, Harding
led the pack with 374 votes. Wood had 249. Lowden, who had let most of his
delegates move to Harding, still kept 121.5.
"Our men," said Daugherty, "leaped to their feet and yelled themselves
hoarse. They marched down the aisles with banners and streamers, and exhorted
sinners to repent before it was too late.
"'Come on, boys!'
" 'It's all over!'
"'Climb on the bandwagon!'"
Daugherty looked up into the boxes and caught sight of Mrs. Harding. He
suddenly thought that Mrs. Harding might be so amazed by what was about to
happen on the next ballot that she would have a heart attack. He rushed
upstairs to join her.
"She had removed her hat in the sweltering heat and sat humped forward in her
chair, her arms tightly folded. In her right hand she gripped two enormous
hatpins, in vogue at the time. I drew a chair close beside her and she
started at the touch of my hand on her arm. A deep frown shadowed her face.
" 'It's terrible, isn't it?'
"'What?'
" 'All this wild excitement.... I can't follow it�'
" 'I didn't think you would, but something's going to happen down there in a
few minutes that may shock you if you don't look out�'
'What do you mean?' she asked sharply.
. . I leaned closer and whispered: 'We have the votes. Your husband will be
nominated on the next ballot-'
"She gave a sudden start, fairly leaped from her chair. The movement drove
both hatpins deep into my side.
"I sprang back and felt the blood follow them.... I had come to save a
woman's life and she had unwittingly murdered me! I said nothing to disturb
her but felt my head swimming as the blood began to run down my leg and fill
my shoe. For a moment I swayed, about to faint. I was smothering.... I felt
my way down to the floor of the Convention and listened to the roll call with
a vague sense of detachment. . . . When I walked I could hear the queer swish
of the blood that filled my shoe. I felt my body sway, and caught a chair. I
was smothering again."
By the time the clerk had got to Pennsylvania, Harding had 440 votes. He
needed 53 more for the nomination. "Pennsylvania," the head of the delegation
called out in a deep voice, "casts sixty-one votes for Warren G. Harding!"
"A cheer rose that shook the earth," Daugherty said. "The vast spaces of the
Coliseum echoed with demoniac screams. Ambitions crumbled! ... I tottered to
my room, and examined myself. My lung had not been pierced. My smothering was
only in imagination. My shoe was full of perspiration."
Frelinghuysen of New Jersey moved to make the nomination unanimous. Lodge
called for the ayes, and this time the vote was thunderously in favor of the
motion. Lodge called for the noes. There were some emphatic bellows of no
from the floor. Lodge ruled the vote unanimous.
Nan Britton watched from a seat high up in the gallery. "How could that
surging multitude; cheering and whistling and stampeding the aisles with
their Harding banners held aloft�be interested anyway in the tumult of
unutterable emotion that rose within me? My eyes swam.
It was said that he was the candidate of the bosses�and that was true, but it
was only part of the truth. In fact, he had won the nomination because he
knew how to be a reasonable man, a sound man, a man who was able to blend in,
a loyal man, a man who knew how to be conciliatory, to forgive a slight, to
bear no grudge, to despise no man's eccentricities or weaknesses, a man who
knew how to wait and when to move, a man who knew how to carry himself and
dress and smile like a president of the United States-all of these qualities
and talents had combined to make him the most available man in America. And
he had acquired them all by himself.
"I feel," said the new Republican nominee for president, "like a man who goes
in on a pair of eights and comes out with aces full."
pps. 85-99
=====
XVII.
Carrie Takes Another Vacation
SOME OF THE hard-eyed members of the Republican Old Guard found out about
Carrie Phillips soon enough, and Harding was told that something would need
to be done about her. Harding and Carrie had not been in touch for several
years. Perhaps it is some measure of the love they once felt for one another
that they came now to a moment of such fierce coldness. One of Harding's men
was dispatched to talk to Carrie. He offered her an outright bribe of $20,000
plus an additional monthly stipend, to be paid for as long as Harding was in
office, plus an all-expense-paid trip around the world for Carrie and her
husband, providing they both took the trip right away and stayed out of the
country until the election was over. It is some measure of her feelings for
her former lover that she took the deal without a moment's hesitation.
p. 100
=====
XVIII.
The Front Porch Campaign
HARDING CHOSE, CANNILY, to stay on his own front porch to campaign for the
presidency. The front yard was covered with crushed gravel to make certain
that the crowds would not churn it into mud, and the procession began of
brass bands and marching clubs, the Elks, the Moose, the Knights of Pythias,
the Ohio State Dental Association, small children, neighbors, actors and
actresses, the all but forgotten candidate for vice-president, Calvin
Coolidge of Vermont, veterinary organizations, Chief Red Fox, the alumni of
Iberia College. And the picture was spread across America of a man of calm
and dignity, not a man who shouted and harangued out on the hustings, but a
man who loved to stay at home, enjoyed seeing the little children drop by his
house, a family man, decent and dependable, a man who liked to pitch
horseshoes and pat little children on the head, a man who stood for the
essential goodness of America, a man whose own equanimity would restore
America to balance and harmony, to the old values of neighborliness and love
of country, cooperation and hard work, decorum and discretion, peace and
security.
The country to which Harding addressed himself was still suffering from
having fought the war to end war and having discovered that the lives lost in
the war and the slogans and songs that had cheered the soldiers to their
deaths had all been pointless. The country suffered not simply from the
economic dislocations caused by the war�inflation, business failures,
mortgage foreclosurses, unemployment, reductions in wages-but also from
bruised feelings, bitterness, and rage. The Ku Klux Klan and the American
Legion and the I.W.W. all nourished and reacted to these passions. Reds were
arrested; pacifists were convicted of sedition under the Espionage Act; and a
jury acquitted, after two minutes' deliberation, a man named Frank Petroni,
who had shot and killed Frank Petrich, an alien, for shouting, "To hell with
the United States."
Sixteen packages in the New York General Post Office were found to contain
dynamite; thirty-four mail bombs were discovered on their way through the
postal service to public officials; four hundred soldiers invaded the offices
of a Socialist newspaper and beat up some of the editors; Sacco and Vanzetti,
Italian-American workingmen and radical leftists, were arrested for robbing
and killing the paymaster and guard at their shoe factory; and race riots
broke out between whites and blacks in the streets of Washington, D,C.
Harding promised a "return to normalcy," a phrase that meant many things to
many people, but meant, to all of themunlike, say, a "return to abnormalcy"�
something good. It meant, on the whole, in addition to setting aside the
bloodshed of war and mollifying the general unrest and discontent, a
restoration of a golden age before the war, an age of tranquillity and
prosperity when everyone fundamentally agreed upon what mattered and how to
go about getting it, when everyone agreed that the rules of society were
basically fair and decent within a classless structure in a polity that was
free�in short, a return to an age that never was.
Having long since discovered how to promote himself by promoting others,
Harding was able to show every individual how to put himself first. It had
been said of President Wilson that he thought too much of his abstract
ideals, his League of Nations, his aspirations to be a great figure on the
European continent.
"We do not mean to hold aloof," candidate Harding declared to a meeting of
the Ohio Society, "we choose no isolation, we shun no duty. I like to rejoice
in an American conscience, and in a big conception of our obligations to
liberty, justice and civilization. . . ."
Nonetheless: "It is fine to idealize, but it is very practical to make sure
our own house is in perfect order before we attempt the miracle of the
Old-World stabilization.
"Call it the selfishness of nationality if you will, I think it an
inspiration to patriotic devotion
"To safeguard America first.
"To stabilize America first.
"To prosper America first.
"To think of America first.
"To exalt America first.
"To live for and revere America first."
Harding was elected president by the largest plurality ever given to a
presidential candidate. "It wasn't a landslide," one of the professional
politicians said, "it was an earthquake."
pps. 101-107
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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