Divisive Party Politics

DIVISIVE PARTY POLITICS

Growing Executive Power

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the presidency underwent dramatic changes. In office from 1897 until his death on 14 September 1901, William McKinley had quietly expanded the chief executive's power during the Spanish-American War, making policy decisions regarding the Philippines without consulting Congress. Strong support in Congress for the expansion of American international influence muted any congressional opposition to McKinley's actions. He reorganized the executive branch and increased the size of his staff to handle his increasing responsibilities. McKinley was also more involved than previous "caretaker" presidents in the creation and passage of legislation, actively leading his party and the government. He presided over a victory in the Spanish-American War and a strong economic recovery, both of which helped to generate public confidence in his administration.

A Prototypical President

When Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became president in September 1901, the nature of the office quickly came to reflect his own character. Congress and the nation at large knew within a few months that great change was afoot. Journalist Ray Stannard Baker captured Roosevelt's essence: "The President ran full-speed on all the tracks at once." In his December 1901 State of the Union message Roosevelt reaffirmed his promise to continue McKinley's programs, but he also established an agenda that was clearly his own. He called for regulation of the trusts, addressed the tariff issue, and spoke to other typical Republican concerns, but he set himself apart from his predecessors with his genuine concern for the plight of labor, his call for strengthening the peacetime military, and his discussion of needed conservation measures. His belief that the chief executive should do as much as the law and Congress allowed—that is, be a strong executive—served as a model for later presidents. At times his actions challenged the constitutional limits of his presidential powers. In contrast, McKinley and Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, believed in a more restrained approach to the presidency. Taft felt his role as president was to consolidate Roosevelt's gains, placing them on a more solid judicial footing, but Taft failed to be a dynamic and aggressive leader like Roosevelt, thus losing the support of the progressive wing of the Republican Party and the 1912 presidential election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

How Roosevelt Worked

To achieve some of his goals Roosevelt borrowed an idea used by Gov. Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. He appointed experts to executive commissions that investigated various problems and then drew up the necessary legislation. Often Roosevelt himself had a hand in drafting the bills or maneuvering them through Congress. If Congress balked at his suggestions, which happened more frequently in the final years of his presidency, Roosevelt did not hesitate to use his office as a "bully pulpit," as he called it, to take his opponents to task. He publicized issues by meeting with reporters on a regular basis, made speaking tours around the country to spread his message, and even wrote articles for popular magazines to get the word out. He met frequently with a select group of trusted young subordinates, including Gifford Pinchot and James R. Garfield, with whom he discussed policy matters while engaging in horseback riding or tennis. Dubbed the "Tennis Cabinet," Roosevelt's inner circle of informal advisers who carried out his goals generated resentment from conservatives during the president's second term. Though he did not hesitate to use government patronage to assure electoral victory in 1904, Roosevelt's earlier tenure as civilservice commissioner (1889-1895) influenced him to make appointments based on the merits of the candidate rather than on the repayment of political debts. For instance, he selected Oscar Straus to become his secretary of commerce and labor not to garner the Jewish vote but because Straus was the best available man for the job.

Placating the Right. Roosevelt's strong will and independent streak, popular with the general public, did not sit well with the conservatives on Capitol Hill, and after 1906 these qualities served only to alienate them. Chief among Roosevelt's "stand-pat" political opponents was Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, who was determined to regain for the House some of the prestige and power lost to the Senate and the president under his predecessor. Rough and crude whereas Roosevelt was polished and sophisticated, "Uncle Joe" Cannon, a Republican from Illinois, brought such a conservative, "stand-pat" philosophy to the lower house that pundits quipped that had he been in on the Creation he would have voted against the Lord on chaos. With "Cannonism" controlling all legislative matters in the House, and conservative senators Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, Orville Platt of Connecticut, John C. Spooner of Wisconsin, and William B. Allison of Iowa controlling the "Millionaires' Club," Roosevelt had a dangerous political tightrope to walk during his first few years in office. To help soothe the worried right wing of his party, he populated his cabinet with conservatives such as Elihu Root and William Howard Taft. With his eye on 1904, he sought the congressional conservatives' cooperation from the outset and dared not challenge them until after the election. The conservatives did not care for the president's expansive use of executive power during his second term, nor for his conservation campaign, and they detested the push for federal direct-democracy legislation like that already enacted by some states.

THE WORST TRUST OF ALL

David Graham Phillips's "The Treason of the Senate," a series of articles published in Cosmopolitan magazine, prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to attack the muckrakers. This excerpt comes from Phillips's profile of Sen. Nelson W. Aldrich, a Republican from Rhode Island:

The greatest single hold of "the interests" is the fact that they are the "campaign contributors"—the men who supply the money for "keeping the party together," and for "getting the vote" Your candidates get most of the money for their campaigns from the party committees; and the central party committee is the national committee with which congressional and state and local committees are affiliated. The bulk of the money for the "political trust" comes from "the interests." "The interests" will give only to the "political trust." And that means Aldrich and his Democratic (!) lieutenant, [Arthur P.] Gorman of Maryland, leader of the minority in the Senate. Aldrich, then, is the head of the "political trust" and Gorman is his right-hand man.

Source:

David Graham Phillips, "Aldrich, The Head of It All," Cosmopolitan, 40 (Aprii 1906): 628-638.

Left of Center

On Roosevelt's political left within his party were progressive Republicans led by La Follette and other midwesterners. Roosevelt was closer to this wing of the party than to the conservatives, agreeing especially with the methods they employed to design reform legislation, but he did not fully embrace their desire to destroy the trusts and seize the railroads. Recognizing that the voting public was shifting in the progressives' direction, the president led them as far to the left as he felt was feasible. As he and the progressives further distanced themselves from conservative Republicans, Roosevelt managed to hold the party together during his presidency through sheer force of personality. Taft had neither Roosevelt's political acumen nor his dominant personality, and he damaged himself politically before his inauguration when he tacitly promised to carry out Roosevelt's program. After 1909 the progressives split with Taft and mainstream Republicans over issues such as the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909, Taft's failure to carry out Roosevelt's conservation program and his dismissal of its leader, Gifford Pinchot, in January 1910, and his inability to end "Cannonism."

Disorganized Democrats

Throughout the decade, the Democrats suffered from party factionalism that left them effectively on the sideline. This problem was longstanding: though roughly equal to Republicans in electoral strength, Democrats occupied the White House for only eight years during the period from the Civil War to the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Eastern Democrats, with their mostly urban, immigrant base, tended to be more conservative on issues such as tariffs, trusts, and electoral and social reform than southern and western Democrats, who were mostly rural and agrarian and opposed the trusts and consolidation but did not want a large federal bureaucracy regulating them. Westerners, of whom there were relatively few, opposed the protective tariff, while southerners usually favored it because it reduced foreign competition to foodstuffs and cotton grown in the South. At the center of party power and controversy stood the "Great Commoner," William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, supported largely by the rural, populist wing of the party. His vitality just barely held the Democrats together through these lean political years. The conservative, urban wing opposed Bryan's nomination in 1900 and 1908, believing that his radical platforms would not win them the White House. Toward the end of the decade, state elections reflected a growing disenchantment with the conservative-dominated Republicans, bringing Democrats and progressive Republi-cans together in a search for greater reforms.

Tariff Divisions

Tariffs provided a substantial portion of government revenue before the creation of the federal income tax in 1913. In 1902 customs duties accounted for $243 million of the $653 million collected in taxes. Economic conservatives revered the high tariff as the foundation of a strong American economy, but its opponents argued it was the tool of the trusts. President McKinley tried to circumvent high tariff rates through reciprocity agreements with trade partners, but he had limited success. Theodore Roosevelt continued this program but avoided tackling the high tariff, leaving the political "time bomb" for his successor. The divisive issue was so volatile that in 1902 David Henderson, Cannon's predecessor as Speaker of the House, claimed he had not "truly represented" his Iowa constituents, who wanted to lower the tariff, and consequently declined his party's nomination for an eleventh term. The tariff debate split the country more along sectional and economic lines than along party lines. Most in the Midwest and West supported lowering or eliminating it as an antitrust move, while southern and eastern businessmen wanted to maintain the high rates to protect raw materials and finished products from foreign competition. The working class opposed the high tariff because it kept consumer prices artificially high.

Taft and Tariff Reform

In 1909 Taft called a special session of Congress to deal with the tariff problem. Believing that lower rates would generate competition naturally and thus weaken the trusts, he favored lowering rates from the all-time high of 57 percent. The House passed a bill lowering rates on most items and placed coal, iron ore, and animal hides on the list of goods that were tariff-free. The Senate bill (sponsored by the protectionist Nelson W. Aldrich, who also happened to be the son-in-law of John D. Rockefeller) added 847 amendments to the Payne bill, almost all of which increased rates. Midwestern progressive Republicans, led by Robert La Follette, fought the bill and managed to get a reduction on some duties with Taft's support. Though the bill lowered tariffs somewhat, the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, which removed coal and iron ore from the free list and established rates at an average of 40 percent, was decidedly protectionist. Hoping for party harmony Taft accepted the bill and declared it "the best bill that the Republican party ever passed." Instead of keeping the party together he aggravated a growing rift.

Sources:

John Whitcclay Chambers II, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980);

George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and The Birth of Modern America, 1900-1912 (New York: Harper & Row, 1958).