With God’s leading or nudging the U.S. and Cuba to reconciliation, the timing of the announcement of that historic change on December 17th was due to more prosaic factors from the U.S. perspective.
Pressures for an announcement as soon as possible were several. The health of U.S. citizen, Alan Gross, was reportedly declining in a Cuban prison, and President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry legitimately believed that reconciliation would be destroyed if he died in that prison. As we now know, the U.S. and Cuba had been engaged in secret negotiations for 18 months, and delaying the announcement ran the risk of a leak of the existence of the negotiations that would upset, if not destroy, the reconciliation. Less immediate was the upcoming Summit of the Americas in April 2015 with the U.S. needing to have a position on host country Panama’s invitation to Cuba to attend the Summit.
In addition, U.S. domestic political considerations pointed towards a December announcement before the Republican-controlled 114th Congress opened in early January and as soon as possible (the next day) after the adjournment of the 113th so that there would be no resulting interference with the completion of the many items of unfinished business of the current Congress. December also is the traditional time for exercise of presidential clemency (pardons and commutation of sentences), the latter of which was used for the release of the remaining three of the Cuban Five on December 17th.
All of these considerations suggest why the President on December 16th (the day before the announcement about Cuba) quietly signed the $1.1 trillion appropriation bill even though it contained a repeal of an important provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act regulating financial institutions that Senator Elizabeth Warren passionately resisted. The President did not want a lack of funding to interfere with or torpedo the reconciliation.
Within a week of the announcement we learned that the U.S. GDP for the third quarter had increased 5.0%, the strongest quarterly performance in a decade, and the U.S. stock market reacted with a record close on December 23 with the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 18024.17, registering its 36th record close this year. Unemployment is below 6.0%. The FY 2014 deficit is below its 40-year average. The Affordable Care Act has reduced uninsured Americans by 25%, and overall health-care spending has slowed significantly. The U.S. Dollar is stronger against other world currencies. The federal government’s bailouts of banks and the auto industry that rescued the economy from a total collapse at the start of the Obama presidency were closed out with a net profit to the taxpayers of $15.4 billion. Low world oil prices help the American consumer and weaken regimes hostile to the U.S., especially Russia, Iran and Venezuela. An amazing economic performance! (Packer, A Pretty Good Year for Government, New Yorker (Dec. 23, 2014); Higgins, Oil’s Swift Fall Raises Fortunes of U.S. Abroad, N.Y. Times (Dec. 25, 2014).)
President Obama, using the “fourth quarter” analogy of his favorite sport of basketball, obviously has concluded that he would be engaged in a vigorous “fourth quarter” (the last two years of his eight years in office) to do as much as possible of what he believes to be in the national interest of our country. Indeed, at the first Cabinet meeting after the huge Republican victories in this year’s midterm election, Obama gave every Cabinet member a white card that said, “We are entering the fourth quarter, and really important things happen in the fourth quarter.” Timothy Egan, a New York Times’ columnist, says Obama has “been liberated by defeat” and “in finally learning how to use the tools of his office, Obama unbound is a president primed to make his mark.” He is “marching ahead of politicians fighting yesterday’s wars,” who are forced “to defend old-century policies, and rely on an aging base to do it.” Moreover, Obama now “has Pope Francis as a diplomatic co-conspirator,” leaving Republican opponents of Cuban reconciliation to try to lecture “the most popular man on the planet.” (Osnos, In the Land of the Possible, New Yorker (Dec. 22 & 29, 2014); Eagan, Obama Unbound, N.Y. Times (Dec. 20, 2014).)
Finally the merits of reconciliation and these reflections on the timing of the announcement resurrect my personal support of the President. Given the Administration’s problems with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and other administrative issues, I was beginning to think that Obama’s lack of prior administrative experience was a reason why he would not be the great President I expected him to be. Now, however, his achieving reconciliation with Cuba is a masterful demonstration of his intellectual, administrative and political skills.
The presidential and vice presidential candidates for the Republican Party in 1904 were President Theodore Roosevelt and Charles W. Fairbanks and for the Democratic Party, Alton B. Parker and Henry Davis.
Republican Party’s Nomination of Roosevelt (and Fairbanks)
At the Republicans’ June convention in Chicago, Roosevelt was unanimously nominated on the first ballot, and the leaders of the conservative wing of the Party selected Fairbanks, a conservative Senator from Indiana with close ties to the railroad industry, for the running mate. Roosevelt was not pleased with Fairbanks, but did not think it was worth fighting about.
Sagamore Hill
On July 27th, 54 solemn Republicans went to Roosevelt’s home, Sagamore Hill, in Oyster Bay, New York on the north shore of Long Island,[1] to enact their party’s “most hallowed ritual: a formal notification of nomination to its presidential candidate.” [2]
Roosevelt in a 12-minute speech that day accepted the nomination. He, of course, praised the Republican Party and slammed the Democrats. He had two comments regarding business issues. He stated, “In dealing with the great organizations known as trusts, we [need] . . . to point out that [the laws] . . . actually have been enforced, and that legislation has been enacted to increase the effectiveness of their enforcement.” Roosevelt added, “The problems with which we have to deal in our modern industrial and social life are manifold; but the spirit in which it is necessary to approach their solution is simply the spirit of honesty, of courage, and of common-sense.”
His more formal letter of acceptance of September 12th reiterated these points and praised the previously mentioned “successful suit against the Northern Securities Company merger,” the enforcement of “the anti-trust and interstate commerce laws, and the action of the last Congress in enlarging the scope of the interstate commerce law [in the Elkins Act], and in creating the Department of Commerce and Labor, with a Bureau of Corporations, [that] have for the first time opened a chance for the National Government to deal intelligently and adequately with the questions affecting society, whether for good or for evil, because of the accumulation of capital in great corporations.”
The Campaign
Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, John Hay, in a letter to American historian and author, Henry Adams, called this campaign “the most absurd political campaign of our time.” Roosevelt did not actively campaign. Instead he issued statements form his front porch at Sagamore Hill, and the Republican Party received large campaign contributions from wealthy capitalists, including J.P. Morgan, the financial leader of Wall Street and a director of the New York Central Railroad; Edward H. Harriman, the president of the Union Pacific Railroad and also a director of the New York Central; and Henry C. Frick, the steel baron.
Roosevelt’s campaign slogan “The Square Deal” reiterated his comment on the settlement of the 1902 coal miners’ strike. He promised to “see it that every man has a square deal, no less and no more.” This pledge summed up Roosevelt’s belief in balancing the interests of business, consumers, and labor. The Square Deal called for limiting the power of trusts (a person having control of a large corporation so that no others can succeed in the economy), promoting public health and safety, and improving working conditions.
The Election Results
The results of the November 8thelection were not close. Roosevelt and Fairbanks had 7,626,000 votes (56.4%); Parker and Davis, 5,084,000 (37.6%). The Electoral College margin for Roosevelt and Fairbanks was even wider: 336 (70.6%) vs. 140 (29.4%); the following map shows the geographical distribution of the electoral votes (Republican in red; Democrat in blue):
=================================================
[1]Sagamore Hill is now a National Historic Site, currently closed for renovation.
[2] Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex at 343-64 (Random House; New York, 2001).
The big U.S. political news this week was the defeat of Eric Cantor in Tuesday’s Republican primary in his U.S. House district in Virginia. Pundits and politicians say it means increased power for Tea Party/Republicans. The Republican Party will become more conservative and even less willing to negotiate with President Obama and congressional Democrats. Etc. Etc.
I have not read all of the newspaper articles about this election and have no desire to do so. But I was surprised by a column by New York Times’ columnist Charles Blow that emphasized the very small size of the vote in this election. Here are the key facts:
District population
760,000
Total votes in District: 2012 general election
381,000
Total votes in District: 2012 GOP primary
47,719
Total votes in District: 2014 GOP primary
65,008
Total votes in District: 2014 GOP primary– David Brat
36,110
Total votes in District: 2014 GOP primary– Eric Cantor
28,898
Ezra Klein of the Vox Conversations website believes that Cantor lost because of the low turnout in this week’s primary; Cantor failed to get his supporters to the polls. Philip Bump in the Washington Post disagrees; he asserts that the GOP primary turnout in 2014 was larger than in 2012 and that the increased turnout was to vote against Cantor.
I am sure there are other interpretations of the result of this primary election, and I certainly am not able to wade in with my own opinion on the subject. Nor do I want to.
I merely point out that only 7,212 (36,110-28,898) more people voted for Brat than for Cantor. Are the many grandiose interpretations of this election merely over-reactions?
A prior post reviewed the U.S. presidential election of 1900, in which Republicans William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt were the winning candidates for President and Vice President. Now we focus on Roosevelt’s involvement in that election.
Attending the Republican Party’s National Convention
The involvement began at the Republican Party’s national convention in Philadelphia in June. Although Roosevelt repeatedly had opposed suggestions that he be the Party’s vice presidential nominee, he did attend the convention as a New York delegate-at-large. Once there, he made dramatic arrivals in the city and on the convention floor.
Roosevelt commanded the attention of the entire convention when he seconded the nomination of McKinley. In the words of his biographer, Edmund Morris, Roosevelt “moved confidently through his prepared text, speaking at a torrential speed unusual even for him, his body trembling with the force of his gestures.”[1] He said that the Republican Party in the prior election “did not promise the impossible . . . and kept our word. . . . [the U.S.] has reached a pitch of prosperity never before attained . . . . So it has been in foreign affairs [as well].” He concluded his seconding speech with these words:
“We stand on the threshold of a new century big with the fate of mighty nations. . . . The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean on either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. . . . We challenge the proud privilege of doing the work that Providence allots us, and we face the coming years high of heart and resolute of faith that to our people is given the right to win such honor and renown as has never yet been vouchsafed to the nations of mankind.”
On the convention’s vote on his own vice presidential nomination, Roosevelt cast the only negative vote, but immediately afterwards told party officials that he would be a loyal member of the team. He said, “I am as strong as a bull moose, and you can use me to the limit taking heed of but one thing and that is my throat.”[2]
Roosevelt confirmed his acceptance of the nomination in a lengthy letter of September 15th (two and a half months after the convention) that repeated some of the points of his seconding speech at the convention and that attacked the issues promoted by William Jennings Bryan.
Roosevelt’s letter also addressed the “serious problem” presented by “the great business combinations . . . [or] trusts.” This real problem was “immensely aggravated” by “honest but wrong-headed attacks on our whole industrial system in the effort to remove some of . . . [its] evils. . . . No good whatever is subserved by indiscriminate denunciation of corporations generally, and of all forms of industrial combination in particular.” Instead, the “real abuses” need to be attacked first by finding out and publicizing the facts regarding “capitalization, profits and all else of importance.” Those facts would “enable us to tell whether or not certain proposed remedies would be beneficial.”
Campaigning
As indicated in a prior post, Roosevelt conducted a real “whistle-stop” campaign from the rear of a railroad train in 1900. He covered 21,000 miles, giving 673 speeches in 24 states to an estimated three million people. These speeches defended the gold standard and McKinley’s foreign policy. He attacked Bryan for wanting to “paralyze our whole industrial life” and for appealing to “every foul and evil passion of mankind.”
The Almanac of Theodore Roosevelt’s compilation of his “Complete Speeches,” however, only has six campaign speeches, three of which are rebuttals of William Jennings Bryan.[3] The other three bear comment.
Roosevelt on his campaign train from Quincy, Illinois to Chicago in September was accompanied by three railroad executives: my maternal great-great-uncle, William Carlos Brown, then General Manager of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad; Theodore P. Shonts, then the President of the Illinois & Iowa Railroad (“I&I RR”);[4] and Paul Morton, then the President of the Santa Fe Railroad (“the Santa Fe”).[5]
W. C. BrownT.P. ShontsPaul Morton
I have not been able to discover the substance of the conversations the four of them had on the train, but they presumably discussed the issue of federal regulation of business, especially railroads. The three railroaders presumably also were present in Chicago on Labor Day when candidate Roosevelt gave a remarkable speech, even to 21st century ears, on “The Labor Question.”[6]
The general theme of the speech was the importance of “the spirit of brotherhood in American citizenship” that is fostered by association with others not in our “own little set.” Roosevelt emphasized this from his own life in working with “mighty men of their hands” in the Northwest cattle country, with farmers and with “skilled mechanics of a high order.” He added that he had been “thrown into intimate contact with railroad men [and] . . . gradually came to the conclusion that [they] . . . were about the finest citizens there were anywhere around.” Presumably the three railroad executives with him on that trip were included in that group.
Therefore, Roosevelt argued, we “must beware of any attempt to make hatred in any form the basis of action.” He continued, “our chief troubles come from mutual misunderstanding, from failing to appreciate one another’s point of view [and] the great need is fellow feeling, sympathy, brotherhood.”
At the end of the speech, Roosevelt sketched his approach to the issues of the day. He said, “Before us loom industrial problems large in their importance and in their complexity. The last half-century has been one of extraordinary social and industrial development. . . . It is not yet possible to say what shall be the exact limit of influence allowed the State, or what limit shall be set to that right of individual initiative. . . .” Therefore, undertaking efforts to change the State’s involvement in these areas should be with caution and humility. “We can do a great deal when we undertake soberly, to do the possible. When we undertake the impossible, we too often fail to do anything at all.”
On September 7th in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Roosevelt castigated Bryan’s “Free Silver” proposal as “the one and only way to insure wide-spread industrial and social ruin.”
Roosevelt also touched on the problems of industrial combinations or trusts that had been raised by Bryan. Roosevelt conceded that “trusts have produced great and serious evils. There is every reason why we should try to abate these evils and to make men of wealth, whether they act individually or collectively, bear their full share of the country’s burdens and keep as scrupulously within the bounds of equity and morality as their neighbors.” However, he added, “wild and frantic denunciation does not do them the least harm and simply postpones the day when we can make them amenable to proper laws.” Repeating his letter of acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, Roosevelt said the first thing was to learn “exactly what each corporation does and earns,” thereby enabling the formulation of “measures for attacking the . . .[ evils] with good prospects of success.”
Roosevelt’s last major speech before the November 6th election was on October 26th at New York City’s old Madison Square Garden.
According to the New York Times, when he arrived at the Garden, “the buzzing sound of many voices became a roar of cheers and the 14,000 people . . . yelled with all their might as they waved small and large American flags. . . . For ten minutes the uproar was deafening. . . . Just as the enthusiasm had reached a climax Gov. Roosevelt spied his wife in [the audience] and bowed and smiled. For the first time his teeth were in plain sight. This little act aroused the people to renewed cheering, drowning the loudest noise which could be produced by two bands of fifty men playing ‘A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.’”[7]
Eventually Roosevelt spoke. He lambasted Bryan’s “Free Silver” proposal and his seeking “to sow seeds of malice and envy” in the manner of Robespierre. “No greater evil, oh, my fellow countrymen, can be done this nation of ours than to teach any group of Americans that their attitude should be one of sullen hatred and distrust of their fellows.” Such “bitter class hatreds . . . leads ultimately to class strife, . . . to the loss of liberty . . . [whose] most dangerous enemy [is] anarchy, license, mob violence in any form.”
He concluded by appealing to his fellow countrymen “to keep the conditions under which we have grown so prosperous” and to maintain “the honor of a mighty nation.”
Conclusion
After winning the 1900 election, President McKinley and Vice President Roosevelt were inaugurated on March 4, 1901. In his short inaugural address, Roosevelt said, “For weal or for woe, for good or for evil, . . . [playing “a leading part in shaping the destinies of mankind”] is true of our own mighty nation. Great privileges and great powers are ours, and heavy are the responsibilities that go with these privileges and these powers. . . . We belong to a young nation, already of giant strength, yet whose political strength is but a forecast of power that is yet to come. We stand supreme in a continent, in a hemisphere.”
[2]Id. at 768. In 1912 after the Republican Party re-nominated William Howard Taft as its presidential candidate, over Roosevelt’s opposition, Roosevelt organized the Progressive Party (nicknamed the Bull Moose Party) and ran as its presidential candidate. With these two parties splitting the conservative vote, the Democratic presidential candidate, Woodrow Wilson, won the election.
[3] The rebuttals of Bryan were in Detroit on September 7th and Evansville, Indiana on October 12th and in a published letter of October 15th.
[4]Shonts grew up in Centerville, Iowa, and after graduating from Illinois’ Monmouth College, worked in Iowa as a bookkeeper, then an attorney and as an executive of a construction company that built stretches of railroad track. This lead to his becoming an executive for the I&IRR. In 1905 then President Roosevelt appointed Shonts to be the Chairman of the Isthmian [Panama] Canal Commission, a position he held until March 1907, when he became President of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, which operated New York City’s rapid transit system.
[5]Morton was born in Michigan and grew up in Nebraska as the son of a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture; his older brother was the founder of Morton Salt. In 1904 President Roosevelt appointed Morton as Secretary of the Navy, but in 1905 he was forced to resign after evidence surfaced that the Santa Fe under his presidency had granted illegal rebates. Morton, however, then became the President of the Equitable Life Assurance Society in New York City.
[6] This account of the Quincy-Chicago trip is based on a January 30, 1907, letter from Brown to Schonts saying “I often think of the trip from Quincy to Chicago, when . . . you and Paul [Morton] and I had the pleasure and the honor of a ride across Illinois with Theodore Roosevelt, then a candidate for Vice-President.” (Image (# 71-0572) provided courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Divisions and Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org.) I plead for anyone who has more information about the Quincy-Chicago trip or the discussions the three railroad executives had with Roosevelt to share such information in a comment to this post.
[7]Gov. Roosevelt Speaks, N.Y. Times (Oct. 27, 1900).
As discussed in a prior post, I favor the adoption of a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College for the election of our President and Vice President and instead to have direct election of those offices by national popular vote. But that amendment has not been adopted. Thus, we are stuck with the Electoral College for the presidential election in 2016 and thereafter.
In anticipation of 2016 the Republican Party is concocting a flimflam scheme to rig the Electoral College so that a Republican candidate could be elected president even though he or she was a clear loser in the national popular vote.
This scheme is being organized by the Republican State Leadership Committee and its Redistricting Majority Project, or REDMAP.
In states whose legislatures are controlled by Republicans, but whose voters favored President Obama in 2012, Republican legislators and party officials are developing legislation to allocate those states’ presidential electoral votes by congressional districts. Those districts already have been gerrymandered by those same Republican-controlled state legislatures to favor Republican congressional candidates. As a result of this gerrymandering, Republicans now have a 33-seat majority in the House of Representatives even though Democratic candidates for Congress collectively got 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents in the 2012 election.
The result of such changes, if adopted, would be to reduce the Electoral College votes of a Democratic Party presidential candidate who had the most popular votes in such states and in the nation as a whole. Under some scenarios, it could even result in the election of a Republican presidential candidate who lost the national popular vote.
The lesson for Democrats, liberals, progressives as well as those who believe in the principles of democracy: be vigilant. Identify any such efforts in your states. Publicly oppose those measures. Lobby for state legislative opposition to them.
