Running against Theodore Roosevelt was less a
political campaign than self-inflicted punishment.
Roosevelt was everywhere. Newspapers couldn’t get
enough of him. Republicans loved him. Plenty of Democrats secretly admired him.
If he’d announced he was moving into the White House stables and raising
buffalo in the Rose Garden, half the country probably would’ve shrugged and
said it sounded reasonable.
Somebody still had to run against him.
The Democrats chose Alton B. Parker, a New York
judge whose greatest political asset was that he wasn’t William Jennings Bryan.
After watching Bryan lose twice, Democratic leaders decided that excitement was
overrated. Maybe what America wanted was a calm, respectable man who looked
like he balanced his checkbook on time.
Safe was Parker’s specialty.
His platform boiled down to lower tariffs, limited government, and keeping Washington from sticking its nose into everything. Conservative Democrats loved him. Wall Street didn’t hate him. Southern Democrats trusted him.
Then someone had the bright idea of pairing him with Henry G. Davis, an 80-year-old railroad millionaire from West Virginia who brought money and experience to the ticket.
The trouble was that nobody was excited.
Parker looked like a man running for bank president. Roosevelt looked like a man who might wrestle a grizzly bear between campaign stops.
By the time Parker got his campaign rolling, Roosevelt was already halfway through his victory lap. He carried 32 states and rolled up one of the biggest victories in American history. Parker carried the Solid South and not much else.
It’s hard to blame him. Plenty of capable men have run for president. Very few had the bad luck to run against Theodore Roosevelt.
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