FROM THE WEST WING TO THE WEST WING



   The victory in New Mexico should have been just the tonic needed by the campaign to re-elect President Root. It certainly could clinch the election if it were properly exploited. Initially, the US victories did hedge the polls back in Root’s direction but, this election was still a very close run thing. Root also had any number of other problems that had been dogging him since before the campaigning season. He also realized the victories handed him by Pershing and Roosevelt were not the October Surprise they needed to be, mostly because they did not happen in October. Most of the real fighting was over by that time and Root was keenly aware that the voters had short memories. As Root examined his problems he came to realize that in order for him to win reelection, he was going to have to make a bold move. All of his problems were coming to a single head and, as he saw it, one man could solve all of them and that man’s name was Theodore Roosevelt.
Root’s main problem was first and foremost, his Vice President. Knox had been shoed in on the first election ticket because of the back room deals that were normal for the day. Root only approved of Knox because the man could serve to make the President look better. The only problem with Knox was that the man not only had a habit of getting into scandals, unfortunately for him, they were well publicized ones. Hearst had harassed Knox to no end as it was obvious that the newspaper man, with his own presidential ambitions, saw Knox as Root’s Achilles heel. Hearst had made Knox out to be a buffoon and, unfortunately for Knox, Root privately agreed with that assessment.
Most historians have come to agree that Knox was given a raw deal but, this meant little, to Root, with a reelection bid sitting on the horizon. This was why Knox was still the Vice President (his resignation was still waiting to be made public) but, not Root’s running mate for the election of November, 1900. As of yet, Root had not officially named a running mate even though it was widely accepted, by this time, that Senator William McKinley would most likely serve as the new Vice President. Now Root saw an opportunity to take care of multiple problems with one swift stroke.
Not only was the young and energetic Roosevelt a national hero, not only had he already managed to thwart the ambitions of Randolph Hearst, he was also a serious pain in the ass for Root. Roosevelt was seen by many of Root’s supporters as a threat to their jobs. That was how Roosevelt had been side lined to New Mexico in the first place. At the time of Roosevelt‘s appointment, no one had ever thought that it would turn into such a heavily publicized theater of war. Now that it had, and Roosevelt’s friends in the media had made him into a hero, why not use that? All the while Root got to put his chief rival in a position where he could keep an eye on him and minimize the damage the man could do. It would also be an effective way of keeping the September war victories in the public eye.
This was how Roosevelt went from the battlefield of war to the campaign of politics and in very short order. It had been printed that Roosevelt had accepted the nomination for Vice President before Roosevelt himself had even been notified that he was on the ticket. As Roosevelt would write in his journal, he saw it as an order from the commander in chief and he was a soldier, so, he accepted the nomination even if he really wished to remain at the front.
Root, a shrewd politician, had calculated the situation well. He was correct in most aspects of his appraisal. Roosevelt’s presence on the ticket, along with his energetic campaigning on the stump, shifted the polls in Root’s favor and by November it was obvious who would win the election. What Root had been completely wrong about was his ability to constrain Roosevelt who was, after all, a man seething with ambition and the talent to go with it. Right from the start it was obvious that Roosevelt not only had his own agenda but, Root could not temper it in anyway. All of this was before the Republicans sent Debbs and his populists down in flames in the election. What would happen after Roosevelt was sworn in was even more serious in the eyes of Root. Then something out of the blue would change the entire situation and alter the course of human history.
The events that would really unleash Roosevelt were still in the future. For the time being it meant that the United States would remain in the war and this was all that concerned the governments in Paris and St Petersburg. The Triple Entente had taken it’s lumps in the past year but, they had also managed some victories. Unfortunately for the world, the only thing that had really changed after another bloody year of war was, nothing at all. By the start of the new century, no one was any closer to concluding, let alone winning, the war. The men running this conflict were getting desperate and they all slowly came to realize it was going to take something unseen to shift the balance to one side or the other. It would come and none of them would see it until it was long over.




To Be Continued.