ROOSEVELT’S CABINET IN 1908
“You will know more, sir, later; a good deal more, or I am much in error. Young? Why, he is just out of school almost, yet he is a force to be reckoned with in New York. Later the nation will be criticizing or praising him. While respectful to the gray hairs and experience of his elders, not one of them can move him an iota from convictions as to men and measures once formed and rooted. He will not truckle nor cringe; he seems to court opposition to the point of being somewhat pugnacious. His political life will probably be turbulent; but he will be a figure, not a figure-head, in future developments—or if not, it will be because he gives up politics altogether.”
These opinions from men who knew Roosevelt all his life go to show that his course to the Presidency was clearly marked for him from the time he entered New York politics.
Jeremiah Curtin, the historian and philosopher, was another person who early became impressed with the idea that Roosevelt was a dynamic force for the highest place in the land. Curtin, in his “History of the Mongols,” wrote thus of seeing Roosevelt as a Civil Service Commissioner:
“All at once, in the large room before us, I saw a young man, alert to his duties and perfectly confident. There was no one else in the apartment. I told (Congressman) Greenhalge to look at him.
“‘That man looks precisely as if he had examined the building and, finding it suitable, has made up his mind to inhabit it!’
“‘He is the living picture of that pose,’ replied Greenhalge; ‘but do you know him? That is Theodore Roosevelt!’”
The assassination of President McKinley, which led Roosevelt to the White House, simply hastened the goal which was already in sight.
From his early days in politics he took a high moral stand and formed the habit of going to the people over the heads of the politicians whenever he thought that the public interest required such drastic measures. He set for himself a high standard, yet, when he quitted the Presidency, that standard had been set even higher than when he made his first campaign for clean politics in the New York Legislature.
Roosevelt’s first notable act on entering the Presidency was to retain in office all of McKinley’s subordinates. It had been the habit on the three previous occasions when Vice-Presidents succeeded Presidents through the death of the President to change the personnel of the higher offices, especially in the Cabinet. Roosevelt did not think this a wise course. He asked all of the members of the Cabinet to stay and help him carry out McKinley’s policies.