Riots, Guns, Bribes: TR's Contested Convention

Would a candidate for president of the United States ever officially condone a riot on the floor of a national convention? Would a candidate actually ever seek to provoke one? Should delegates at a convention be permitted to carry guns? Can supporters of a candidate try to buy delegate votes? Could any of these things happen at a contested Republican Convention this year in Cleveland?

It seems unlikely, but there would be precedents. Amazingly, in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt tried to wrest the nomination from William Howard Taft, there were plans for riots, plenty of guns, and more than a few attempted and perhaps actual bribes.

Even though he had groomed Taft as his handpicked successor in 1908—describing him as the most lovable man he knew—Roosevelt decided to come out of retirement in 1912 and challenge the sitting president for the Republican nomination. Up to then, delegates to national conventions were picked by party leaders, but when it became clear that he could not win over the men who controlled the party machinery, Roosevelt embraced a new idea: presidential primaries. His campaign theme became: “Let the people rule.” There were 13 primaries that year, and when Roosevelt won nine of them and 70 percent of the elected delegates, he claimed to have right to the nomination. But most of those delegates had been picked in the old-fashioned way. So when Taft’s supporters used the power of his incumbency to pressure delegates and control the proceedings, Roosevelt—or men acting in his name—resorted to more creative and belligerent tactics.

Cowan has a book out about the 1912 conventions. Apparently, TR was so upset about losing the votes of African-Americans at the GOP convention that he seated all-White delegations from the Deep South. This cost him the support of Black Progressives in the North, who actually thought they'd do better with Woodrow Wilson. It's not likely, though, that TR could have won as a third party candidate whatever he did.

Cowan can't stop talking about how he was the one who transformed Democrat conventions back in the 1970s.

On the eve of the 1972 Democratic Convention, Howard K. Smith delivered a commentary as co-anchor of the ABC Evening News that ended with these words: "Over the hall tonight hang huge pictures of men who made the Democratic Party what it is. One is missing - young Geoffrey Cowan. He did more to change conventions than anybody since Andrew Jackson first started them."

No word on what else he's been doing for the last forty years, but he's probably been having a better time than Andy Jackson or Howard K. Smith.

Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.

Now, friends, I am not speaking for myself at all, I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap.

I have had a good many experiences in my time and this is one of them. What I care for is my country. I wish I were able to impress upon my people — our people, the duty to feel strongly but to speak the truth of their opponents. I say now, I have never said one word one the stump against any opponent that I cannot defend. I have said nothing that I could not substantiate and nothing that I ought not to have said — nothing that I — nothing that, looking back at, I would not say again.

Now, friends, it ought not to be too much to ask that our opponents -[speaking to some one on the stage]-I am not sick at all. I am all right. I cannot tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this campaign, and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but for the sake of common country, that they make up their minds to speak only the truth, and not use that kind of slander and mendacity which if taken seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes of violence. Don’t you make any mistake. Don’t you pity me. I am all right. I am all right and you cannot escape listening to the speech either.

And now, friends, this incident that has just occurred - this effort to assassinate me- emphasizes to a peculiar degree the need of the Progressive movement. Friends, every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the “Havenots” arraigned against the creed of the “Haves.” When that day comes then such incidents as this to-night will be commonplace in our history. When you make poor men - when you permit the conditions to grow such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won, when that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it will be an ill day for our country.

Now, friends, what we who are in this movement are endeavoring to do is forestall any such movement for justice now - a movement in which we ask all just men of generous hearts to join with the men who feel in their souls that lift upward which bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while their countrymen and countrywomen suffer from avoidable misery. Now, friends, what we Progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor, whatever their social or industrial position, to stand together for the most elementary rights of good citizenship, those elementary rights which are the foundation of good citizenship in this great Republic of ours.

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