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“Keeping Cool”
No caption
Cartoonist
W. A. Rogers did not apparently think the 1904 Republican ticket of
President Theodore Roosevelt and his vice presidential running mate,
Senator Charles Fairbanks, was a compatible one. The artist
depicts Fairbanks cramped and frozen in a block of ice, as Roosevelt, in
his Rough Rider uniform, shivers from the cold. Fairbanks, though,
proved to be an effective campaigner, while Roosevelt reluctantly heeded
the tradition against sitting presidents electioneering. In
November of that year, voters elected the two men by a landslide.
Charles
Fairbanks was born into a family of poor Ohio farmers in 1852. He
attended Ohio Wesleyan University, where he edited the school
newspaper. After graduation in 1872, he took a job with the
Associated Press in Pittsburgh before matriculating at the Cleveland Law
School. Passing the bar in 1873, Fairbanks moved to Indianapolis,
Indiana, where he worked as a lawyer for a railroad company. His
successful legal career, including a stint as counsel to financier Jay
Gould, and wise investments allowed him to purchase railroads and become
a millionaire.
A
supporter of protective tariffs and the gold standard, Fairbanks became
active in Republican Party politics. In 1888, he managed the
unsuccessful campaign of Walter Gresham, the former treasury secretary,
for the GOP presidential nomination. In 1892, Fairbanks failed in
his bid for a U.S. Senate seat, but his prominence on the money question
led to his selection as the keynote speaker at the Republican National
Convention in 1896. That same year, he was elected to the Senate,
and reelected in 1902. Although he was not very influential in
the Senate, Fairbanks had close ties to President William McKinley, who
choose him in 1898 to chair a joint commission to resolve a boundary
dispute between Canada and the United States. The city of
Fairbanks, Alaska, is named after him (and probably accounts for the
cartoonist's choice of an ice block).
In
1900, Fairbanks was considered as a possible running mate for McKinley,
but the ticket would have lacked geographical balance since both men
were Midwesterners. In 1904, though, delegates to the Republican
National Convention selected him as the party's vice presidential nominee,
recognizing that the senator's conservative philosophy and Indiana home
were a good contrast to President Theodore Roosevelt's progressivism and
New York residency. Fairbanks took an active part in the campaign,
delivering speeches in 33 states. In November, the
Roosevelt-Fairbanks ticket scored an impressive victory--336-140 in the
Electoral College and 56%-38% in the popular vote--over the Democratic
ticket of Alton Parker and Henry Davis.
Fairbanks
was a typical vice president of the period who mainly attended
ceremonial functions and had little influence on policy or
administration. In 1908, Roosevelt's handpicked successor, William
Howard Taft, secured the Republican presidential nomination,
although Fairbanks received Indiana's first-ballot votes as a
favorite-son candidate. Four years later, Fairbanks endorsed the
reelection of the more conservative Taft over his new rival, former
president Roosevelt, who ran on the Progressive Party ticket. In
1916, Fairbanks was again chosen as the Republican vice presidential
nominee. He and his presidential running mate, Charles Evans
Hughes of New York, were defeated as President Woodrow Wilson won a
second term. Fairbanks died in 1918, leaving an estate worth
nearly $5 million.
Robert C. Kennedy
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