Joseph Benson Foraker (1846-1917), Governor of Ohio (1886-1890)
Notes of a Busy Life (1916)
Pages 425-426
…The “hurrah boys” had lost interest and the result was a Democratic victory. The lesson of all this is plain. You cannot do much in politics without issues and a candidate who is not afraid to discuss them, and they must be issues that are important enough to call for plain talk that the whole people will note and understand. Failing in this, the “hurrah boys” become indifferent and the “sober and conservative” classes too frequently forget all about the election until they read its results the day afterward.
In discharging the duties of his office Harrison was an excellent President, but, as Mr. Hayes says [in his recently published diary], he lacked tact. He had a grouchy way of meeting people and lost friends and made enemies. Consequently on election day there was “lack of interest.” Defeat was his reward and his party’s disaster.
Some of us foresaw all this at Minneapolis and in a conscientious endeavor to serve the best interests of the party, and not as a lot of “unscrupulous bosses,” tried to nominate somebody else. It was not an agreeable thing to do, but duty commanded, and we did the best we could.
In the Senatorial contest with Senator Sherman a few months before a great many revenue agents, national bank examiners, and others holding positions under the Federal government flocked into Columbus and made themselves active in opposition to my candidacy.
Governor Foster was then Secretary of the Treasury. Senator Sherman had helped to secure him this appointment as a token of his appreciation for Governor Foster’s support in the National Convention of 1888. The Governor had a natural aptitude and a great liking for practical politics. He had an opportunity in this contest to show his appreciation for what Senator Sherman had done for him, and, therefore, made it known early that, while he had no personal antagonism to me, yet he favored Sherman’s re-election.
I felt some resentment, and in the course of a speech I was called on to make at the time I referred to these government officials who were so intermeddling, as “everybody from grandfather’s hat to Baby McKee.” This was construed by some to indicate a hostile feeling toward President Harrison; but it was not so, and if it had been it would not change the fact that neither personal nor political dislike had anything to do with my opposition to his renomination at Minneapolis. On the contrary, my relations with General Harrison were cordial, not only before, and while he was President, but afterward until his death.
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