Oh! Heigh! Oh!
Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, President Roosevelt, and Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks watch over a fence saying, “Oh!” “Heigh!” “Oh!” respectively. William H. Taft holds the handle to the “Buckeye State” wagon and Senator Joseph Benson Foraker rolls his sleeve, ready for a fight.
Comments and Context
A cartoonist named H. H. Graham discovered a variant angle on the aspirations of Republican politicians as the 1908 elections drew near. Cartoonists and editorial writers — and politicians themselves — endlessly speculated on the race. Roosevelt clearly favored his Secretary of War, William H. Taft; yet the power of an incumbent president, even one with the broad popularity that Roosevelt enjoyed, was not absolute. Party leaders and unpredictable delegates could confound the experts.