Congratulations, Mr. President; They Wanted You

The week after Roosevelt won the presidency in his own right, Puck staged a handshake across the country. From the cornice of the Puck Building in New York the little sprite leans out, top hat and pink sash, and stretches his arm the length of the spread; from the far side a vast Theodore Roosevelt leans out over the White House and Capitol to grip it. Autumn foliage fills the gap between the two buildings, and the Brooklyn Bridge sits small on the horizon. The caption reads the 1904 landslide as the popular will made plain: "they wanted you." Puck, so often the scold, here plays the enthusiast, and the sheer scale of Roosevelt says who now filled the national frame.