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The most striking of these, Vidal claims, is Teddy Roosevelt, who parlays ; the inflated Hearstian ballyhoo about his heroics on San Juan Hill into a political career that eventually, after McKinley's assassination in 1901, lands him in the White House. Empire is, to put it mildly, not kind to Roosevelt. Nearly all the characters extol his predecessor. Hay tells McKinley, "You may be tired, sir, but you've accomplished a great deal more than any President since Mr. Lincoln, and even he didn't acquire an empire for us, which you have done." Roosevelt, by contrast, is the "fat little President," a bellicose figure of fun with a falsetto voice, a habit of clicking his "tombstone teeth" and laughing like a "frenzied watchdog." These denigrations largely fall flat. In Burr, Vidal turned a villain into a hero, suggesting that another truth could be found on the dark side of legend; here the issue of Roosevelt's buffoonery hardly matters, since he is portrayed as simply following in the revered McKinley's footsteps.
In lieu of suspense there is plenty of attention to the veneer of the gilded age: high society in New York, Newport and Washington, with occasional forays into England and France. Vidal handles the gatherings of the very bright and very rich with meticulous attention to the furnishings and small outbursts of naughty wit. Mrs. John Jacob Astor appears, commenting on the trials of idle affluence: "Now I play bridge. It is exactly like being alive." Vidal also throws in teasers to keep knowledgeable readers on their toes. Roosevelt's outspoken daughter Alice is quoted on her desire to leave Washington: "Scenes of former glory sort of thing. I don't want to be a fixture." That, of course, is exactly what Alice Roosevelt Longworth became for much of this century. When Oklahoma is admitted to statehood, Roosevelt rails that the new citizens have "in their infinite Western wisdom sent us a blind boy for one Senator." The Senator in question is Thomas Gore, Vidal's maternal grandfather.
Empire offers many small pleasures in place of an absorbing whole. Vidal obviously sees his characters stumbling into the same folly of worldly dominion that has undone all previous empires. On the other hand, the end is not yet. And while life remains, it is probably smarter and more profitable to be charming than to despair.