The Presidents #26: Theodore Roosevelt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt

Discuss him and his Presidency.

I liked this guy from the beginning.

Cousin of FDR.

No President since can equal his record. And he built a modern navy. Navies are critically important; people who constantly disparage military spending frequently overlook the fact that the nation which controls the seas controls international commerce.

Teddy Roosevelt also took on the monster trusts which dominated the American economy at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was the guy who began the work on the Panama Canal, and however one sees it politically, the Panama Canal was enormously important in the 20th century economic scene.

An amazing fellow. The Texan H.W. Brand has written an excellent biography called The Last Romantic, which I strongly recommend.

I'm reading Theodore Roosevelt: Wilderness Warrior right now, it's excellent.

but being pro-environment was pretty much risk-free in those days.

He also loved children. When he was president, the White House was filled with playing children. TR would play games and run around with them. His wife once said, "I have 5 children, six if you count the President."

FDR idolized him.

Second floor window on the left. He was 6.

Fought big business, loved the environment and animals, was a true patriot (that modern tea-losers wouldn't even recognize). He believed in honor and justice, treated people fairly and could connect with everyone from kings to the common man.

Plus he was an amazing renaissance man. Writer, explorer, soldier, hunter, father, politician, rancher, cowboy, biologist, book-fiend and much more.

I'm reading Theodore Roosevelt: Wilderness Warrior right now, it's excellent. It's about his quest to save wild America.

To sum it up, TR was just plain Bully!

There's always a sinister side to most of the things folks admire about TR. He was an unabashed imperialist, declaring a 'corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine in which the US would intervene anywhere in the hemisphere if we decided it was in our interest. Such things have had disastrous effects on Latin America. Even the Panama Canal could not have been built if the US had not fomented revolution in Colombia, where Panama was a province. The 'revolutionaries' proclaimed independence, the US quickly gave diplomatic recognition and backed up the new country with troops to deter Colombia from taking it back. The canal, of course, made US businesses a lot of money, and the Panamanians got very little.

Roosevelt's anti-big business reputation is also overstated, I think. If you're interested in this era of American history, Gabriel Kolko wrote a good book called The Triumph of Conservatism where he shows that the business reforms from 1900 to 1916 were actually supported, and often initiated by the major industries (meat packing, banking for instance) in order to regulate smaller competition out of business.