McCain and Teddy

Thank you Mr. Riccards.  What a nice diversion from the rest of the coverage.  I am particularly fond of McCain's statement to Romney in last week's debate.  To paraphrase, McCain said something along the lines of not apologizing for crossing the aisle to compromise.  I think this nation was built on such commonality of purpose.

The comparison between The Bully Boy and Joystick John are more real than you know.

Both are egomainiacs/meglomaniacs; both are big-time bigots (recent biographies characterize Teddy as a Native-American hater who believed that the only good Indian is a dead Indian).

Both Teddy and Joystick are warmonger, big-government natioanlists, not patriots.  A patriot is someone who loves the land and the people, as well as its values.  Both of these clunkers loved power and government.

Both Bully Boy and Joystick were/are ill-tempered boors.

I could go on, but instead, I'll simply refer you to "Bully Boy", a recent critical biography of Roosevelt.  That should be enough to disabuse anyone of the idea that Tteddy Roosevelt was even half-human . . . let alone presidential.

Lots of tyrants keep their promises.  Read Mein Kampf if you doubt that.

Roosevelt would have made a great Emperor . . . but he stank as President of a Republic, ruining business, the courts, foreign policy, etc. etc. . . . all of which is chronicled in "Bully Boy: the Truth About Theodore Roosevelt's Legacy" by Jim Powell.

N.B.  And just so you don't think that Mr. Powell was a partisan, he also set the record straight respecting Democrats Woodenhead Wilson ("Wison's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and World War II"); and, Feebleminded Dingbat Roosevelt ("FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression").

In particular, "Bully Boy" reveals how Teddy's alleged "Trust Busting" actually promoted monopolies; how his alleged "conservation" policies caused untold environmental destruction; how TR expanded presidential power and brought us Big Government; how he heralded in the era of government regulation, thereby handicapping employers, destroying jobs, and harming consumers; how he established the dangerous and expensive precedent of pushing America into other peoples' wars even when our own national interests weren't threatened or at stake; how this looney-tunes "crusader" for "pure food" launched crazy campaigns against margarine; corn syrup and Coca-Cola; and, arguably most devastatingly . . . ROOSEVELT INSPIRED THE CAMPAIGN TO ENACT A FEDERAL INCOME TAX THAT WAS SUPPOSEDLY A TAX ON THE RICH BUT BECAME A PEOPLE'S TAX.

In sum Roosevelt was a poster-boy (bully-boy) for all that is wrong with the existing WELFARE-WARFARE STATE.  In fact, he was instrumental in ushering a new era of overweening federal government intervention in our lives.

A pox on him and his plant-food legacy.   

Read Bully Boy.  It's a revelation that your high-school civics text doesn't quite offer . . .

Naturally, one should read all points of view; however, one should take note of actual scholarship and historiography.

The problem with vitually all prior biographical treatment of phonies like Roosevelt is that their biographers are hagiographers, not historians.  Or in the cases cited above, "mere neocons".

The beauty of recent historical treatment of Roosevelt is that the historians started on a clean slate.  They went for the facts, not the halo.  The facts take you where they take you.

In the case of Powel's work, his presentation of the facts do not largely diverge from the factual predicate of other authors cited by the above commentor.  The difference lies in Powell's extrapolation from those facts to the ACTUAL RESULTS of Roosevelt's policies.

No historian disputes the fact that Roosevelt was responsible for initiating certain legislation that he ultimately signed into law.  No historian disputes the fact that Roosevelt created a much more muscular, interventionist executive.  For example, Powell notes that prior to Lincoln, very few Executive Orders are signed by the President.  From Lincoln through McKinley (Roosevelt's predecessor), 158 such total orders were signed.  The record shows that Roosevelt alone signed 1,007 such orders.  These are the facts; draw the inferences.

Such behavior has consequences and sets precedents.  One cannot possibly assess an individual, especially a U.S. President, without understanding the consequences of his decisions.  Unlike the other biographers and historians who have written about Roosevelt and his presidency, Powell gives us the straight dope on the CONSEQUENCES of Roosevelt's actions.

Mark Twain, who had met Roosevelt twice, called Teddy "clearly insane".  Historian/biographer Walter LaFeber tells of Roosevelt, "at age twenty, following an argument with his girlfriend, Roosevelt went home and shot and killed his neighbor's dog for no reason whatsoever".

Roosevelt was a Hobbesian/Rousseauean trying desperately to make a place for himself within the confines of a Republic and a compact written and organized for a Lockean government.