American Ideal: Theodore Roosevelt's Search for American Individualism | Date: 28 April 2011, 07:05
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American Ideal: Theodore Roosevelt's Search for American Individualism
By Paul M. Rego
* Publisher: Lexington Books
* Number Of Pages: 233
* Publication Date: 2009-06-28
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0739126083
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780739126080
Early in George W. Bush’s presidency, Karl Rove, the president’s top political
adviser, recommended that his boss read Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris’ account
of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential years. Shortly after Christmas
2001, Bush told reporters that he had just finished the book and recommended
it highly. In the wake of September 11, it is easy to imagine Bush reading excitedly
about the parallels between Roosevelt’s circumstances and his own. TR
believed that “anarchism, that plague of European government,” also threatened
both order and freedom in the United States. After all, an anarchist had
been responsible for the assassination of his predecessor. As President, Roosevelt
intended to “war with ruthless efficiency” against this terrorism of his
time, and he addressed the threat with the same language of moral outrage that
Bush adopted in the War on Terror.1 More recently, Rove furthered the comparison
between Roosevelt and Bush, suggesting that, given “a choice between
Wall Street and Main Street,” the 43rd President, like the 26th, would “choose
Main Street every time.” He argued as well that Roosevelt would stand up and
applaud Bush’s initiative on healthy forests, noting that there are currently
more trees in the United States than when TR was President.2
Bush, however, is not the only recent President who has sought to establish
a connection with Roosevelt. Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, repeatedly
praised Roosevelt’s positive moral example, and even invited TR biographer
David McCullough to the White House to lecture on Roosevelt’s valor. Bill
Clinton often referred to Roosevelt as one of his favorite Presidents. He hung
a portrait of TR by the entrance to his private study, off the Oval Office, and
posthumously awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor. As President,
Clinton expressed admiration for Roosevelt’s trust busting, advocacy of
child-labor laws, and efforts to protect the public from unsafe food. Again and
again, he spoke about the parallels between TR’s time, when an agrarian
economy was becoming industrial, and his own, when an industrial economy
was becoming information-based.3 As a former President, Clinton has continued
to invoke the memory of Roosevelt. In an August 2004 op-ed piece for
the Los Angeles Times, he reminds readers that, despite Roosevelt’s warning
against the waste and destruction of natural resources, the Bush administration
has proposed ending limitations on the development of approximately 60
million acres of national forests where no roads have been built. Pointing to
examples such as these, Clinton maintains that, if the Rough Rider were alive
today, he “would have been a Democrat.”4
Similarly, various pundits have used Roosevelt to serve their respective political
agendas. When Senator John McCain challenged Bush for the Republican
Party’s presidential nomination in 2000, Richard Lowry of National Review
noted McCain’s frequent mentions of Roosevelt and described the
senator’s calls for a renewed spirit of American citizenship as “Rooseveltian.”
Alleging that both Roosevelt and McCain associated wealth with selfishness
and were unwilling to acknowledge that such virtues as “thrift, foresight, and
service to others” underlay democratic capitalism, the Lowry article concludes
that a number of McCain’s proposals, such as the Patient’s Bill of
Rights and campaign-finance reform, fit TR’s brand of progressivism, which
“wasn’t just about energy, but also about fear and control, and grabbing
power back from grubby businessmen and putting it in the hands of middleclass,
college-educated experts.”5 At the same time, David Brooks of The
Weekly Standard has expressed admiration for Roosevelt’s foreign policy,
which he believes placed moral concern over the maintenance of international
political stability. In a review of Theodore Rex, Brooks wonders if Morris
overlooks how willing Roosevelt was to “upset equilibriums and [transform]
the status quo” for the sake of a cause he thought just.6
In sum, politicians and political activists of diverse beliefs and ideologies
all lay claim to the mantle of Theodore Roosevelt, borrowing particular
pieces of his legacy. Conservatives embrace Roosevelt’s strong belief in the
power of self-improvement, his commitment to individualism, and his willingness
to preach about the loss of virtue; but they completely ignore his support
for the regulation of business. On the other hand, liberals tend to ignore
most of the above and celebrate only Roosevelt’s conservationism and his
willingness to regulate the economy to counter many of the negative consequences
of large-scale industrialization.
Far too often, then, Roosevelt is cast as either “conservative” or “liberal,”
but his political thought defies so simple an interpretation; it was more nuanced
and had a larger purpose than mere ideology. This study demonstrates
that Roosevelt spent most of his life trying to reconcile two often-competing
values: the collectivist spirit of Progressivism and the individualism of the
American founders. As President, TR used the power of the national government
to break down obstacles that prevented many Americans from competing
on a reasonably level economic playing field, thereby providing them
with opportunity to realize their individual potential. At the same time, he believed
that much depended on the character of the individual. He therefore
relied on personal example, the bully pulpit, and an extraordinary number of
public writings to preach the values of fair-play, decency, hard-work, selfcontrol,
and duty to family, community, and nation. Economic regulations,
coupled with the power of rhetoric and the inspiration of his example, were
the means by which Roosevelt attempted to reconcile the tension between individualism
and collectivism. In office, as in life, he was the embodiment of
boldness, energy, and resoluteness. He had an aggressive fighting style, but
he also had a capacity to empathize with the plight of others. In essence, Roosevelt
played the role of the kindhearted tough guy—his American ideal—
and he hoped that his words and deeds would inspire his fellow citizens to appreciate
the importance of both individualistic and collectivistic qualities.
Roosevelt accepted largeness in American life, including the new corporate
scale of the economy. He rejected both the Wilsonian desire to break up corporations
and the Socialist wish to nationalize them. He preferred instead to
strengthen the regulatory powers of the federal government, while remaining
devoted to the principle of individual responsibility. He was simply unwilling
to regard structural solutions like statutes, constitutional amendments, and
regulatory bodies as an appropriate response to all of society’s problems.
With regard to both economic and social/moral issues, Roosevelt also regarded
rhetoric and personal example as an effective means of encouraging
Americans to embrace both individualistic and collectivistic values. Thus, as
Michael McGerr observes, TR was not in the mainstream of Progressive reformers
in that he set out to reform, not forsake, the individualist values that
prevailed during the 18th and 19th centuries.7 The sum of Roosevelt’s efforts
(both institutional and personal) offers a third way that transcends the liberalconservative
dichotomy of modern American politics.
This book examines TR’s third way. It is an intellectual biography about a
man not usually thought of as an intellectual, but who was perhaps our most
scholarly President. It takes Theodore Roosevelt seriously as a man of ideas, a
thinker who was deeply commit
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