Theodore Roosevelt was born into an aristocratic New York family, was troubled by asthma as a child, and grew up believing in personal strength and will power, as his father did, and he adopted the active and somewhat reckless life style of his Southern mother. Some of the talking heads would have agreed with Alfred Adler that he spent his life compensating for that constitutional weakness.
He may have been a sickly kid but in Partd I and II we see him grow into a boisterous and willful man. Not only was he never afraid to impose his will on other individuals -- or other nations for that matter -- he eagerly sought a war with Spain because, as his writings make clear, he embodied the values that General George S. Patton expressed when he said: "All REAL Americans love the sting of battle." Parts I and II cover T.R.'s life up to and including his second term, the first having been "accidental", when President McKinley was assassinated. Unlike some of his predecessors he loved The Bully Pulpit and was arrogant almost beyond belief in his foreign policy. I mean, the guy offers to buy a six-mile strip of land through an isthmus belonging to Colombia for ten million dollars. The Colombians, whose land this is, after all, say no, it's not enough. So Roosevelt, who had put down rebellions in Panama earlier, backs a friendly rebellion this time and, lo, the Panama Canal. Speak softly and carry a big stick. I mean, if Ernest Hemingway had been a president, this is how he might have governed.
Yet his rough handling of the rest of the world didn't extend to the citizens of his own country, especially the poor, for whom he felt a kind of noblesse oblige. He not only busted the trusts that stifled competition and put all the power in the hands of Wall Street, he began by taking on J. Pierpont Morgan, one of the most powerful men in the world. (He owned more gold and silver than the United States government.) Roosevelt won the battle too. It occurred to me, watching this, that one of the reasons T. R. took on this giant of industry was not only out of any sympathy for the poor but also because he WAS a giant. Why kill a mouse?
All these contradictions -- if that's what they are -- are brought out in Part I and handled with a delicate balance.
The minor information is kind of interesting, especially to kids who don't know anything about it, such as the fact that T. R. refused to shoot a black bear cub while hunting in Mississippi, and an enterprising toy manufacturer in Brooklyn began turning out best-selling stuffed animals called "Teddy Bears." Some of the observations are humorous too. The Democrat who ran against T. R. in a hopeless race, is described as so colorless as to "have all the salient features of a sphere." (Well, I found it funny, anyway.) Part I ends with Roosevelt's much-regretted promise that he would honor George Washington's example by not running for another term. Wow -- what a mistake.
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