If TR Were Alive Today, He'd Be Blogging

Near the end of our Thursday tour of Theodore Roosevelt's book-filled house, I turned to my wife and commented, "Were he alive today, Roosevelt would be blogging." "Oh, no doubt!" she exclaimed. "And he would be at the forefront, way ahead of everybody!"

Theodore Roosevelt was the most accomplished and prolific author-president. Only Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson have come close to him in this category. (Although, as a writer, none of our Presidents can match the lyricism of Abraham Lincoln.) Like Carter, TR also was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American to be given this award. And like Carter, Roosevelt's interests as both a person and a writer, were diverse.

But the political figure with whom TR has the most in common as an adventurer and author would have to be Winston Churchill. Churchill always read and wrote, as did TR. (Indeed, for the cash-strapped Churchill, his journalistic writing was what allowed him to keep and add to his beloved Chartwell Estate. TR never faced such money worries.) And, both of them proved their mettle as soldiers, TR in the Spanish-American War and Churchill, who escaped enemy imprisonment while fighting in and writing about the Boer War.

Interestingly, I read somewhere--I can't remember where--that TR once met the young Churchill and didn't care for him. Someone, it may have been the President's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, suggested that the reason for this curious reaction from Roosevelt may have been that the two were much too alike.

It's shocking to consider that Roosevelt, the youngest man ever to ascend to the presidency--he was 42 when William McKinley was assassinated--and always the practitioner of a life of robust activity, only lived to be sixty. (His fifth cousin-once removed, Franklin Roosevelt, was only 63 when he died near the beginning of his fourth term as President.) But TR managed to pack more life in his sixty years than most of us will with half-again as much time on the planet.

Of course, TR started off with decided advantages: wealth and connections. Money alone freed him to do things that the rest of us, even today, may only dream about. But, as my wife and I were saying, his advantages make Roosevelt's dogged and unmatched performance in what he called "the arena" all the more remarkable. The scion of a rich man had no need to lead the strenuous life, challenging himself in many ways. But that's precisely the life Roosevelt chose to lead.

No one in public life gets into the arena for solely altruistic motives, to be sure. Thirty years ago, I read John Blum's study of TR. There, Blum suggests that Roosevelt even deluded himself about his motives. He wanted power, Roosevelt told himself and others, because of the good he could accomplish for the people. That was true. But it was also true that in 1919, the year of his death and ten years after he had stepped down from the presidency, Roosevelt, still brimming with ambition for power, was the frontrunner for his party's presidential nomination, almost two decades after he had been made McKinley's vice presidential running mate by those hoping to end his career.

After his own hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, had been in office a short time, prosecuting more antitrust cases than the trustbusting Teddy, Roosevelt nonetheless picked a fight with Taft, trying to wrest the 1912 Republican nomination from the sitting President. When the Republicans wouldn't nominate him, Roosevelt took the nomination of the Progressive Party and so, handed the White House to Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats.

TR's love of power also caused him to, at times, play fast and loose with the Constitution. Our tour guide today told a story I hadn't recalled reading or hearing before. Speaker of the House Joe Cannon was asked what he thought of Mr. Roosevelt. He was a fine fellow, he said. But to TR, the Constitution was about as meaningful as a marriage license is to a tomcat.

Roosevelt made no bones about having taken the Isthmus of Panama to build his canal, for example. While Congress debated whether he should have done it, he boasted, he would get the canal built.

Beyond Roosevelt's desires for power as a thing in itself or as a tool for helping people, there was another motive for his continuing to be in the arena until the end of his life: He loved the spotlight. Alice Roosevelt Longworth once observed, “My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.”

Like his distant cousin, Franklin, Theodore Roosevelt confounded and enraged his opponents by his capacity to get the attention--and the affection--of so many people. In the body politic, he was a force of nature they tried mightily to contain, but rarely did.

If, magically, eighty-seven years after his death, Theodore Roosevelt could reappear, you can bet that he would be blogging. He loved the limelight. He was interested in everything--birding, military strategy, poetry and literature, history, conservation, hunting, urban renewal, ranch life, police work, Naval history. He was a writer and propagandist of the first order. And seeing blogging as a way to further his political interests and agenda, he couldn't resist being a blogger.

But not just any blogger! As my wife rightly says, he would be the best in the blogosphere, dazzling all with his insight, erudition, breadth of interest, boyish inquisitiveness, and his amazing capacity to charm, challenge, endear, and infuriate his readers...all at the same time.

[My son, Philip, presents his reflections on our trip to Oyster Bay and on Theodore Roosevelt here.]

[Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for linking to this post. And thanks to Mark Olson, who has linked to the post on two blogs here and here.]

[Thanks also to Mark D. Roberts, one of my favorite bloggers, for linking to this piece.]