Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Vision and Presidential Power with David Brown | BRI Scholar Talk

0:05 In this episode of Scholar Talks, we will be discussing

0:07 the progressive vision and presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.

0:12 Our guest, David Brown, is a professor of history at Elizabethtown College

0:16 and the author of nine books, including several I’ve read myself.

0:20 The first populist, The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson.

0:24 Also A Hell of a Storm, The Battle for Kansas, the End

0:28 of Compromise, and The Coming of the Civil War.

0:31 And also In The Arena, Theodore Roosevelt in War,

0:35 Peace and Revolution, which is the topic of today’s discussion.

0:41 I am Tony Williams, Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute.

0:44 I want to welcome you to another episode in the America

0:48 250 Scholar Talk series.

0:51 So, David, thank you very much for joining me.

0:53 Thanks, Tony. It’s a pleasure.

0:55 Yeah, I love the book.

0:57 And T.R. is such a compelling figure.

1:00 Theodore Roosevelt, I mean, both just in his life, his biography,

1:05 and also is very, very dramatic

1:07 and sort of watershed presidency.

1:11 I often say, you know, you can’t really write a boring book

1:14 about Teddy Roosevelt,

1:15 but you really have written a magnificent book, very compelling.

1:19 You know, I just couldn’t put it down, but thanks.

1:22 It was a labor of love.

1:24 The thing that’s really interesting about Roosevelt or so many things is that,

1:28 it seems like even in a fractious country, people on the right, people on the left,

1:32 they agree they’re very interested in Roosevelt.

1:35 They seem to draw whether it’s the same thing or different things.

1:40 But they find the man compelling.

1:42 Oh indeed.

1:42 Indeed.

1:43 And in fact, that’s my really my first question. So.

1:45 So Theodore Roosevelt is a fascinating, as we said,

1:49 a compelling character, compelling figure.

1:52 Can you please tell us a little bit about his presidential life?

1:56 I know we could do that for hours, but if you could,

1:59 kind of

1:59 summarize his, early life, that would be great.

2:02 Sure.

2:03 His father was from, a Dutch, Knickerbocker family, New York,

2:08 merchant wealth.

2:10 His mother was from a, southern family.

2:13 Georgia Roosevelt thought that he in some sense embodied,

2:18 the country because of that, that, that family background.

2:23 He was old money, and he thought the public service

2:27 was the right thing to do.

2:29 And so whether it was,

2:32 serving, in the American military,

2:35 whether it was serving,

2:38 the state or serving his, his local community,

2:43 at oyster Bay,

2:44 he believed that he had a responsibility as as a member of the patrician class

2:49 to, set an example of civic virtue for his, his countrymen.

2:55 And, this is something that,

2:58 I think he shared with his class,

3:00 the class identified with mostly to his father’s line,

3:04 but also, I think, to his mother’s ancient southern Georgia line as well.

3:10 Right.

3:11 And he, he had a pretty colorful early career

3:14 in New York State legislature and New York police commissioner.

3:18 Governor.

3:19 Can you tell us a little bit about that?

3:21 Yeah, I think that that does stem from a sense of civic activism.

3:25 He was once questioned by a college.

3:27 He went to Harvard, of course.

3:30 You know, colleague had asked him, you know, what do you want to do this?

3:34 You know, this is this democracy game.

3:37 It’s rough and tumble stuff. Not for a man of our class.

3:39 And Roosevelt said, you know, other among the ruling class, we are being ruled.

3:44 And I mean to be among the ruling class

3:47 and, his his service to his state in this country,

3:50 I think, stemmed from this notion that the patrician class,

3:55 today wasn’t done, not the day the industry, not the day of,

3:59 the Gilded Age graft and, and corruption,

4:02 but rather it was incumbent upon them to establish, to set a tone upon New York

4:08 City, New York State, the Empire State, and then perhaps upon the country.

4:13 So I think Roosevelt’s activism as a progressive

4:17 president actually stems from an earlier activism.

4:21 And that comes from the same impulse which we see in state and local government.

4:26 He very much believed that,

4:29 members of

4:31 his class had a lot to offer in terms of good governance.

4:34 And he saw himself, I think, as something of a golden mean,

4:38 who could stand between the political right,

4:42 which he identified in his own party as the old guard and the political left,

4:46 which he identified, as many did at that time with socialism.

4:50 And then and then there was the patrician class, the old money in the middle,

4:54 educated to serve.

4:58 Right.

4:59 And and one more follow up,

5:00 just because it’s just so interesting, you know, he, I guess he went over,

5:04 to, to Europe and Egypt, as a young man,

5:07 went off into the, the West,

5:10 the Badlands as, sort of a would be rancher and so forth.

5:14 So, so he certainly liked, you know, went out into the main woods,

5:18 as, in the wake of his father’s death, as a student and, and just really,

5:23 seemed to embrace, what other historians have called the the strenuous life.

5:28 Can you tell us a little bit about that?

5:30 Sure.

5:31 This is that the phrase comes from a speech that he gave, in Chicago,

5:36 and it was the notion of in an age of industrialization,

5:40 where are we going to, to, to to find challenges.

5:46 We don’t want to become machines, slack machines.

5:49 Soft.

5:50 And so, as you note, as a young man, he was an inveterate traveler.

5:55 And, and, when he went to the West and he purchased,

6:00 a cattle ranch in the Dakota Territory.

6:04 He was not just a gentleman farmer.

6:05 I mean, he was, but he also really engaged in the hard work

6:09 that the men around him, the locals, they were very impressed by this.

6:13 And so when Rousseau becomes,

6:16 the national leader, I think he brings that sense of, of,

6:21 of getting up and being active and doing to the culture.

6:26 And he’ll read a book, a novel like The Jungle, the Chicago meatpacking industry.

6:32 And he sees these cities, and he sees how they’re getting big,

6:35 and he’s wondering how all these citizens are going to have what he would call

6:39 the fighting virtues, the martial virtues, the strength of life.

6:44 And so he wants to create, opportunities,

6:47 perhaps through national parks, for example, for Americans to go out.

6:51 And he mentioned the Maine Woods experience and England’s experience,

6:55 Yosemite experience, the majesty of of the natural environment,

6:58 which he saw as an antidote to urbanization and industrialization.

7:05 Very good.

7:05 Very great context for the 19th century.

7:08 So, so in the wake of his participation in the Spanish-American War,

7:12 you know, we have this image of him as a Rough Rider.

7:15 And then later on as president, what what are his foreign

7:18 policy views, whether his foreign policy objectives.

7:22 You know, he was very much an activist.

7:24 He was very much his, not just president, but his own secretary of state.

7:29 And I think that this also comes from his patrician background.

7:33 He views himself as a man who was educated and trained.

7:37 And as you noted, he went to Europe a couple times before his presidency.

7:42 He was he was brought up to the

7:45 a broad, wide worldview.

7:48 And so

7:50 he thinks, and he’s right about this, that he can converse with kings.

7:54 He can sit down with Kaisers and have conversations.

7:58 The great, triumph of his foreign policy was probably conducting,

8:04 the peace,

8:04 helping to bring together Russia, Japan, the Russia, Japanese war for which,

8:10 this, this, this man who is a war hero,

8:13 this man who believed in the strangest life, this man who could also have

8:17 some belligerent overtones to his foreign policy, particularly Latin America.

8:21 He will win the Nobel Prize.

8:23 The peace prize, bringing those two countries together.

8:27 He was Roosevelt was was a little bit upset

8:31 that, that, Woodrow Wilson, a college president.

8:36 Okay, that’s fine, but, but but Roosevelt

8:39 got to be the American president during the First World War.

8:42 And, Roosevelt just didn’t think that Wilson was up to it

8:46 and thought that he was something of a of a provincial,

8:50 Southerner and lacked

8:52 the pedigree, lacked the experiences that that he had had.

8:57 And Roosevelt,

8:58 we know, will make connections with world leaders.

9:01 During the First World War, including the French that are Clemenceau

9:04 and and Clemenceau.

9:05 Will will tout you know that that Roosevelt

9:08 then a lot press it should be allowed to come to America

9:11 and inspire the American troops that are now arriving on the shores.

9:17 Very interesting.

9:18 So, in terms of,

9:21 his progressivism, as you mentioned earlier,

9:24 how did Roosevelt end to, these progressive policies,

9:28 and expand the power of the regulatory state, the federal government’s

9:32 power of regulation? While he was president.

9:35 I think his timing was very good.

9:38 If he had been president, you know, ten years earlier, it might not have happened.

9:43 McKinley, the president was assassinated.

9:45 That was the third assassination

9:47 of a president in the last, you know, 30 some years.

9:51 Congress had assumed quite a lot of power, in part because of that.

9:56 So here’s Roosevelt, who is is seeing a nation

10:00 which is struggling with, industrialization, with urbanization,

10:05 and there’s a great public outcry for change on the frontier.

10:11 This would be the populist party, the farmers and the city

10:15 and the East Coast.

10:16 This would be, labor unions,

10:18 emerging socialist parties.

10:21 And Roosevelt is able to appeal to,

10:25 middle class

10:25 Americans in saying that there’s that there are extremes that are out there.

10:30 He said, when I was a child, the extremes were, the,

10:34 the fire eaters of the American South

10:36 and, and those in the North

10:38 that wanted to sever ties from the Union.

10:42 And he said, Abraham Lincoln was the golden mean.

10:44 Not sure that was quite correct, but but but

10:46 but Lincoln was his ideal of a politician.

10:49 So Roosevelt said, I want to emulate Lincoln, and I don’t want the

10:53 the radicals, who are promoting, ideological change.

10:57 And I don’t want the capitalists who are egging on the radicals,

11:02 to to have their way.

11:03 I need to I need to be the golden me and the public like that.

11:07 The public accepted that, and I think allowed him to assert,

11:12 presidential power and increase presidential power

11:15 and to to begin to build a regulatory state.

11:18 It probably also didn’t hurt matters that Roosevelt was not really,

11:24 a good Republican all the time.

11:27 He regarded the old guard in his own party

11:31 as as kind of his opposition, his enemies.

11:33 It wasn’t so much the Democrats,

11:35 the Democrats, they were obviously the second party.

11:38 Republicans were the first party.

11:39 And the question is, who controls this party?

11:42 And for the last generation, it’s pretty much been Congress, the old guard types.

11:47 Roosevelt uses his charisma, his popularity,

11:51 and he was a very shrewd politician as well to

11:54 to manage reform in such a way that the people,

11:58 generally speaking, were behind this change.

12:01 And the old guard had to more or less go along with it.

12:06 Right.

12:06 And as far but, you know, as you bring out in, in the book,

12:11 the 1912

12:14 election, right, he’s sort of running for a quote unquote third term.

12:18 And he definitely breaks through the old guard, bolts the convention.

12:22 The RNC, and establishes the Progressive Party, based upon this new nationalism.

12:28 So he seems to become, you know, just more,

12:33 maybe a little more radical, but also, you know, just,

12:36 leans in a little bit more on on all these progressive reforms.

12:40 Yeah.

12:41 In a way, it was the second time that he tried

12:44 to have a third term because when when he left the presidency,

12:48 he, he essentially

12:50 fought that with William Howard Taft, who he chose.

12:53 Taft was going to carry off a kind of a third term.

12:58 And Taft a, you know, sort of made gestures that he would do that.

13:03 Taft meant well, Taft was a pliable individual.

13:07 And when he was around Roosevelt’s, he wanted to please Roosevelt.

13:11 And when Roosevelt left the presidency and went to Africa and Taft was left field

13:14 guard, Taft began to lean in that direction.

13:18 Rousseau does become a bit more radical

13:21 and I think that he got caught up in the progressive movement.

13:25 And so, for example, when he began

13:27 to call for,

13:31 judicial recall

13:32 and maybe, you know, make it easier to remove federal judges

13:38 and perhaps even Supreme Court judges, then that’s when,

13:42 some of the old guard, including one of his very good

13:44 political friends for a long time, Henry Cabot Lodge from Massachusetts,

13:50 wrote and said, you know, we’re still great friends,

13:54 but I had not realized how wide we had had diverged.

13:58 So I think, I think

14:01 the third term Roosevelt progressive presidency

14:04 probably would have went for no more than two years,

14:07 because by that time, the First World War was underway.

14:10 And then I suspect that not unlike a second Roosevelt presidency,

14:15 with with with Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal comes to an end, in part

14:19 because there’s the global crisis of the Second World War.

14:22 And to the extent that that Teddy Roosevelt,

14:25 if he had gotten elected in 1912, could have, pushed

14:28 through the new agenda of more aggressive reforms.

14:33 I’m not sure that he could have

14:35 he could have gotten that through to Congress at that time.

14:40 Yeah.

14:40 That’s a very interesting point.

14:41 Good.

14:42 So, so speaking of his presidency, how does Roosevelt view the presidency,

14:47 the office, and how does he expand the power of the executive?

14:51 Yeah.

14:52 So there’s this phrase that we sometimes use through the bully pulpit.

14:55 And, that means that, that, that we’re using,

15:00 the podium, speeches,

15:02 your charisma to, in a sense,

15:06 speak over Congress and the Senate and enrich the people directly.

15:11 I mean, now we have obviously social media.

15:14 It’s a little bit of a different game back then.

15:17 And so, he wants to use the bully pulpit

15:20 to bring his case to the people.

15:23 And in that sense, even though Roosevelt was,

15:27 was was a critic of the populist movement on the frontier,

15:32 which he associate with William Jennings Bryan from a radicalism.

15:35 In a sense, there was a populist strain in Roosevelt, which is interesting

15:39 because, again, he’s a patrician from this great moneyed family in Manhattan.

15:43 But he really knew how to connect with people with, particularly

15:47 with, with, with, with, with middle class audiences all around the country.

15:51 When he would go on speaking tours in the West, very, very popular.

15:55 And, I think that that’s also part of

15:58 how he expands the progress and the powers the presidency.

16:03 He he he he’s not doing this.

16:06 The name of the presidency.

16:07 He’s doing this name of the American people

16:10 and his popularity was such

16:13 that even even the old guard didn’t agree with everything they really needed.

16:17 Roosevelt

16:19 before his presidency and during his presidency, and even after his presidency,

16:23 to campaign on the hustings for Republican candidates.

16:26 And so that gave Roosevelt some leeway with members

16:29 of his own party who might think he was going a little bit too far.

16:32 But they could see his popularity, and they needed that popularity,

16:36 to attain power.

16:38 Right right.

16:40 So, coming back to our original, question,

16:44 so what was the significance of Roosevelt’s life and presidency?

16:50 In War, peace and revolution, as your subtitle points out.

16:54 So I think of Roosevelt as someone who really anticipates the American century.

16:59 This is the concept that we begin to define

17:02 in the 1940s because of the Second World War

17:05 and where the United States is moving as a world power.

17:08 But I look at Roosevelt, who who made his name in a war,

17:12 the Spanish-American War that that gave us the Philippines

17:15 and the Philippine War, which is fought in part during which was presidency.

17:19 That was the first of the 20th century,

17:23 Asian wars that that states

17:25 would fight in the last 30, 35 years or so.

17:29 We’ve known quite a bit of conflict in the Middle East,

17:33 the 20th century, that is, it’s it’s the Pacific.

17:36 And so when I think of foreign policy and I think of the expansion,

17:41 the emergence of an American empire, and the one I think of domestic policy

17:45 and I think of, well, what was there before there was the New Deal,

17:49 there was this progressive square deal under under Roosevelt.

17:53 So I see him as somebody whose fingerprints are on American foreign

17:58 policy and domestic policy as we move into

18:02 the American century.

18:05 Right?

18:05 I mean, you certainly need a compelling case here.

18:07 And in the book that he is a, transformational figure,

18:11 of lasting significance in the 20th and 21st century.

18:15 So, David Brown,

18:18 I want to thank you very much for coming on to talk about Theodore

18:20 Roosevelt’s dramatic life and presidency as we celebrate America. 250.

18:25 Thanks to. Good to be with you. All right. Thanks.

18:27 And thank you all for joining us on this episode of Scholar Talks.

18:30 Please check out the other videos in our America to 50 series.

18:35 And, go to YouTube and click subscribe.