After watching the first two episodes of Ken Burns’ new, massive documentary on the Roosevelts, I’m amazed by what I’ve learned about Teddy R. I was drawn to the series because FDR, who died the year I was born, was a kind of household god during my childhood. But I’d known little about TR aside from the few facts about his role as a conservationist and his interventionist adventures in Cuba, Panama and the Philippines. Now, it seems to me that no other president has so precisely embodied the best and worst qualities of our “American” character. On one hand, he was the first president to invite a black person to dine, as a guest at the White House (Booker T. Washington), the first to intervene in a labor dispute, threatening to nationalize the coal industry if the “captains of industry” would not negotiate with the miner’s union. The owners gave in. He negotiated an end to the Russian-Japanese war, put wilderness areas with an aggregate size of the state of Texas under federal protection, created the National Forest Service, reformed the meat-packing industry, regulated the railroads and more. On the other hand, he was quoted as saying that it would take African-Americans “thousands of years” to reach the level of the white race’s “civilization.” He dismissed, without pension, an entire battalion of black soldiers for an alleged riot that did not happen. After ordering the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila, he went on to cause untold deaths in the Philippines (in the hundred thousands, I believe). He believed that world was divided between the superior, civilized, industrialized (white) nations and the inferior, chaotic nations of Latin America, Asia and Africa. He personally slaughtered thousands of wild animals – lions, elephants, giraffes. Has any other American leader oscillated between such remarkable extremes? I know that every president has been, at best, a mixed bag, but I’d really like to know if any other has combined, in one person, so many seemingly contradictory impulses.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 22:52:52 +0000
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