Our Greatest President

In just over seven years in office Theodore Roosevelt protected more wilderness than all the other presidents before him combined, but it wasn’t just his conservationism that makes him the most extraordinary president that this country has ever seen. He established the first child welfare laws, introduced worker’s rights, prescription drug regulations, and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Though Roosevelt was born into wealth he turned against his own class, creating an inheritance tax on the rich; he returned a $100,000 campaign donation from Standard Oil back to the corporation; and when an Oregon senator was found to be involved in a land scheme, he sent him to prison.

Roosevelt was the first American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for his mediation that ended the Russo-Japanese War, which might have evolved into a world war if he hadn’t intervened. Henry Adams called him “The best herder of emperors since Napoleon.” King Edward VII said he was “the greatest moral force of the age.” And H.G. Wells wrote that “Never did a president so reflect the quality of his time.” Roosevelt was the first to invite an African American to dinner at the White House. He was influential in the building of the Panama Canal. He ended the Coal Miners Strike of 1902 and gave Cuba its independence. The United States had its best economic status thus far while he was in office. With all of these accomplishments it’s of little surprise that Theodore Roosevelt had the most popular approval rating of any president and won the 1904 election by the largest landslide up to that time.

The most incredible thing about Theodore Roosevelt is that his two terms as President of the United States were probably the least interesting years of his life. After leaving office he travelled overseas and became a great African hunter. When he returned and saw that his handpicked predecessor, the pathetically obese William Howard Taft, was reversing policies that he had implemented while in office, he quickly turned against his old friend and challenged him for the Republican candidacy of the 1912 election. When Roosevelt didn’t get it, he started his own “Progressive Party,” more popularly known as the “Bull Moose” party, and though he knew he couldn’t win the general election as a third party candidate, he made sure that the Republicans split their votes, assuring that the fat Taft would not be reelected. After that he travelled to Brazil to be the first to explore an unknown waterway that ran through the Amazon. Measured in today’s standards, it would be similar to George W. Bush being the first to explore Mars, if the planet had hordes of dangerous aliens that could kill human beings at any moment.

At 42, Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest person ever to become President of the United States. I believe the years leading up to that moment are his most interesting. At the age of 23 he was minority leader of the New York State Assembly. By the time he was 40 he would be the state’s governor. In between that time he co-founded the Boone and Crocket Club and created the National Zoo in Washington D.C. He was the New York City Police Commissioner, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and when the Spanish-American War flared up, he formed his own volunteer regiment to fight on the front lines. Borrowing the name from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” were influential in the victory at San-Juan Hill. Believing that no politician should send boys to war without experiencing combat themselves, Roosevelt thought he was “unkillable” as he rode in to battle, bullets whizzing by him, but none hitting his flesh. Measured in today’s standards, it would be similar to Ted Cruz traveling to Afghanistan to personally fight the Taliban.

On top of everything we’ve already discussed, there was one profession that Roosevelt worked at his entire life. If making a living refers to earning an income, then Theodore Roosevelt made his living as a writer. If he never became president he might still very well be remembered as one the greatest authors of his day. At the age of 23 he published The Naval War of 1812, which just happened to be the most comprehensive book on naval history that the world had ever seen at the time. He would go on to write 36 more volumes of history, natural history, biography, political philosophy, memoirs, and essays. Never being an economically intelligent or business savvy man, he sometimes wrote books to pay off debts and to provide his family with the comfortable lifestyle that they had become accustomed to.  He once took a month long vacation, which to him meant writing a 63,000 word book on Oliver Cromwell.

I could go on and on about Theodore Roosevelt. In fact, there have been tens of thousands of pages of academic study devoted to the man. But I will wrap things up with my own personal observation concerning the man who considered it an “outrageous impertinence” to be called “Teddy” to his face. Engraved on the front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City are the following words to describe Theodore Roosevelt: “Ranchman, scholar, explorer, scientist, conservationist, naturalist, statesman, author, historian, humanitarian, soldier, patriot.” I believe they left something out, a single word that could sum up all the others—adventurer.

I’m pretty sure the reason that Theodore Roosevelt did anything in his life is because he thought it would be a “bully” good adventure. When he was a child he suffered from many medical ailments, including severe asthma. A doctor once told him that he would have to live an easy life, staying indoors, participating in very little exercise. He thanked the doctor for his advice and then told him he would, from that moment on, do the exact opposite of what the physician recommended. He became a successful boxer while at Harvard, and throughout his life would challenge certain guests of his home to friendly matches of boxing and then wrestling. He was an expert hunter, and as confident riding a horse as climbing a mountain. While president he was accustomed to 20-mile hikes and swimming naked in the Potomac River, even in the dead of winter. While on a presidential visit to Yosemite he escaped into the wilderness with John Muir, and while at Yellowstone took off alone, neither time telling anyone where he was going. When he was campaigning against Taft in 1912 he was shot in the chest by a would-be assassin. Luckily, the bullet was slowed down by a rolled up manuscript in his pocket. He refused to go to the hospital before delivering his speech, saying to the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I’ve just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a “Bull Moose.” When America joined the Great War in Europe, the ex-president, then in his mid-fifties, begged the government to allow him to lead another volunteer regiment, but was denied. But the sense of adventure never left him, and neither did the fight. When he died in 1919 at the age of 60, he was the favorite to win the next presidential election.

To find out more about Theodore Roosevelt and other interesting American icons, 

read The Road and the River: An American Adventure. 

Now available at jonpenfold.com and on Amazon!