December 1, 2019 • 39 mins
Theodore Roosevelt revered Abraham Lincoln so much that, during his second inauguration, he wore a ring containing a lock of Lincoln’s hair. His feelings toward other presidents, however, were a little less warm and fuzzy. TR thought William Howard Taft was a “puzzlewit,” Woodrow Wilson was a “lily-livered skunk,” and Benjamin Harrison was a “cold-blooded, narrow-minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid old psalm-singing Indianapolis politician.” And these weren’t even necessarily his sworn enemies—in fact, he was sometimes campaigning for them. How did Roosevelt juggle this lack of faith in his contemporaries with the knowledge that he often needed them in order to effect change on a national level? Letting off steam through dazzlingly creative insults, for one thing. Find out more in this week’s episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
History versus is a production of I heart radio and
mental flaws. Shifty Adroit's logathy, cold blooded, narrow minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid,
old psalm singing Indianapolis politician, no more backbone than a
(00:21):
chocolate eclaire, a flood dub with a streak of the
second rate, and the common in him puzzle with fat
head brains less than a guinea pig. Yes, those are
the words of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, author, philanthropist,
avid reader, and inspiration for the Teddy Bear. He was,
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from most accounts, a kind and sociable man. But if
Roosevelt found flaws, he was quick to articulate them, a
fast and furious torrent of put downs, designed to bombard
the target of his attack with insults that might require
a dictionary to fully process. Roosevelt didn't unleash these particular
tirades at just anyone. He reserved them for individuals he
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held to the highest standard, because they held the highest
office in the land. For Roosevelt, anything less than the naked,
harsh truth directed at the commander in chief would be
a disservice to his country. When it came to other presidents.
Theodore Roosevelt pulled no punches. How ugh did it get?
We're about to find out. For mental flaws and I
(01:26):
Heart Radio. This is History Versus, a podcast about how
your favorite historical figures faced off against their greatest foes.
This week's episode is t R Versus Other Presidents. Roosevelt's
famously tempestuous attitude towards politicians may have started with his
impossible standards. His role model for all things presidential was
Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth Commander in Chief of the United
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States and one of the few presidents Roosevelt had no
quarrel with. He grew up in a household where Lincoln
was revered, at least by his Republican father, Theodore Senior,
or the His mother, Mitty, a Southern and Confederate sympathizer,
likely had other feelings. He had worked with Lincoln's administration
during the Civil War and had even joined Abraham and
his wife Mary at church after Lincoln was assassinated. In
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his funeral procession ran through New York City from his
grandfather's mansion in Union Square. Six year old Roosevelt and
his brother Elliott watched as the president's coffin was carried
through the streets. Photographer even captured the moment a young
Theodore appearing out of the window and what would be
the first of his many eyewitness experiences in history. Here's
Clay Jenkinson, founder of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson
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State University in North Dakota. Lincoln and Rose was the
savior of the country. He was also a friend of
his father, and tr worshiped his father and his father's associations.
And he regarded Lincoln as somebody who had the moxie
and the moral strength to do the right thing against
almost impossible loads. And he knew that Lincoln had paid
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the ultimate price for that, that he had been assassinated
in part because he grew in office, whereas most presidents,
as you know, don't grow in office. They decline. But
Lincoln was one of the few who actually grew in
a big way during the course of its presidency. Roosevelt's
admiration for Lincoln endured throughout his life as president. Roosevelt
referred to him as my great hero, a degree of
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affection he reserved for very few people, aside from his father.
With Lincoln's portrait hanging both in the White House and
in his home office at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt was constantly
reminded of Lincoln's legacy. I look up to that picture,
he said, and I do as I believe Lincoln would
have done. He even kept a lock of Lincoln's hair
in a ring, which Roosevelt war for his inauguration. It
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was given to him by John Hay, who had served
in Lincoln's administration and went on to serve in Roosevelt's.
It was kind of like a Victorian thing, and they
would make jewelry into them. So that's what Hay does,
and he keeps these, I think as two of the
maid and he has them for quite a while and
gives one the tr Aware as an inauguration. That's Tyler Caliberta,
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the education technician at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's one time home
and now a National Historic site. I think Roosevelt saw
Lincoln as kind of this incredible president, and I think
in his own presidency would have liked to been president
during a time like Lincoln. Nation was in crisis, and
you know, he had to solve these kind of major problems.
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As president. Roosevelt enjoyed having a memento of Lincoln so
close to him, but he was not so fond of
one of the other presidents who would end up on
Mount Rushmore alongside him. Roosevelt was famously cooled towards Thomas Jefferson,
blaming the long deceased president for his ineffectual efforts in
building a military force during the War of eighteen twelve
and for jefferson subversive opposition to George Washington's policies while
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serving as his Secretary of State. But it was Roosevelt's
contemporaries that received most of his scorn. That rant about
a cold blooded, narrow minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid, olds all
singing Indianapolis politician that was directed at Benjamin Harrison, our
twenty three president from eight nine to eight nine, and
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the same man who appointed Roosevelt as a Civil Service
reform commissioner around the start of his term. Roosevelt had
campaigned for him when he was on the Republican ticket,
So where did things go so wrong? For one thing,
Harrison didn't really want reform for federal employees. The position
was more of a figurehead role that didn't suit Roosevelt
in his high standards at all. In his mind, if
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someone was granted a federal job, it should be because
they deserved it and not because they were out a favor.
For the six years he held the post Roosevelt was defiant,
putting laxa daisical civil service workers and departments in his crosshairs.
He advised Harrison to fire George H. Paul, Postmaster of Milwaukee,
for granting jobs to his friends. His investigation into the
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Baltimore Postal Service, where Roosevelt found workers soliciting money for
political purposes on government property, which, according to historian and
Edmund Morris, was against the Civil Service Code, put him
against Postmaster General John Wanamaker even more directly. I wanta
Maker tried to run his own investigation into the matter
and reported that it found that no wrongdoing had occurred,
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But a House investigative committee, acting on Roosevelt's insistence, found
that Roosevelt was right. Here's Jenkinson, it was just a
natural instinct of his to read the job as boldly
as possible, and to make sure that he got himself
in the newspapers, and to make sure that he was
on the right side of these questions. And he wasn't
afraid to take on his own political party. He'd take
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it right up to the edge. And whether they're just
like so annoyed and disgusted with him because he won't
he won't play the game. You know. He just couldn't
play the game. And they wanted him to be a
figurehead at least, and to be They knew that he
was like the best stump speaker they had, and that
he could galvanize an audience, but they wanted him to
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be less tactic and to be less certain of things,
and to go along more than he did. This wasn't
how government was supposed to work. Government wasn't supposed to
be fair. Cynicism and cronyism mandated that politicians did favors
and the winning team showed support. But Roosevelt didn't care
what party anyone belonged to. He was on a mission,
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and if Harrison's allies were in the way, he had
no problem taking them down. That commitment had consequences for
their relationship. When Harrison and Roosevelt met, Harrison took to
tapping his fingers, a nervous tick that developed as a
result of the aggravation Roosevelt caused him. There was, of course,
the situation with the money soliciting Baltimore postal workers, and
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the fact that Roosevelt went after William Wallace, the postmaster
of Indianapolis and a man who also happened to be
Harrison's best friend, for hiring incompetent and corrupt workers because
they were Republicans. Later, Harrison would say of Roosevelt, the
only trouble I ever had with him was that he
wanted to put an end to all the evil in
the world. Between sunrise and sunset, Harrison's overt displays of
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favoritism needles Roosevelt perpetuating some of his most articulate insults.
He called Harrison the little gray man in the White
House and a genial little runt behind his back. Roosevelt
managed to last through Harrison's term and would end up
being reappointed Civil Service Reform Commissioner once Grover Cleveland entered
office in eight. He left his post in eight and
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became president of the Board of Police Commissioners in New
York City. His next brush with the presidency would come
when William McKinley ran for the office in eight McKinley's
campaign had given Roosevelt pause before McKinley's first term Roosevelt
wrote to his friend and Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
that it will be a great misfortune to have McKinley nominated.
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If I could tell you all I have learned since
his campaign has progressed, you would be as completely alarmed
over the prospect of his presidential nomination as I am.
When it seems like McKinley would soon be named the
Republican nominee, Roosevelt dashed off a letter to a sister baby, McKinley,
whose firmness I utterly distrust, will be nominated, and this
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I much regret. Roosevelt didn't dislike McKinley. He noted he
was an honorable man, of very considerable ability and good
record as a soldier and in Congress. But where Roosevelt
felt Harrison was politically savvy, he caught the impression that
McKinley was without a spine. He is not a strong man,
Roosevelt said, unless he is well backed, I should feel
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rather uneasy about him. In a serious crisis, whether it
took the form of a soft money craze, a gigantic
labor riot, or danger of foreign conflict. Roosevelt's tune changed slightly.
When McKinley was elected G. I. R. Was an ardent Republican,
and he could never stray from the Republican camp, and
so that was dictated a lot of what he did.
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Kinley appointed Roosevelt Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but the
piece didn't last long. He thought that McKinley was unimaginative
and unnecessarily cautious, and and that McKinley was timid about
going to war against Spain in and tr really went
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on somewhat questionable campaign to sort of force McKinley's hand
to declare war against Spain. When McKinley said, you know,
we've had one big war during my lifetime, I hesitated
to begin another one. But tr read every possible story
coming out of Cuba in the way that made the
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Spanish look worst. Made it sort of a righteous issue
of whether we stand for anything, especially after the sinking
of the main So that's why he called McKinley names
and said that he had the backbone of a chocolate eclaire.
He would later campaign extensively for McKinley second term. By
this point, Roosevelt was more than just a supporter. After
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a two year term as Governor of New York. He
was a vice presidential candidate on the McKinley ticket. Roosevelt
campaign for McKinley in a really big way in against
William Jennings. Bryan McKinley didn't leave his home in Canton, Ohio.
He ran that front porch campaign and sent out this valuable, hectic, crazy,
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energetic vice presidential candidate to do all the work on
the stump. And Roosevelt, of cards, threw himself into it
just head and shoulders, and had the time of his
life and took on Brian and I probably McKinley would
have won anyway, but it's Roosevelt who did the heavy
lifting in the campaign and really found his voice in
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the American West. While doing that, he said a horrible
things about Brian. He said he was a human trombone,
which is virtually my favorite thing, that my favorite Roosevelt
insult of all. So he believed that McKinley was sound economically,
and he realized, especially after that McKinley could be manipulated
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or managed, let's put it, to pursue a more vigorous
American role in the world than he might instinctively have intended.
One wouldn't think that Roosevelt would exert a little more
patience with the guy on his campaign ticket. But it's
Theodore Roosevelt we're talking about here. For one thing, Roosevelt
didn't really want to be vice president. He thought the
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office was ineffectual and constricting. I would a great deal
rather be anything, say, professor of history, than vice president.
He said, here's Caliberta, there's a man who cannot set still,
and you put him in the vice presidency, which we
just regarded as an idol officer. But Roosevelt's friends knew
it was a step closer to the presidency. Senator Lodge
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urged him to take it on and stick by McKinley side,
declaring it invaluable for his future in politics. So why
would Akinley select him as a running mate. It was
more indifference than anything. Supporters buzzed in McKinley's ear that Roosevelt,
then the governor of New York and a war hero,
would bring some much needed fire into the campaign. Plus,
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the New York Republican Party machine desperately wanted him out
of the state, and so McKinley and Roosevelt became the
Republican hopefuls of nine Ohio Senator Mark Hannah, who viewed
Roosevelt as a loose canon, was not a fan. Don't
you realize? He said that there is only one life
between this madman and the White House. Roosevelt's concerns about
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the role proved accurate. McKinley never consulted him on policies
and refused to let him interact with the Senate as
a liaison, as he had done with his previous Vice President,
Garrett Hobart. Roosevelt meanwhile, found McKinley's glacial decision making process infuriating,
but he wouldn't have to endure it for long. On
September six, McKinley was shot in the stomach by anarchist
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Leon shul Gash. He died of gang green only a
little over a week later. According to an eyewitness, when
Roosevelt heard the news of McKinley shooting, a look of
unmistakable anguish came to his face and tears immediately filled
his eyes. Well, tr was was in upstate New York.
He had presided over the Senate for I think five
days before they adjourned, and now he was sort of
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just wandering and giving speeches and going hiking and camping
and writing and doing all the things that Piotore Roosevelt does.
And he got the word that McKinley had been shot,
and he made an emergency trip to Buffalo to be
at McKinley's bedside. And then he realized McKinley was probably
going to recover, so he went back. He thought it
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was unseemly for him to hang around um the sixth
Man's bed, and so he went back to upstate New York.
And he was on mom Marcy, the highest point in
the state, when he a messenger came running up the
path and informed him that the President was going to
die that night. Roosevelt race to Buffalo to be by
McKinley's side, although he would be too late to see
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the president before he passed. Though they had their differences,
the tragedy overshadowed any political divide. Following McKinley's assassination, it
was time for Roosevelt to step into the role held
by men he had often criticized. The so called Madman
was now in the Executive Mansion. With that experience afford
him a new perspective on the challenges of the job.
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Of course, when it prompt him to bite his tongue
when it came to his successor probably not, We'll be
right back. Imagine what it would be like to disappoint
someone with the standards of Theodore Roosevelt. Just think about
that for a moment. William Howard Taft didn't have to
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think about it. He experienced it firsthand. Taft was Roosevelt's
secretary of War. When Roosevelt left office, he selected Taft
as his choice for the presidential nomination. Taft was named
the nominee in and Roosevelt believed he would welcome advice
with an open ear. Mhm. Not quite. Roosevelt felt Taft
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was a little too careless with his image, seeing Taft
fishing and golfing instead of shaking hands and kissing babies.
He urged Taft to put yourself prominently and emphatically into
this campaign of his recreational activities. He said, I am
convinced that the prominence that has been given to your
golf playing has not been wise, and from now on,
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I hope that your people will do everything they can
to prevent one word being sent out about either your
fishing or you're playing golf. Roosevelt had very particular ideas
about how a president should behave and what kind of
image they should project. Presidential candidates weren't supposed to be
seen enjoying themselves. I never let friends advertise my tennis
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and never let a photograph of me in tennis costume appear,
he said. And Roosevelt believed that Taft should allow his
constituents to see him smiling always, because I that your
nature shines out so transparently when you do smile. You big, generous,
high minded fellow. According to caliberta Tear had tight control
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over his public image, very much a thing with politicians today,
but a new concept in TRS time. It's one of
the things that made him the first modern president. He
was very aware that you are going to be written
about newspapers, your image is going to be broadcast or
you know, through newspapers, people are going to see you,
even the ones that you don't interact with. So if
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you're playing golf, like William Howard, tafted, that has its
certain own connotations. If you're playing tennis, that has its
own connotations. Roosevelt thought it was feminine. You didn't want
to be seen as feminine, so he doesn't allow anyone
to photograph him playing tennis. If it sounds like Roosevelt
was acting as an image consultant for Taft, well he was.
He was Roosevelt's handpicked successor, and his success or failure
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would in some way reflect back on Roosevelt's legacy. According
to Jenkinson, Roosevelt was right to lecture Taft about golfing
because average people back then couldn't afford to golf. That
was a rich man's sport. Takes time, it takes money,
it takes privilege. Rose said, if you want to be
the leader of the people, you have to narrow the
distance between yourself and the common man, not accentuated by
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being photographed in an aristocratic copy. Roosevelt had incredible political
instincts now. He wanted to be photographed climbing a mountain,
or being lowered on a rope in front of a waterfall,
or killing something, because then that would be something people
could really respect. But if you're photographed doing something that
only the privilege to get to do, then you're sending
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the wrong signal to the country. It's not hard to
imagine that Roosevelt's nagging irritated Taft. The presses spin on
things may have also rubbed him the wrong way. They
decided that his last name could be an acronym short
for take advice from Teddy Taf to beat Democrat William
Jennings Bryan, and Year was sure his successor would continue
his legacy of reform. Roosevelt left on a hunting trip
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to Africa for a year, allowing Taft a chance to
make his own market office. So tr was not as
good a judge of character as his wife. He did.
He loved Taft, and Taft was an incredibly able man,
but Taft really wanted to be the Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, and that's when he was well suited
to And it was his wife, Belly, who forced him
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to accept the presidency. He didn't really want it, but
she was ambitious for him, and so tr thought the
Taft would continue his policies. What he didn't realize is
that Taft was not strong. He was big, but he
wasn't strong. And so in the Republican Party at the time,
there was the progressive wing of people who wanted reform
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and to end child labor and to lighten the burdens
of the poor and clean up our food supply and
so on. And then there was the standpat wing of
rich capitalists had just lot of government to either be
their handmade and get out of the way. And Roosevelt
was able to hold those two tribes, those two factions
of the Republican Party together, because he was a war hero,
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because he was our first cowboy president, and because he
was Roosevelt. But tafted wasn't able to do it. He
didn't have enough firepower, enough charismas. Taft had to choose,
and he chose to move back towards the old stand
Pat JP Morgan Rockefeller wing of the party. Taft didn't
live up to Roosevelt's lofty expectations. He found it easier
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to be complacent with existing laws than to become combative.
A former lawyer, he wanted to remain within the boundaries
of office, whereas Roosevelt was keen on exerting as much
control as he could. Taft possessed none of Roosevelt's firebrand policies,
none of his aggressive attitude towards improving the country. At
the end of the Africa trip, he wrote to Roosevelt
to complain, I do not know that I have had
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harder luck than most presidents. But I do know that
thus far I have succeeded far less than others. I've
been conscientiously trying to carry out your policies, but my
method of doing so has not worked smoothly. Poor Taft
bemoaned that he couldn't even lose weight. In some ways,
Taft was like a sibling looking up to a bigger
brother for approval. He invited Roosevelt to the White House,
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but Roosevelt refused. I don't think it well for an
ex president to go to the White House, or indeed
to go to Washington, except when he cannot help it,
he sniffed. Time and again. Taft would make advances and
Roosevelt would rebuff them. Taft would later say Roosevelt's chili
demeanor deeply wounded him. Taft was also faced with a
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fight between his Secretary of the Interior, Richard Ballinger, and
his chief forester, Gifford pin Show, who had helped create
Roosevelt's conservation policy. The result was pin Shows firing, and
it felt that he had assurances from Taff the Taft
would continue the progressive initiatives, particularly on conservation questions, and
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when Taft didn't Roosevelt felt angry, betrayed, and somewhat righteous
and vindicted. Plus I mean, it's just the case that
Roosevelt couldn't stand not to be in power. He just
couldn't stand not to be the guy he was the
youngest former president. Because he was the youngest president and
made a stupid mistake by renouncing a third term, he
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left at the height of his powers before he had
finished all that he wanted to do. The friction grew
worse when Taft finally made a sweeping change, advising the
government to sue the monopolistic U. S. Steel, an industrial
behemoth Roosevelt had tacitly approved of in n in order
to avert financial panic. Not only was Taft slow to act,
but when he did, it was to try and reverse
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one of Roosevelt's decisions. And I rate Roosevelt actually penned
entire published essays devoted to separating his policies from those
of his one time friend. The problem. Roosevelt's decision in
the U. S. Steel situation was probably a mistake. According
to Jenkinson, the key players in the merger concealed their
true motivations from the president. Economics was not to our
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strong suit, and he acted quickly to stave off the panic.
But if he had more time to read up on
his options, he might not have approved the merger. Still,
nothing stopped him from defending the decision he had made,
and it became abundantly clear that he had been manipulated
and that it was probably an unnecessary thing and maybe
an unethical thing for him to have done. He just
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got more and more and more righteous about it. And
the same was true about Panama. When the Wilson administration
gave them um Colombian government twenty five million dollars, he
threw just a gigantic hissy fit over that and broke
with the Wilson administration. A poison pen was not Roosevelt's
only come back. He decided to challenge Taft. In the
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ultimate arena of the presidential election, Roosevelt announced he was
returning to run in vying for the Republican nomination against Taft.
Those references to a flub dub and someone with brains
less than a guinea pig Roosevelt was referring to Taft.
The incumbent was quick to retort, calling Roosevelt a honeyfuggler
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or someone who gains an advantage by cheating, as well
as an egotist, a demagogue, and a flatterer. And after
Roosevelt said he was no longer going to attack Taft personally,
Taft proclaimed, having called me everything in the category of
bad names that are mentioned in polite society, he now
wishes to indulge in less emphatic expressions. So now they
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their their friendships has been damaged and frayed by all
of this. But now it was really a tragic business
because Taft loved Roosevelt. He actually wept and said, you know,
he was my closest friend. I love tr And tr
was much less emotional about it. He was he was
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really caught up in his own righteousness. And so they
began to call each other names. And you know, Roselt
was great at insults, called him a fathead, and you
know all the other things that that he said. A
puzzle with how did the public react to his insults,
especially with Taft, because it's not like you're insulting just
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anyone when you call them guinea pig, power brain, you're
insulting the president. Well, most of most people didn't know
about this. Most people, you know, were so they knew
that tr was this like this cowboy, and that he
was that he shot from the hip, and that he
was not afraid to punch somebody metaphorically or physically if necessary.
Certainly that was his public persona, that he was a
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Christian warrior, and that he was not afraid to take
on trusts or anything that got in his way. And
he loved that, and he circulated those stories. He was
glad that they circulated because he felt that they gave
him a political advantage. But we know more about as
than they did, because some of this was in private letters.
The Republicans tried to curb the rivalry, offering to arrive
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at a compromise and find a third candidate. Roosevelt would
have none of it. I'll name the compromise candidate, he said.
He'll be me. I'll name the compromise platform. It will
be our platform. After a controversial convention that saw the
Republican National Committee award Taft the necessary delegates to guarantee
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his selection, Roosevelt could have been gracious in defeat. Instead,
he remained in the race, breaking away from the Republicans
and running as a progressive in his Bull Moose Party.
The sniping continued. These were picked up in the newspapers,
and there was like the public was following this feud,
and Roosevelt wasn't sorry. He knew that his only path
to victory was to bring down the sitting incumbent president
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of the United States, and so he wanted the public
to share his view. The taft really wasn't up to it.
Did any of his remarks come back to sort of
bite him? Or well, you never really want to burn
your bridges and t R when I neglect about this area,
and I always say that that TR the post president,
was really a very unpleasant person. He he just couldn't
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stand not being in power. And he didn't realize this
when he left. He brought all these letters to his children,
like I've had my time, and the public votes on
and you know, nobody has enjoyed this more than I have,
and it's time for others, and there's a weariness about
me in the country. But he didn't believe it. He
actually thought that he was the indispensable man, indispensable or indestructible.
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Preparing for a speech at Milwaukee Editorium on October fourteenth,
Roosevelt was shot by would be assassin named John Shrink.
He survived, he even finished his speech. Shrink later said
he shot him in part because William McKinley had come
to him in a dream and ordered him to do
the deed. It seemed that Theodore Roosevelt's clashes with presidents
both past and present were far from finished. We'll be
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right back in competing against each other, both Taft and
Roosevelt lost. It was Democrat Woodrow Wilson who secured the
nine twelve election, and unfortunately Roosevelt didn't care much for
him either. Both men were from similar backgrounds, their childhoods
made difficult by challenges Roosevelt had asthma, Wilson dyslexia. Both
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men lost their first wives to premature deaths. The two
even worked together when Wilson was President of Princeton and
Roosevelt was involved in trying to encourage the sport of
football to be safer for athletes who are risking their
lives with minimal safety equipment, and at one point they
even kind of liked each other. When Wilson was elected
president of Princeton in nineteen o two, Roosevelt wrote, Woodrow
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Wilson is a perfect trump. I am overjoyed at his election.
Wilson was bookish and self aware. He knew Roosevelt appeared
to be larger than life. He is a real, vivid
person whom they have seen and shouted themselves horse over
and voted for a million strong. Wilson said, I am
a vague conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and
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academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpusals. In
the face of such self deprecating commentary, Roosevelt still let
him have it with both barrels. Wilson, he said, was
a good man who has in no way shown that
he possesses any special fitness for the presidency. Here's Jenkinson,
just a little poor Wilson, and treated him just so
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shabbily and undermine it. Most presidents when they leave are
graceful to their successors. But gr just couldn't be. And
it wasn't a partisan that he was equally awful to
Wilson as he was to Ta as it often did.
Roosevelt's scorn stemmed in part from a president who deviated
from Roosevelt's well worn path. In a treaty with Columbia
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a few months before the opening of the Panama Canal,
the United States proclaimed sincere regret that anything came between
the friendship of the United States and Colombia, like the
Panamanian coup, Roosevelt had sent a ship to support. To Roosevelt,
that was an admission, a sign of institutional weakness. He
would never have allowed that. It was an open defiance
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of his decision, rankled him even more. In a press release,
Roosevelt called Wilson's handling of foreign affairs such as to
make the United States a figure of fun in the
international world. He criticized the treaty and with the help
of Senate allies, blocked the treaty's ratification. When the treaty
was finally ratified a few years after Roosevelt's death, these
(30:26):
sincere regret clause had been removed, But it was more
than a difference of diplomacy. In his heart, Roosevelt was
a soldier. He lived for combat, be it verbal, physical,
or territorial. When Wilson was faced with the decision to
bring America into World War One, Roosevelt criticized his cabinet's pacifism.
Writing to his friend Arthur Lee, Roosevelt said that it
(30:49):
is not a good thing for a country to have
a professional yodeler, a human trombone like William Jennings Bryan
as Secretary of State, nor a college president with an
astute and shifting mind, of a critical ability to deceive
plain people, and no real knowledge or wisdom concerning internal
and international affairs as head of the nation. On another occasion,
(31:12):
he bemoaned Wilson's lack of action following the German sinking
of the Lusitania and told his son Kermit that a
lily livered skunk was occupying the White House. Speaking to
the public at large about the sinking of the Lusitania,
he said this represents not merely piracy, but piracy on
a vaster scale of murder than any old time pirate
(31:32):
ever practiced. Roosevelt said that the Act constituted warfare against
innocent men, women, and children traveling on the ocean, and
to our own fellow countrymen and countrywomen who are among
the sufferers. It seems inconceivable that we can refrain from
taking action in this matter, for we owe it not
(31:52):
only to humanity, but to our own national self respect.
A little Wilson's man hood over this that he wasn't
a real man, because he said he used Nancy, I
think he called him, and you know, made all these
slurs about the virility of Woodrow Wilson because Wilson was
(32:13):
trying so hard to keep the peace. And when Wilson
said that he was going to keep us out of war,
roosevelts and Roosevelt turned out to be right. By the
way Roosevelt to was, we will have to get involved
in this war. There is no way the United States
of America is going to avoid the World War One,
so we may as well get ready for it. And
if we're prepared when the war comes, we'll be able
(32:34):
to fight it more successfully and victory will be more complete.
If you dilly dally around by the time you get
in the war, you're not going to be ready for it.
And that's the that's going to be a delay, and
that means you're not going to be able to control
the post war arrangement in Europe. You're gonna lose some
of your leverage over the post war. Writing to his
son Archie, Roosevelt was even more accusatory, placing the blame
(32:56):
for the victims of Hallusitania directly on Wilson's shoulder. As
a nation, we have thought very little about foreign affairs.
We don't realize that the murder of the thousand men,
women and children in the Lusitania is due solely to
Wilson's abject cowardice and weakness and failing to take energetic
(33:18):
action when the golf flight was sunk but a few
days previously. Just a quick fact check here, though there
were reports that the golf flight had been sunk, it
was actually just damaged and towed in. Okay. Back to
the quote, Wilson and Brian are both abject creatures, and
they won't go to war unless they are kicked into it,
(33:38):
and they will consider nothing but their own personal advantage
in the matter. Wilson, however, did put up a fight
when Roosevelt goaded him into one. The way to treat
an adversary like Roosevelt is to gaze at the stars
over his head, Wilson said. The men reconciled, if ever
so briefly. When Wilson decided to join the war, Roosevelt
(33:59):
came over to the White House and over Lemonade pitched
himself as going back to the army to take up
his post as a commander of the Rough Riders, which
had Barnstorm to the Spanish American War in eighty eight
and helped perpetuate Roosevelt's reputation as a hands on combatant.
Wilson eventually refused, which once again drew Roosevelt. Hire war
has has kind of changed since San Juan Hill. It's
(34:22):
not done that way anywhere. There's no room for it.
A voluntary cavalry unit in France. When Wilson wouldn't do
it just through Roselt, who was a naturally pugnacious figure
and one of gloried war, it threw him into a
complete tailspin. He just wanted someone to punish, and there
was Wilson, and so he wrote increasingly awful op ed
(34:44):
pieces um and then wondered why Wilson wouldn't send them
over to France with a rough rider unit. Wilson later
said he believed Roosevelt's cause was born out of ego
and self aggrandizement. Secretly, he may have also feared Roosevelt
becoming a war hero once more could lead to a
white house run in Roosevelt's four sons wound up in listing.
(35:05):
One of them, Quentin, died in disguise over France. It
was Wilson who confirmed the news via telegram. Roosevelt wouldn't
live to see the remainder of Wilson's second term. He
died on January six. Some of his remaining days were
spent authoring editorials for the Kansas City Star about his
repeated criticisms of the president. While it concerned Wilson, it
(35:27):
summarizes Roosevelt's feelings about the office he treated with such reverence.
The President is merely the most important among a large
number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed
exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good
conduct or his bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in
(35:47):
rendering loyal, able and disinterested service to the nation as
a whole. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that there should
be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts.
And this means that it is exactly necessary to blame
him when he does wrong, as to praise him when
he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen
(36:09):
is both base and servile. To announce that there must
be no criticism of the president, or that we are
to stand by the president right or wrong, is not
only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about
him or anyone else. But it is even more important
(36:32):
to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than
about anyone else. Roosevelt was fiercely critical of the office
of the presidency, a role he believed needed to be
contextualized and challenged constantly, which could be one explanation for
why he assessed other presidents so harshly. But there is
(36:52):
another possible explanation where his insults, criticisms, complaints, and admonishments
fed by ego by us since they he Theodore Roosevelt
could and did do a better job. Perhaps I feel
like a lot of his hostility, you know, was about
sort of people failing to live up to his standards
for what he thought the presidency should be. But do
(37:14):
you think his standard was just like it should be me?
Just think of it this way. Who would you think
could follow him? Who has his mighty potency and his
power of language and his patriotism. There's there's nobody. I mean,
we think that Franklin Roosevelt in many respects saved the
country or maybe saved the world. But he was a
mere shadow compared to TR. And he always lived in
(37:38):
envy of TR's vitality and Trs sheer political joy and
being in a good slugging match with his opponents are
perceived opponents. So I think, you know, we sort of
locked ourselves into a problem because what follows t R.
Wilson is a more kind of professorial figure, and then
the whole series of harding and cool agent so on.
(38:00):
These are just nonentities who released power back to the
legislative French. So TR was going to have trouble no
matter what. But it was his own personality problem, his
own righteousness, and his own sense that he was the
only one that really puts him in such an ugly
light in the years from nineteen nine to nineteen nineteen.
(38:21):
But Roosevelt wasn't fighting just for the sake of fighting
or to have his own legacy polished. He fought because
he felt it was the role of citizens to confront government,
to force politicians to defend their positions and remain culpable
to the individuals they represent. Theodore Roosevelt didn't want to
fight other presidents. He wanted other presidents to fight for him.
(38:52):
History versus a is hosted by Me Aaron McCarthy. This
episode was written by Jake Rossan, with research by Me
and fact checking by Austin Thompson. Field recording by John Mayer.
Joe Wigan voiced Theodore Roosevelt in this episode. The executive
producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The
supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by
(39:13):
Dylan Fagan and Lowell Brulante. Special thanks to Clay Jenkinson
and Tyler Caliberta. So learn more about this episode and
Theodore Roosevelt, check out our website at mental fass dot
com slash History Versus. That's mental fass dot com. Slash
h I S t O R y vs. History Versus
is a production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss.
(39:47):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
History versus is a production of I heart radio and
mental flaws. Shifty Adroit's logathy, cold blooded, narrow minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid,
old psalm singing Indianapolis politician, no more backbone than a
(00:21):
chocolate eclaire, a flood dub with a streak of the
second rate, and the common in him puzzle with fat
head brains less than a guinea pig. Yes, those are
the words of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, author, philanthropist,
avid reader, and inspiration for the Teddy Bear. He was,
(00:43):
from most accounts, a kind and sociable man. But if
Roosevelt found flaws, he was quick to articulate them, a
fast and furious torrent of put downs, designed to bombard
the target of his attack with insults that might require
a dictionary to fully process. Roosevelt didn't unleash these particular
tirades at just anyone. He reserved them for individuals he
(01:04):
held to the highest standard, because they held the highest
office in the land. For Roosevelt, anything less than the naked,
harsh truth directed at the commander in chief would be
a disservice to his country. When it came to other presidents.
Theodore Roosevelt pulled no punches. How ugh did it get?
We're about to find out. For mental flaws and I
(01:26):
Heart Radio. This is History Versus, a podcast about how
your favorite historical figures faced off against their greatest foes.
This week's episode is t R Versus Other Presidents. Roosevelt's
famously tempestuous attitude towards politicians may have started with his
impossible standards. His role model for all things presidential was
Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth Commander in Chief of the United
(01:48):
States and one of the few presidents Roosevelt had no
quarrel with. He grew up in a household where Lincoln
was revered, at least by his Republican father, Theodore Senior,
or the His mother, Mitty, a Southern and Confederate sympathizer,
likely had other feelings. He had worked with Lincoln's administration
during the Civil War and had even joined Abraham and
his wife Mary at church after Lincoln was assassinated. In
(02:12):
his funeral procession ran through New York City from his
grandfather's mansion in Union Square. Six year old Roosevelt and
his brother Elliott watched as the president's coffin was carried
through the streets. Photographer even captured the moment a young
Theodore appearing out of the window and what would be
the first of his many eyewitness experiences in history. Here's
Clay Jenkinson, founder of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson
(02:35):
State University in North Dakota. Lincoln and Rose was the
savior of the country. He was also a friend of
his father, and tr worshiped his father and his father's associations.
And he regarded Lincoln as somebody who had the moxie
and the moral strength to do the right thing against
almost impossible loads. And he knew that Lincoln had paid
(02:56):
the ultimate price for that, that he had been assassinated
in part because he grew in office, whereas most presidents,
as you know, don't grow in office. They decline. But
Lincoln was one of the few who actually grew in
a big way during the course of its presidency. Roosevelt's
admiration for Lincoln endured throughout his life as president. Roosevelt
referred to him as my great hero, a degree of
(03:19):
affection he reserved for very few people, aside from his father.
With Lincoln's portrait hanging both in the White House and
in his home office at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt was constantly
reminded of Lincoln's legacy. I look up to that picture,
he said, and I do as I believe Lincoln would
have done. He even kept a lock of Lincoln's hair
in a ring, which Roosevelt war for his inauguration. It
(03:41):
was given to him by John Hay, who had served
in Lincoln's administration and went on to serve in Roosevelt's.
It was kind of like a Victorian thing, and they
would make jewelry into them. So that's what Hay does,
and he keeps these, I think as two of the
maid and he has them for quite a while and
gives one the tr Aware as an inauguration. That's Tyler Caliberta,
(04:05):
the education technician at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's one time home
and now a National Historic site. I think Roosevelt saw
Lincoln as kind of this incredible president, and I think
in his own presidency would have liked to been president
during a time like Lincoln. Nation was in crisis, and
you know, he had to solve these kind of major problems.
(04:26):
As president. Roosevelt enjoyed having a memento of Lincoln so
close to him, but he was not so fond of
one of the other presidents who would end up on
Mount Rushmore alongside him. Roosevelt was famously cooled towards Thomas Jefferson,
blaming the long deceased president for his ineffectual efforts in
building a military force during the War of eighteen twelve
and for jefferson subversive opposition to George Washington's policies while
(04:48):
serving as his Secretary of State. But it was Roosevelt's
contemporaries that received most of his scorn. That rant about
a cold blooded, narrow minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid, olds all
singing Indianapolis politician that was directed at Benjamin Harrison, our
twenty three president from eight nine to eight nine, and
(05:08):
the same man who appointed Roosevelt as a Civil Service
reform commissioner around the start of his term. Roosevelt had
campaigned for him when he was on the Republican ticket,
So where did things go so wrong? For one thing,
Harrison didn't really want reform for federal employees. The position
was more of a figurehead role that didn't suit Roosevelt
in his high standards at all. In his mind, if
(05:31):
someone was granted a federal job, it should be because
they deserved it and not because they were out a favor.
For the six years he held the post Roosevelt was defiant,
putting laxa daisical civil service workers and departments in his crosshairs.
He advised Harrison to fire George H. Paul, Postmaster of Milwaukee,
for granting jobs to his friends. His investigation into the
(05:53):
Baltimore Postal Service, where Roosevelt found workers soliciting money for
political purposes on government property, which, according to historian and
Edmund Morris, was against the Civil Service Code, put him
against Postmaster General John Wanamaker even more directly. I wanta
Maker tried to run his own investigation into the matter
and reported that it found that no wrongdoing had occurred,
(06:14):
But a House investigative committee, acting on Roosevelt's insistence, found
that Roosevelt was right. Here's Jenkinson, it was just a
natural instinct of his to read the job as boldly
as possible, and to make sure that he got himself
in the newspapers, and to make sure that he was
on the right side of these questions. And he wasn't
afraid to take on his own political party. He'd take
(06:35):
it right up to the edge. And whether they're just
like so annoyed and disgusted with him because he won't
he won't play the game. You know. He just couldn't
play the game. And they wanted him to be a
figurehead at least, and to be They knew that he
was like the best stump speaker they had, and that
he could galvanize an audience, but they wanted him to
(06:59):
be less tactic and to be less certain of things,
and to go along more than he did. This wasn't
how government was supposed to work. Government wasn't supposed to
be fair. Cynicism and cronyism mandated that politicians did favors
and the winning team showed support. But Roosevelt didn't care
what party anyone belonged to. He was on a mission,
(07:22):
and if Harrison's allies were in the way, he had
no problem taking them down. That commitment had consequences for
their relationship. When Harrison and Roosevelt met, Harrison took to
tapping his fingers, a nervous tick that developed as a
result of the aggravation Roosevelt caused him. There was, of course,
the situation with the money soliciting Baltimore postal workers, and
(07:42):
the fact that Roosevelt went after William Wallace, the postmaster
of Indianapolis and a man who also happened to be
Harrison's best friend, for hiring incompetent and corrupt workers because
they were Republicans. Later, Harrison would say of Roosevelt, the
only trouble I ever had with him was that he
wanted to put an end to all the evil in
the world. Between sunrise and sunset, Harrison's overt displays of
(08:05):
favoritism needles Roosevelt perpetuating some of his most articulate insults.
He called Harrison the little gray man in the White
House and a genial little runt behind his back. Roosevelt
managed to last through Harrison's term and would end up
being reappointed Civil Service Reform Commissioner once Grover Cleveland entered
office in eight. He left his post in eight and
(08:28):
became president of the Board of Police Commissioners in New
York City. His next brush with the presidency would come
when William McKinley ran for the office in eight McKinley's
campaign had given Roosevelt pause before McKinley's first term Roosevelt
wrote to his friend and Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
that it will be a great misfortune to have McKinley nominated.
(08:50):
If I could tell you all I have learned since
his campaign has progressed, you would be as completely alarmed
over the prospect of his presidential nomination as I am.
When it seems like McKinley would soon be named the
Republican nominee, Roosevelt dashed off a letter to a sister baby, McKinley,
whose firmness I utterly distrust, will be nominated, and this
(09:14):
I much regret. Roosevelt didn't dislike McKinley. He noted he
was an honorable man, of very considerable ability and good
record as a soldier and in Congress. But where Roosevelt
felt Harrison was politically savvy, he caught the impression that
McKinley was without a spine. He is not a strong man,
Roosevelt said, unless he is well backed, I should feel
(09:37):
rather uneasy about him. In a serious crisis, whether it
took the form of a soft money craze, a gigantic
labor riot, or danger of foreign conflict. Roosevelt's tune changed slightly.
When McKinley was elected G. I. R. Was an ardent Republican,
and he could never stray from the Republican camp, and
so that was dictated a lot of what he did.
(10:00):
Kinley appointed Roosevelt Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but the
piece didn't last long. He thought that McKinley was unimaginative
and unnecessarily cautious, and and that McKinley was timid about
going to war against Spain in and tr really went
(10:20):
on somewhat questionable campaign to sort of force McKinley's hand
to declare war against Spain. When McKinley said, you know,
we've had one big war during my lifetime, I hesitated
to begin another one. But tr read every possible story
coming out of Cuba in the way that made the
(10:42):
Spanish look worst. Made it sort of a righteous issue
of whether we stand for anything, especially after the sinking
of the main So that's why he called McKinley names
and said that he had the backbone of a chocolate eclaire.
He would later campaign extensively for McKinley second term. By
this point, Roosevelt was more than just a supporter. After
(11:03):
a two year term as Governor of New York. He
was a vice presidential candidate on the McKinley ticket. Roosevelt
campaign for McKinley in a really big way in against
William Jennings. Bryan McKinley didn't leave his home in Canton, Ohio.
He ran that front porch campaign and sent out this valuable, hectic, crazy,
(11:24):
energetic vice presidential candidate to do all the work on
the stump. And Roosevelt, of cards, threw himself into it
just head and shoulders, and had the time of his
life and took on Brian and I probably McKinley would
have won anyway, but it's Roosevelt who did the heavy
lifting in the campaign and really found his voice in
(11:46):
the American West. While doing that, he said a horrible
things about Brian. He said he was a human trombone,
which is virtually my favorite thing, that my favorite Roosevelt
insult of all. So he believed that McKinley was sound economically,
and he realized, especially after that McKinley could be manipulated
(12:07):
or managed, let's put it, to pursue a more vigorous
American role in the world than he might instinctively have intended.
One wouldn't think that Roosevelt would exert a little more
patience with the guy on his campaign ticket. But it's
Theodore Roosevelt we're talking about here. For one thing, Roosevelt
didn't really want to be vice president. He thought the
(12:29):
office was ineffectual and constricting. I would a great deal
rather be anything, say, professor of history, than vice president.
He said, here's Caliberta, there's a man who cannot set still,
and you put him in the vice presidency, which we
just regarded as an idol officer. But Roosevelt's friends knew
it was a step closer to the presidency. Senator Lodge
(12:52):
urged him to take it on and stick by McKinley side,
declaring it invaluable for his future in politics. So why
would Akinley select him as a running mate. It was
more indifference than anything. Supporters buzzed in McKinley's ear that Roosevelt,
then the governor of New York and a war hero,
would bring some much needed fire into the campaign. Plus,
(13:13):
the New York Republican Party machine desperately wanted him out
of the state, and so McKinley and Roosevelt became the
Republican hopefuls of nine Ohio Senator Mark Hannah, who viewed
Roosevelt as a loose canon, was not a fan. Don't
you realize? He said that there is only one life
between this madman and the White House. Roosevelt's concerns about
(13:33):
the role proved accurate. McKinley never consulted him on policies
and refused to let him interact with the Senate as
a liaison, as he had done with his previous Vice President,
Garrett Hobart. Roosevelt meanwhile, found McKinley's glacial decision making process infuriating,
but he wouldn't have to endure it for long. On
September six, McKinley was shot in the stomach by anarchist
(13:56):
Leon shul Gash. He died of gang green only a
little over a week later. According to an eyewitness, when
Roosevelt heard the news of McKinley shooting, a look of
unmistakable anguish came to his face and tears immediately filled
his eyes. Well, tr was was in upstate New York.
He had presided over the Senate for I think five
days before they adjourned, and now he was sort of
(14:19):
just wandering and giving speeches and going hiking and camping
and writing and doing all the things that Piotore Roosevelt does.
And he got the word that McKinley had been shot,
and he made an emergency trip to Buffalo to be
at McKinley's bedside. And then he realized McKinley was probably
going to recover, so he went back. He thought it
(14:42):
was unseemly for him to hang around um the sixth
Man's bed, and so he went back to upstate New York.
And he was on mom Marcy, the highest point in
the state, when he a messenger came running up the
path and informed him that the President was going to
die that night. Roosevelt race to Buffalo to be by
McKinley's side, although he would be too late to see
(15:04):
the president before he passed. Though they had their differences,
the tragedy overshadowed any political divide. Following McKinley's assassination, it
was time for Roosevelt to step into the role held
by men he had often criticized. The so called Madman
was now in the Executive Mansion. With that experience afford
him a new perspective on the challenges of the job.
(15:24):
Of course, when it prompt him to bite his tongue
when it came to his successor probably not, We'll be
right back. Imagine what it would be like to disappoint
someone with the standards of Theodore Roosevelt. Just think about
that for a moment. William Howard Taft didn't have to
(15:45):
think about it. He experienced it firsthand. Taft was Roosevelt's
secretary of War. When Roosevelt left office, he selected Taft
as his choice for the presidential nomination. Taft was named
the nominee in and Roosevelt believed he would welcome advice
with an open ear. Mhm. Not quite. Roosevelt felt Taft
(16:05):
was a little too careless with his image, seeing Taft
fishing and golfing instead of shaking hands and kissing babies.
He urged Taft to put yourself prominently and emphatically into
this campaign of his recreational activities. He said, I am
convinced that the prominence that has been given to your
golf playing has not been wise, and from now on,
(16:26):
I hope that your people will do everything they can
to prevent one word being sent out about either your
fishing or you're playing golf. Roosevelt had very particular ideas
about how a president should behave and what kind of
image they should project. Presidential candidates weren't supposed to be
seen enjoying themselves. I never let friends advertise my tennis
(16:49):
and never let a photograph of me in tennis costume appear,
he said. And Roosevelt believed that Taft should allow his
constituents to see him smiling always, because I that your
nature shines out so transparently when you do smile. You big, generous,
high minded fellow. According to caliberta Tear had tight control
(17:10):
over his public image, very much a thing with politicians today,
but a new concept in TRS time. It's one of
the things that made him the first modern president. He
was very aware that you are going to be written
about newspapers, your image is going to be broadcast or
you know, through newspapers, people are going to see you,
even the ones that you don't interact with. So if
(17:32):
you're playing golf, like William Howard, tafted, that has its
certain own connotations. If you're playing tennis, that has its
own connotations. Roosevelt thought it was feminine. You didn't want
to be seen as feminine, so he doesn't allow anyone
to photograph him playing tennis. If it sounds like Roosevelt
was acting as an image consultant for Taft, well he was.
He was Roosevelt's handpicked successor, and his success or failure
(17:57):
would in some way reflect back on Roosevelt's legacy. According
to Jenkinson, Roosevelt was right to lecture Taft about golfing
because average people back then couldn't afford to golf. That
was a rich man's sport. Takes time, it takes money,
it takes privilege. Rose said, if you want to be
the leader of the people, you have to narrow the
distance between yourself and the common man, not accentuated by
(18:20):
being photographed in an aristocratic copy. Roosevelt had incredible political
instincts now. He wanted to be photographed climbing a mountain,
or being lowered on a rope in front of a waterfall,
or killing something, because then that would be something people
could really respect. But if you're photographed doing something that
only the privilege to get to do, then you're sending
(18:42):
the wrong signal to the country. It's not hard to
imagine that Roosevelt's nagging irritated Taft. The presses spin on
things may have also rubbed him the wrong way. They
decided that his last name could be an acronym short
for take advice from Teddy Taf to beat Democrat William
Jennings Bryan, and Year was sure his successor would continue
his legacy of reform. Roosevelt left on a hunting trip
(19:05):
to Africa for a year, allowing Taft a chance to
make his own market office. So tr was not as
good a judge of character as his wife. He did.
He loved Taft, and Taft was an incredibly able man,
but Taft really wanted to be the Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, and that's when he was well suited
to And it was his wife, Belly, who forced him
(19:27):
to accept the presidency. He didn't really want it, but
she was ambitious for him, and so tr thought the
Taft would continue his policies. What he didn't realize is
that Taft was not strong. He was big, but he
wasn't strong. And so in the Republican Party at the time,
there was the progressive wing of people who wanted reform
(19:49):
and to end child labor and to lighten the burdens
of the poor and clean up our food supply and
so on. And then there was the standpat wing of
rich capitalists had just lot of government to either be
their handmade and get out of the way. And Roosevelt
was able to hold those two tribes, those two factions
of the Republican Party together, because he was a war hero,
(20:10):
because he was our first cowboy president, and because he
was Roosevelt. But tafted wasn't able to do it. He
didn't have enough firepower, enough charismas. Taft had to choose,
and he chose to move back towards the old stand
Pat JP Morgan Rockefeller wing of the party. Taft didn't
live up to Roosevelt's lofty expectations. He found it easier
(20:33):
to be complacent with existing laws than to become combative.
A former lawyer, he wanted to remain within the boundaries
of office, whereas Roosevelt was keen on exerting as much
control as he could. Taft possessed none of Roosevelt's firebrand policies,
none of his aggressive attitude towards improving the country. At
the end of the Africa trip, he wrote to Roosevelt
to complain, I do not know that I have had
(20:56):
harder luck than most presidents. But I do know that
thus far I have succeeded far less than others. I've
been conscientiously trying to carry out your policies, but my
method of doing so has not worked smoothly. Poor Taft
bemoaned that he couldn't even lose weight. In some ways,
Taft was like a sibling looking up to a bigger
brother for approval. He invited Roosevelt to the White House,
(21:18):
but Roosevelt refused. I don't think it well for an
ex president to go to the White House, or indeed
to go to Washington, except when he cannot help it,
he sniffed. Time and again. Taft would make advances and
Roosevelt would rebuff them. Taft would later say Roosevelt's chili
demeanor deeply wounded him. Taft was also faced with a
(21:39):
fight between his Secretary of the Interior, Richard Ballinger, and
his chief forester, Gifford pin Show, who had helped create
Roosevelt's conservation policy. The result was pin Shows firing, and
it felt that he had assurances from Taff the Taft
would continue the progressive initiatives, particularly on conservation questions, and
(22:00):
when Taft didn't Roosevelt felt angry, betrayed, and somewhat righteous
and vindicted. Plus I mean, it's just the case that
Roosevelt couldn't stand not to be in power. He just
couldn't stand not to be the guy he was the
youngest former president. Because he was the youngest president and
made a stupid mistake by renouncing a third term, he
(22:21):
left at the height of his powers before he had
finished all that he wanted to do. The friction grew
worse when Taft finally made a sweeping change, advising the
government to sue the monopolistic U. S. Steel, an industrial
behemoth Roosevelt had tacitly approved of in n in order
to avert financial panic. Not only was Taft slow to act,
but when he did, it was to try and reverse
(22:43):
one of Roosevelt's decisions. And I rate Roosevelt actually penned
entire published essays devoted to separating his policies from those
of his one time friend. The problem. Roosevelt's decision in
the U. S. Steel situation was probably a mistake. According
to Jenkinson, the key players in the merger concealed their
true motivations from the president. Economics was not to our
(23:05):
strong suit, and he acted quickly to stave off the panic.
But if he had more time to read up on
his options, he might not have approved the merger. Still,
nothing stopped him from defending the decision he had made,
and it became abundantly clear that he had been manipulated
and that it was probably an unnecessary thing and maybe
an unethical thing for him to have done. He just
(23:28):
got more and more and more righteous about it. And
the same was true about Panama. When the Wilson administration
gave them um Colombian government twenty five million dollars, he
threw just a gigantic hissy fit over that and broke
with the Wilson administration. A poison pen was not Roosevelt's
only come back. He decided to challenge Taft. In the
(23:49):
ultimate arena of the presidential election, Roosevelt announced he was
returning to run in vying for the Republican nomination against Taft.
Those references to a flub dub and someone with brains
less than a guinea pig Roosevelt was referring to Taft.
The incumbent was quick to retort, calling Roosevelt a honeyfuggler
(24:09):
or someone who gains an advantage by cheating, as well
as an egotist, a demagogue, and a flatterer. And after
Roosevelt said he was no longer going to attack Taft personally,
Taft proclaimed, having called me everything in the category of
bad names that are mentioned in polite society, he now
wishes to indulge in less emphatic expressions. So now they
(24:29):
their their friendships has been damaged and frayed by all
of this. But now it was really a tragic business
because Taft loved Roosevelt. He actually wept and said, you know,
he was my closest friend. I love tr And tr
was much less emotional about it. He was he was
(24:53):
really caught up in his own righteousness. And so they
began to call each other names. And you know, Roselt
was great at insults, called him a fathead, and you
know all the other things that that he said. A
puzzle with how did the public react to his insults,
especially with Taft, because it's not like you're insulting just
(25:14):
anyone when you call them guinea pig, power brain, you're
insulting the president. Well, most of most people didn't know
about this. Most people, you know, were so they knew
that tr was this like this cowboy, and that he
was that he shot from the hip, and that he
was not afraid to punch somebody metaphorically or physically if necessary.
Certainly that was his public persona, that he was a
(25:36):
Christian warrior, and that he was not afraid to take
on trusts or anything that got in his way. And
he loved that, and he circulated those stories. He was
glad that they circulated because he felt that they gave
him a political advantage. But we know more about as
than they did, because some of this was in private letters.
The Republicans tried to curb the rivalry, offering to arrive
(25:59):
at a compromise and find a third candidate. Roosevelt would
have none of it. I'll name the compromise candidate, he said.
He'll be me. I'll name the compromise platform. It will
be our platform. After a controversial convention that saw the
Republican National Committee award Taft the necessary delegates to guarantee
(26:20):
his selection, Roosevelt could have been gracious in defeat. Instead,
he remained in the race, breaking away from the Republicans
and running as a progressive in his Bull Moose Party.
The sniping continued. These were picked up in the newspapers,
and there was like the public was following this feud,
and Roosevelt wasn't sorry. He knew that his only path
to victory was to bring down the sitting incumbent president
(26:43):
of the United States, and so he wanted the public
to share his view. The taft really wasn't up to it.
Did any of his remarks come back to sort of
bite him? Or well, you never really want to burn
your bridges and t R when I neglect about this area,
and I always say that that TR the post president,
was really a very unpleasant person. He he just couldn't
(27:08):
stand not being in power. And he didn't realize this
when he left. He brought all these letters to his children,
like I've had my time, and the public votes on
and you know, nobody has enjoyed this more than I have,
and it's time for others, and there's a weariness about
me in the country. But he didn't believe it. He
actually thought that he was the indispensable man, indispensable or indestructible.
(27:28):
Preparing for a speech at Milwaukee Editorium on October fourteenth,
Roosevelt was shot by would be assassin named John Shrink.
He survived, he even finished his speech. Shrink later said
he shot him in part because William McKinley had come
to him in a dream and ordered him to do
the deed. It seemed that Theodore Roosevelt's clashes with presidents
both past and present were far from finished. We'll be
(27:52):
right back in competing against each other, both Taft and
Roosevelt lost. It was Democrat Woodrow Wilson who secured the
nine twelve election, and unfortunately Roosevelt didn't care much for
him either. Both men were from similar backgrounds, their childhoods
made difficult by challenges Roosevelt had asthma, Wilson dyslexia. Both
(28:16):
men lost their first wives to premature deaths. The two
even worked together when Wilson was President of Princeton and
Roosevelt was involved in trying to encourage the sport of
football to be safer for athletes who are risking their
lives with minimal safety equipment, and at one point they
even kind of liked each other. When Wilson was elected
president of Princeton in nineteen o two, Roosevelt wrote, Woodrow
(28:37):
Wilson is a perfect trump. I am overjoyed at his election.
Wilson was bookish and self aware. He knew Roosevelt appeared
to be larger than life. He is a real, vivid
person whom they have seen and shouted themselves horse over
and voted for a million strong. Wilson said, I am
a vague conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and
(29:00):
academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpusals. In
the face of such self deprecating commentary, Roosevelt still let
him have it with both barrels. Wilson, he said, was
a good man who has in no way shown that
he possesses any special fitness for the presidency. Here's Jenkinson,
just a little poor Wilson, and treated him just so
(29:23):
shabbily and undermine it. Most presidents when they leave are
graceful to their successors. But gr just couldn't be. And
it wasn't a partisan that he was equally awful to
Wilson as he was to Ta as it often did.
Roosevelt's scorn stemmed in part from a president who deviated
from Roosevelt's well worn path. In a treaty with Columbia
(29:44):
a few months before the opening of the Panama Canal,
the United States proclaimed sincere regret that anything came between
the friendship of the United States and Colombia, like the
Panamanian coup, Roosevelt had sent a ship to support. To Roosevelt,
that was an admission, a sign of institutional weakness. He
would never have allowed that. It was an open defiance
(30:05):
of his decision, rankled him even more. In a press release,
Roosevelt called Wilson's handling of foreign affairs such as to
make the United States a figure of fun in the
international world. He criticized the treaty and with the help
of Senate allies, blocked the treaty's ratification. When the treaty
was finally ratified a few years after Roosevelt's death, these
(30:26):
sincere regret clause had been removed, But it was more
than a difference of diplomacy. In his heart, Roosevelt was
a soldier. He lived for combat, be it verbal, physical,
or territorial. When Wilson was faced with the decision to
bring America into World War One, Roosevelt criticized his cabinet's pacifism.
Writing to his friend Arthur Lee, Roosevelt said that it
(30:49):
is not a good thing for a country to have
a professional yodeler, a human trombone like William Jennings Bryan
as Secretary of State, nor a college president with an
astute and shifting mind, of a critical ability to deceive
plain people, and no real knowledge or wisdom concerning internal
and international affairs as head of the nation. On another occasion,
(31:12):
he bemoaned Wilson's lack of action following the German sinking
of the Lusitania and told his son Kermit that a
lily livered skunk was occupying the White House. Speaking to
the public at large about the sinking of the Lusitania,
he said this represents not merely piracy, but piracy on
a vaster scale of murder than any old time pirate
(31:32):
ever practiced. Roosevelt said that the Act constituted warfare against
innocent men, women, and children traveling on the ocean, and
to our own fellow countrymen and countrywomen who are among
the sufferers. It seems inconceivable that we can refrain from
taking action in this matter, for we owe it not
(31:52):
only to humanity, but to our own national self respect.
A little Wilson's man hood over this that he wasn't
a real man, because he said he used Nancy, I
think he called him, and you know, made all these
slurs about the virility of Woodrow Wilson because Wilson was
(32:13):
trying so hard to keep the peace. And when Wilson
said that he was going to keep us out of war,
roosevelts and Roosevelt turned out to be right. By the
way Roosevelt to was, we will have to get involved
in this war. There is no way the United States
of America is going to avoid the World War One,
so we may as well get ready for it. And
if we're prepared when the war comes, we'll be able
(32:34):
to fight it more successfully and victory will be more complete.
If you dilly dally around by the time you get
in the war, you're not going to be ready for it.
And that's the that's going to be a delay, and
that means you're not going to be able to control
the post war arrangement in Europe. You're gonna lose some
of your leverage over the post war. Writing to his
son Archie, Roosevelt was even more accusatory, placing the blame
(32:56):
for the victims of Hallusitania directly on Wilson's shoulder. As
a nation, we have thought very little about foreign affairs.
We don't realize that the murder of the thousand men,
women and children in the Lusitania is due solely to
Wilson's abject cowardice and weakness and failing to take energetic
(33:18):
action when the golf flight was sunk but a few
days previously. Just a quick fact check here, though there
were reports that the golf flight had been sunk, it
was actually just damaged and towed in. Okay. Back to
the quote, Wilson and Brian are both abject creatures, and
they won't go to war unless they are kicked into it,
(33:38):
and they will consider nothing but their own personal advantage
in the matter. Wilson, however, did put up a fight
when Roosevelt goaded him into one. The way to treat
an adversary like Roosevelt is to gaze at the stars
over his head, Wilson said. The men reconciled, if ever
so briefly. When Wilson decided to join the war, Roosevelt
(33:59):
came over to the White House and over Lemonade pitched
himself as going back to the army to take up
his post as a commander of the Rough Riders, which
had Barnstorm to the Spanish American War in eighty eight
and helped perpetuate Roosevelt's reputation as a hands on combatant.
Wilson eventually refused, which once again drew Roosevelt. Hire war
has has kind of changed since San Juan Hill. It's
(34:22):
not done that way anywhere. There's no room for it.
A voluntary cavalry unit in France. When Wilson wouldn't do
it just through Roselt, who was a naturally pugnacious figure
and one of gloried war, it threw him into a
complete tailspin. He just wanted someone to punish, and there
was Wilson, and so he wrote increasingly awful op ed
(34:44):
pieces um and then wondered why Wilson wouldn't send them
over to France with a rough rider unit. Wilson later
said he believed Roosevelt's cause was born out of ego
and self aggrandizement. Secretly, he may have also feared Roosevelt
becoming a war hero once more could lead to a
white house run in Roosevelt's four sons wound up in listing.
(35:05):
One of them, Quentin, died in disguise over France. It
was Wilson who confirmed the news via telegram. Roosevelt wouldn't
live to see the remainder of Wilson's second term. He
died on January six. Some of his remaining days were
spent authoring editorials for the Kansas City Star about his
repeated criticisms of the president. While it concerned Wilson, it
(35:27):
summarizes Roosevelt's feelings about the office he treated with such reverence.
The President is merely the most important among a large
number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed
exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good
conduct or his bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in
(35:47):
rendering loyal, able and disinterested service to the nation as
a whole. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that there should
be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts.
And this means that it is exactly necessary to blame
him when he does wrong, as to praise him when
he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen
(36:09):
is both base and servile. To announce that there must
be no criticism of the president, or that we are
to stand by the president right or wrong, is not
only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about
him or anyone else. But it is even more important
(36:32):
to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than
about anyone else. Roosevelt was fiercely critical of the office
of the presidency, a role he believed needed to be
contextualized and challenged constantly, which could be one explanation for
why he assessed other presidents so harshly. But there is
(36:52):
another possible explanation where his insults, criticisms, complaints, and admonishments
fed by ego by us since they he Theodore Roosevelt
could and did do a better job. Perhaps I feel
like a lot of his hostility, you know, was about
sort of people failing to live up to his standards
for what he thought the presidency should be. But do
(37:14):
you think his standard was just like it should be me?
Just think of it this way. Who would you think
could follow him? Who has his mighty potency and his
power of language and his patriotism. There's there's nobody. I mean,
we think that Franklin Roosevelt in many respects saved the
country or maybe saved the world. But he was a
mere shadow compared to TR. And he always lived in
(37:38):
envy of TR's vitality and Trs sheer political joy and
being in a good slugging match with his opponents are
perceived opponents. So I think, you know, we sort of
locked ourselves into a problem because what follows t R.
Wilson is a more kind of professorial figure, and then
the whole series of harding and cool agent so on.
(38:00):
These are just nonentities who released power back to the
legislative French. So TR was going to have trouble no
matter what. But it was his own personality problem, his
own righteousness, and his own sense that he was the
only one that really puts him in such an ugly
light in the years from nineteen nine to nineteen nineteen.
(38:21):
But Roosevelt wasn't fighting just for the sake of fighting
or to have his own legacy polished. He fought because
he felt it was the role of citizens to confront government,
to force politicians to defend their positions and remain culpable
to the individuals they represent. Theodore Roosevelt didn't want to
fight other presidents. He wanted other presidents to fight for him.
(38:52):
History versus a is hosted by Me Aaron McCarthy. This
episode was written by Jake Rossan, with research by Me
and fact checking by Austin Thompson. Field recording by John Mayer.
Joe Wigan voiced Theodore Roosevelt in this episode. The executive
producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The
supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by
(39:13):
Dylan Fagan and Lowell Brulante. Special thanks to Clay Jenkinson
and Tyler Caliberta. So learn more about this episode and
Theodore Roosevelt, check out our website at mental fass dot
com slash History Versus. That's mental fass dot com. Slash
h I S t O R y vs. History Versus
is a production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss.
(39:47):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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