Something made me watch Ken Burns’ documentary “The Roosevelts” again last week. I was not looking for current perspective or political enlightenment, and the stories told are all very familiar to me, being an admirer of Teddy from childhood and fascinated by the complexities and contradictions that were Franklin. But history always surprises, and it often resonated differently depending on when it is examined. I realized, for the first time, that the Roosevelts have much to teach us about the conflict roiling the nation now….and the worse roiling that seems to be on its way.
Revisiting the glory and the weirdness that was Theodore Roosevelt made me understand why Donald Trump maintains his popular support despite more flaws than the typical neighborhood jerk, never mind the typical Presidential candidate. Trump is more like Teddy than any other President has been, and TR had a natural and visceral appeal that was primal and, to many, inexplicable. He was our most narcissistic President (by far), and arguably our most arrogant. He had little respect for precedent or what the expected course of action would be. He talked too much, and what he said was often inflammatory and undiplomatic. Roosevelt was, like Trump, a performer by talent and temperament, and he was a little bit crazy—dangerously so.
Most of all, he couldn’t be intimidated or frightened; he would not accept defeat, and he didn’t apologize even when he should have. Americans loved all of that about TR just as most professional politicians hated it, and him. The ultimate Teddy Roosevelt story is his insisting on giving a campaign speech after a would-be assassin shot him in the chest. It was insane thing to do, but the grandstanding showed strength, courage, stubbornness and defiance. Those are all characteristics Americans seek in their leaders. Trump projects them.
Trump’s problem, and it is a major one, is that he shares these superficial character traits with Roosevelt without the underlying foundation that made TR successful. He was a scholar, a historian, a scientist, an innovator and a genius in many ways. Theodore Roosevelt may have written more books than Donald Trump has read. Most important of all, Roosevelt was dedicated to the old fashioned values of honor and dignity; Trump cares about neither.
Nonetheless, Trump’s trappings evoke many of the same instincts in voters that Roosevelt did. He was a populist, and presented himself as a foe of the establishment, though he came from an upper middle class Ivy League background. Like Trump, Roosevelt was denigrated as a less than serious public figure; Teddy was a “cowboy,” like Trump is a “reality star.” Both were foolishly and repeatedly underestimated by their enemies.
Reviewing Franklin Roosevelt’s history clarified for me why the Democrats have so easily slipped into a pattern of pursuing one-party, totalitarian government. Steve-O-in NJ, in a comment on this post, wrote in part,
…the whole thing is starting to backfire and reveal the Democratic Party as the nascent totalitarians that they are. I’d like to say that this nation didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic party left it, but I’m not sure that’s true. At least since the days of Woodrow Wilson, that party has been all about getting more power and essentially ignoring the opposition. I used to think highly of FDR as many of us are taught, but the fact is that the man governed as an elected King, tried to pack the Supreme court, and did not have the wisdom to step aside when he knew he was dying.
All true, but the documentary makes it clear that Franklin Roosevelt was one of many instances in our history when the exact right man was available at a desperate moment. FDR was a ruthless sociopath, but also a brilliant politician and manipulator of people: I don’t think anyone else could have navigated the Great Depression (Herbert Hoover was a brilliant man, but not for that job), the run-up to World War II (which involved Roosevelt courageously flirting with impeachable actions in defiance of Congress), and the war itself. More to the point, Roosevelt didn’t think anyone else was up to the job, and most of the public didn’t either. He was a template for the Great American Leader: that confidence, the resonant voice, the actor’s sense of timing, that beaming smile and that huge, handsome head. Even though FDR was devious and lied when it suited his purposes, everything about Roosevelt projected competence and trustworthiness.
Meanwhile, the twin crises of depression and war not only gave FDR dictatorial powers in many aspects of his job; it also allowed the far left in the Democratic Party to install a large chunk of the socialist wish-list. As the song says, “Those were the days, my friend!” and Democrats thought they might never end. They might not have ended, if Dwight Eisenhower, as some thought he would, had run for President as a Democrat. But Ike felt FDR’s breaking of the two-term tradition was dangerous, and believed that government was becoming too powerful.
Roosevelt, who, as the documentary correctly says, had come to embody what a large segment of the population believed the Presidency was (FDR was the office, and vice-versa) established Democratic power in Congress that looked like it would last forever: between 1931 and 1995, sixty-four years, Republican had a majority in the House for exactly four years, and they weren’t consecutive.
Without FDR, his skills, his charisma, and his credibility with the public, the next wave of leftist programs and policies hasn’t materialized as Franklin (and especially Eleanor Roosevelt) had designed. Democrats have been waiting for another crisis to justify de-democratizing the government as FDR did. LBJ, a Roosevelt disciple, used Kennedy’s assassination to push through some programs, but the Vietnam War short-circuited that push. Watergate was another disaster that give the Democrats an opportunity, but Carter was a weak leader. By the time Clinton was elected, the Democratic hold on Congress had deteriorated; the next disaster—and thus opportunity for the Democrats—was the 2008 financial crisis, and sure enough, it brought a Democratic President to power and allowed one more ratchet notch toward a nanny state, the Affordable Care Act. Barack Obama, however, was a divisive leader, not a unifying one, and unlike FDR, projected contempt for the same “little people” who always said that they knew FDR understood them, like a father. Obama, in contrast, pinned his fatherhood image to the black combatant in an ugly and fatal confrontation between two jerks, giving legitimacy to an anti-white, anti-law enforcement movement.
So the Democrats waited for the next disaster to try to pick up where FDR left off. The Wuhan virus gave them their opening too: unemployment, ruined businesses, the chance to show the wisdom of progressive policies by turning things around. There were other parallels with Roosevelt’s rise: the news media hid the mental decline of Joe Biden just as reporters and photographers didn’t let the public know just how disabled by polio Roosevelt was. Like Roosevelt, President Biden has found his Constitutionally-dubious efforts to exploit the pandemic foiled by a conservative Supreme Court.
Roosevelt, however, would never have tried to neutralize a political enemy by prosecuting him. Roosevelt would have never allowed loyalty to a ne’re-do-well son to interfere with his dedication to the nation. Roosevelt chose his lies carefully, and used them only when necessary (as when he assured voters in 1940 that he would not send their sons to fight abroad, knowing full well that the U.S. was not going to be able to avoid involvement in World War II.) Democrats desperately want the control Roosevelt acquired for them, but they don’t have FDR, or even an adequate approximation.
While FDR was brilliant, eloquent and charismatic, Biden is slow, and getting slower, inarticulate and weak. By force of personality and political skill, FDR was able to wield power that now Democrats must seek through censorship, demonizing, fearmongering, division, election manipulation and media propaganda.
In 2024, both parties will be hitching their fortunes and the fate of the nation to Roosevelt models without the Roosevelts who could make those models work.
It is not a promising scenario.
Ethics Alarms 
Trump couldn’t carry TR’s jockstrap! (But then again no living politician could either)
I wonder if Trump would have the integrity and the humility to admit that.
What FDR said was: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again; your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”
He parsed his words, like the Clintons do. He knew that, if America was attacked, it wouldn’t be a foreign war anymore. The press knew that, too, and like they did for Kennedy, Obama and now Biden, made sure the spin worked.
A really fine essay, Jack. This is why I follow EA. Btw, when is the next installment of rating the presidents? I hope I didn’t miss it.
Yup. I am awash with shame. I will get it posted soon.
Agreed. One of your best posts I’ve read in a while. Thank you for this one, Jack.
A very fine essay.
It is essays like this that keep me visiting Ethics Alarms.
No it’s not a promising scenario.
Let’s add that Teddy Roosevelt only came to power because of the assassination of William McKinley. The Republican Party did not like Teddy Roosevelt at all because of his behavior as governor of New York, so they thought they could silence him by “kicking him upstairs” into the relatively powerless office of vice President. After the assassination, more than a few folks facepalmed and said “now look, that damned cowboy is president of the United States!”. He was not supposed to become president. Trump wasn’t supposed to become president either, he was supposed to go down in an ugly, disastrous defeat, and lose Congress as well.
Word has it that former Ohio governor John Kasich was prepared with a speech that he would give the day after that disastrous defeat trying to step forward as the new national leader of the Republican Party and promising to “pick up the pieces,” like Nixon did after 1964. Instead, the people of this country decided they’d had enough of the democratic parties contempt for ordinary folks, he never gave that speech, and Hillary will never see the inside of The White House again except as an invited guest. Whatever plans Hillary might have had to move this country One step closer or two or three steps closer to a nanny state died that day.
I won’t say that Teddy Roosevelt did not have his own approach to the federal government’s role in society. He viewed himself as a trustee of the people’s power who would use it on their behalf. He called himself the trust buster and took several actions designed to ensure healthy competition in business, although he was not anti-business the way Woodrow Wilson was (Wilson changed the legal climate in New Jersey to make it a lot less corporate friendly, saying he did not want robber barons in his state). I read somewhere that TR also read a fairly famous book about the stockyards and was so disgusted that he vomited up his breakfast, and soon after started to push for the Pure Food and Drug Act, which was not at all what that author was aiming for, the author was pushing for socialism.
Say what you want about Trump, he also actually got things done. He was not a passive “Chief Magistrate” type who just wanted to preside over a nation that he trusted to run itself. I still say that he should have walked to re-election but for the pandemic and then the George Floyd freak out. I wonder how Hillary would have handled those two events, and if she would have been pushed out in 2020 also. I am guessing she would have, because her contempt for ordinary people would not have resulted in good handling of those events, and if someone like Trump sprang up to a pose her, she would have been nowhere.
I have to agree, though, that although Trump acts in the manner of Teddy Roosevelt, he has nowhere near the abilities nor the credentials. Teddy Roosevelt, let’s not forget, had also served as a very dynamic Secretary of the Navy who had contributed to the building of American seapower, and he was also Colonel Teddy Roosevelt, who had led the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill. I have also compared Churchill to Trump in the past, as a dynamic leader who the establishment hated but who was the right man at the right time and who the nation rallied behind. Churchill also was a man of far greater ability than Trump, even if he was probably a functioning alcoholic. He was not only a scholar and a writer of fairly high renown, he was pretty close to a career officer and had spent years fighting for Queen and country, including participating in one of the last great cavalry charges at the Battle of Omdurman (despite having to fight with a pistol instead of a sword due to a shoulder injury). Trump, of course, as folks like Tammy Duckworth repeatedly pointed out, had no such credentials (neither does Joe, but that’s beside the point for the moment). It’s dangerous to be a populist while not quite having the ability to be a competent populist ruler, as we saw with Venezuelan big mouth Hugo Chavez.
It’s frankly an insult to FDR to even try to compare Biden to him. FDR was a sociopath, a bully, and a borderline tyrant,. But I can think of no one else at the time who could have navigated the Great depression for World War II, although Harry Truman did an okay job navigating the last few months of the war when most of the heavy lifting was done. FDR, however, was definitely “all there, “even if his body was crippled by polio and he had to rely on leg braces to stand when giving an address. There was never a question of who was in charge and who was accountable. As you point out, FDR was willing to take the hit if his policies failed and he ended up being the last President. FDR also had a fairly distinguished governmental career before being elected to the presidency, so the people knew what they were getting and that it was not a bad thing. Everyone also knew what Biden’s record was when he ran. His career consisted almost entirely of representing Delaware in Congress. In fact, when he was elected to the Senate, he was not even 30 yet, which is the minimum age for a senator, although he would reach that age before being sworn in. After that he spent eight years as a relatively undistinguished vice president to the divisive Obama. Throughout all that time he told many pointless lies and made many gaffes and mistakes. FDR was sharp right up to the end when a stroke finally ended his life. Joe wasn’t that sharp at his sharpest, and has been going downhill further and faster since his election to the point where there is a question as to who is really in charge. Those who said soon after the election that he would become a transformative president like FDR who would presumably enact a whole lot more of the left’s wish list were kidding themselves. This situation is arguably worse than when Woodrow Wilson continued to remain in office after a disabling stroke, allowing his wife and closest advisors to lead the country and cutting his vice president, Thomas Marshall, completely out of any substantive role. These days, the vice president had to be cut pretty much out of any substantive role from the beginning because she was just so damn incompetent. The “yes we Kam” merchandise quickly disappeared and some of the people I know who displayed stuff like that deny ever doing it because even they can see that Kamala Harris brought nothing but melanin and a vagina to the office, speaking bluntly.
I spoke at some length in another post about how bad it was when ordinary people could not trust the apex of government to do what it was supposed to do, and they shouldn’t be surprised when things start to fall apart if that’s the case. In that post I was talking about the Wars of the Roses and the clash between the houses of Lancaster and York for the throne of England which left the nation without effective leadership and the common people to simply be abused. However, in that day ordinary people didn’t count, it was there duty to serve the royalty and nobility and it was pretty much expected that the nobility and the royalty would look down their noses at the common people and not really give a damn about them, although we hadn’t quite reached the “let them eat cake” attitude of Marie Antoinette. At this point, however, ordinary people are supposed to count for something. Government is supposed to be serving the people, and not the other way around. To have a President who is clearly incompetent and accomplishing nothing tell the ordinary people that everything is just great and if you don’t see it that’s your problem is not acceptable. To have a president go above and beyond to save a slimy, drug addled, prostitute frequenting son who would be in prison if he had a different last name is completely unacceptable. To have a president prosecute his main political adversary? That’s banana republic stuff.
Here’s the thing, if you voted for Biden last time out, you voted for all this stuff and you voted for it knowing it was what was coming. Maybe you said how bad can it be and maybe you said anything is better than Trump. Well, here we are, and you have the answer to both those questions. Turns out it could be pretty damn bad and if you can honestly say that a nation where real family income is down by 7,500 a year, gas is up 60%, and as the result the price of everything is up, where illegal immigrants are just pouring across the border, and where our enemies pretty much scoff at us, is better than the relatively prosperous days of Trump, you’re either a partisan hack or a complete idiot. Unfortunately, America has far too many partisan hacks who just vote for the letter next to the person’s name, and far too many idiots who would rather not think for themselves because it would mean they would have to stop drinking beer and watching reality TV. You can cast your vote however you choose, but if you cast it that way, you are casting a vote for things just to get worse, because logic states that if you continue with the policies, things are going to continue getting worse. Trump said once in front of the UN that the problem with a lot of the various socialist countries is not that they did not do socialism or communism right, but they did it exactly the way it was intended. What you’re seeing now is not a well-meaning president backed by a well-meaning party who are just having trouble getting the message out or who are running into some unexpected challenges that are getting in the way of them getting things done, especially the opposition who just can’t see what they are trying to do. What you are seeing is a president backed by a party with clear goals executing against those goals, and chief among those is keeping themselves in power permanently, with increasing that power right behind. The fact that they are doing it by offering you not too much more than the virtue signaling high that goes with being able to say you believe that borders shouldn’t mean a thing, that anyone who claims racism should be able to do whatever the hell they want, and that the ability to kill a gestating child right up to the moment of birth is paramount, should tell you something. The fact that they offer you this while also saying that the rights to speak your mind, to share your ideas, to report the facts as you see them, to due process, and of course the right to defend yourself, really aren’t all that important should also tell you something. The only question is: are you not hearing what they’re telling you, or are you hearing it and choosing to ignore it? If the former, you better listen up. If the latter, then I think next year is the time for folks like me to start asking why, insisting that you defend your position, and not accepting glib answers or non-answers.
I know we discussed this briefly in another post, but I maintain that FDR’s effectiveness and success is hugely exaggerated, which makes sense because the left loves what he did to increase power and centralization of the government—things the left values in trying to push their agenda.
I know you maintain that his leadership helped avert revolution, but I maintain that this is circular thinking: He helped absorb popular anger and frustration with the economic difficulties that his own policies created and/or extended. Many economists now believe that FDR’s policies extended the Great Depression by as much as 7 years; in 1939 unemployment was HIGHER than it was in 1931 (read, e.g., https://www.ff.org/fdrs-policies-prolonged-depression-by-7-years-ucla-economists-calculate/).
All that economic failure came with the added cost of truly transforming the US, enlarging the federal government and degrading states powers, and enshrining labor union as political force.
Nice work, Jack. I really enjoyed reading that, and I think your premise is defensible and reasonable.