Theodore Rex By Edmund Morris. Random House, 864 pages, $35.00
Theodore Roosevelt By Louis Auchincloss. Henry Holt and Company, 155 pages, $20.00
Of all the presidential monuments in Washington,perhaps the most fitting isalso one of the least known: the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, which hides amidthe woods of an 88-acre island in the Potomac. Most people get to RooseveltIsland by driving to a parking lot on the Virginia shore and then walking acrossa bridge. Roosevelt himself, I'm sure, would have preferred to paddle a rowboatfrom Georgetown across the river and hike through the pines and poplars to theshady clearing where a 17-foot-tall statue of the 26th president stands like alost ruin (although it was actually dedicated in 1967). The monument itself is alow-key affair that celebrates Roosevelt as one of the guiding lights of theenvironmental movement in the United States.
"Every man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of the wilderness and ofwild life," Roosevelt wrote,
should strike hands with the far-sighted men who wish topreserve our material resources, in the effort to keep our forests and ourgame-beasts, game-birds, and game-fish--indeed, all the living creatures ofprairie and woodland and seashore--from wanton destruction. Above all, we shouldrecognize that the effort toward this end is essentially a democratic movement.It is entirely within our power as a nation to preserve large tracts ofwilderness, which are valueless for agricultural purposes and unfit forsettlement, as playgrounds for rich and poor alike... . But this end can only beachieved by wise laws and by a resolute enforcement of the laws.
And Roosevelt was nothing if not resolute. There were, Edmund Morris tells usin his new, marvelously enjoyable biography of TR, 42 million acres of nationalforests when Roosevelt took office in 1901. There were 130 million acres morewhen he left office seven years later. Roosevelt created five national parks andscores of national monuments and bird refuges.
But Roosevelt's conservationism contained a paradox that tells much about theman: To be conservative (that is, to preserve the country's natural patrimony),Roosevelt had to be almost radical: aggressively expansionist in the use offederal power--and this in an era when the free use of property was regarded bythe courts and many legislators as sort of a supraright, an inalienable freedomthat undergirded all the other liberties of a free people. Responsiblebusinessmen and intellectuals thought him crazy or power mad; ordinary peopleloved him.
"He left behind," notes Morris, "a folk consensus that he had been the mostpowerfully positive American leader since Abraham Lincoln. He had spent much ofhis two terms crossing and recrossing the country, east and west, south andnorth, reminding anyone who would listen to him that he embodied all America'svariety and the whole of its unity; that what he had made of his own life waspossible to all."
Paradox, of course, was encoded in Roosevelt's DNA. A sickly child, he willedhimself to vigor and often reckless physical activity. Born to affluence (andaccompanied to Harvard by a manservant and bootblack), he used the White House todecry the moneyed classes as parasites, "the malefactors of wealth," whose trustshe proceeded to bust. An accomplished historian and ravenous scholarly reader, hepreferred the company of cowhands to academic blowhards. A famous militant ("adangerous and ominous jingo," as Henry James put it), TR won the Nobel PeacePrize for ending the Russo-Japanese War. And after doing more than any otherpresident to protect wilderness in America, the first thing Roosevelt did inretirement was to embark on a safari on which he proceeded to denude the Africanlandscape of some 300 animals.
Roosevelt's political leanings were no easier to disentangle. Was he aconservative liberal or a liberal conservative? A "conservative progressive" isthe label historian Richard Hofstadter settled on; but this seems insufficient,since it implies certain bedrock values to be conserved while striving for socialprogress. To be sure, Roosevelt possessed fixity of purpose, but the polestar ofhis moral universe was his own sense of righteousness.
Louis Auchincloss, in his insightful and slender book Theodore Roosevelt (which is part of "The American Presidents" series, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.), calls him a policeman at heart. "A deeply moral man," Auchincloss writes, "he was first and foremost taken up in a lifelong and enthusiastic fight against lawbreakers."
This seems pretty close, but if Roosevelt was a cop, he was the kind whosedisciplinary record would have been questioned. That's not to say that Rooseveltwas a thug; but self-restraint was not his strong point. "Theodore the Sudden,"John Hay called him.
Like a certain more recent Republican occupant of the WhiteHouse, Roosevelt was an accidental president who bulldozed his way throughWashington as if he had been elected by a landslide. But unlike George W. Bush,Roosevelt had already accomplished enough for several busy lifetimes when WilliamMcKinley's assassination made him president at the age of 42: Three terms in theNew York State assembly, a stint as a cattle rancher after the death of hisbeloved first wife, president of the New York City Police Commission, assistantsecretary of the Navy, leader of the Rough Riders in Cuba, governor of New York,vice president--not to mention a historian and naturalist whose collected works(upon entering the White House) stretched to 14 volumes.
Roosevelt's idea of unwinding after a long day in the White House was todictate a review of a five-volume history he had happened to read. After TR'sfirst two years in office, the president of Columbia University asked him what hehad read lately. Roosevelt jotted down 114 authors, ranging from Herodotus toChurchill, before giving up. "Of course," he noted, "I have forgotten a greatmany."
Roosevelt set the tone for his presidency in the first month by having BookerT. Washington to dinner at the White House--the first time a black person hadbeen so invited and a gesture that predictably led to a firestorm of controversy.Roosevelt followed by unleashing antitrust prosecutions against some of thetitans of American industry; connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via thePanama Canal (and not incidentally helping to give birth to the country of Panamaalong the way); averting a threatened general strike by mediating between capitaland labor (something previous presidents didn't consider part of the jobdescription); more than quadrupling the acreage of national parks; and turningthe U.S. Navy from the fifth largest in the world to the third.
"I congratulate you on attaining the respectable age of 46," Elihu Root wroteto Roosevelt on his birthday. "You have made a very good start in life and yourfriends have great hopes for you when you grow up."
In many ways, however, Roosevelt's tenure in office was the least eventfulperiod of his life. His handpicked successor, William Taft, actually turned outto be a better trustbuster, although Roosevelt was still gravely disappointed inhis performance, prompting him to bolt from the Republican Party in 1912 to runas an independent and make possible the election of Woodrow Wilson--surely themost momentous act of Roosevelt's career.
Still, Roosevelt being Roosevelt, it was as colorful a presidency as thecountry has ever had. Likewise, this second installment of Edmund Morris'sthree-volume biography is as colorful an account of Roosevelt as a reader couldhope for. Theodore Rex covers Roosevelt's two terms as president in kaleidoscopic detail. Morris is a wonderful writer with a rare ability to breathe life into the clay of history. His prose is as vivid and powerful and as charming as Roosevelt himself. Here is Morris describing the Oval Office:
The room's main decoration was a huge globe. Spun and stoppedat a certain angle, this orb showed the Americas floating alone and green frompole to pole, surrounded by nothing but blue. Tiny skeins of foam (visible onlyto himself, as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Navy) wove protectivelyacross both oceans, as far south as the bulge of Venezuela and as far west as thePhilippines. Asia and Australia were pushed back by the curve of the Pacific.Africa and Arabia drowned in the Indian Ocean. Europe's jagged edge clung to onehorizon, like the moraine of a retreating glacier. When Roosevelt spoke of theWestern Hemisphere, this was how he saw it--not the left half of a mapcounterbalanced by kingdoms and empires, but one whole face of the earth,centered on the United States. And here, microscopically small in the powercenter of this center, was himself sitting down to work.
Roughly speaking, theodore Roosevelt lived in the space between the start of the Civil War and the end of World War I, which is to say the period when the United States became a world power and then turned its back on the world. Roosevelt was the first president of what would later come to be known as the American Century.
Was he a great president? In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Morris recently said that TR was one of the greatest presidents, behind only Lincoln, Jefferson, and Washington. This is nonsense and Morris makes no such claim in this book. In fact, the one weakness of the book is that Morris provides almost no framework for understanding how important Roosevelt was or what to think of him. Morris is pitch perfect in presenting Roosevelt's personality but is content to let the man speak for himself. "Historical hindsights," he writes in as odd a disclaimer as you could expect to find in a presidential biography, "are confined to the notes." It's telling, for example, that the book's index for Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policy covers more than two pages but there isn't a single entry for political philosophy. Morris tells you everything Roosevelt did in the White House for seven years except why. Morris's own paradox, then, is that by the time he finishes his TR trilogy he will likely have completed an extraordinarily detailed, lovingly written, hugely entertaining opus that will tell us less about why we should still care about Roosevelt than Auchincloss does in his short book, which is really a long essay. Here, forexample, is Morris assessing a year of political victories for TR:
Theodore Roosevelt was sanguine in every sense of the word,physiological and psychological. He was ruddy and excitable, flush-faced,susceptible to cuts and grazes. . . . The medieval humor sanguis expressed hischaracter exactly: courageous, optimistic, affectionate, ardent. His apparentfatigue in the summer of 1906 was the result of overstimulation rather thanoverwork. For more than a year now, he had prevailed too easily against too manyopponents, and found himself more than equal to the largest tasks. As a result,he had begun to receive regular boosts of journalistic hyperbole, intoxicatingenough to contravene the Pure Food and Drug Act.
Of course, others have looked closely at the historical import ofRoosevelt's presidency. Half a century ago, Richard Hofstadter, in The AmericanPolitical Tradition and the Men Who Made It, got to the heart of one of Roosevelt's paradoxes that Morris doesn't examine. "It is hard to understand," he concluded, "how Roosevelt managed to keep his reputation as a strenuous reformer."
The problem, to my mind, is that many people mistook Roosevelt's constantmotion for actual movement. "Get actions, do things; be sane," Roosevelt oncepanted, "don't fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you areand be somebody: get action."
Action as an end in itself. As a leitmotiv for reform, this is usually arecipe for chaos. Political philosophy to Roosevelt was something like a gun, aninstrument to be chosen according to the game he was hunting: A sharpshooter'srifle for his restrained trust-busting as president; an elephant gun, so tospeak, against the ponderous right wing of his own party during his Bull Mooserevolt; a blunderbuss of opposition to anything Woodrow Wilson supported.
In certain times, action itself can be more important than ideologicalcoherence. This is why Franklin D. Roosevelt, frequently judged as a callowimitator of his cousin before he followed TR into the White House during theGreat Depression, acquitted himself as one of the great leaders in Americanhistory. And because of Theodore Roosevelt's disruptive striving for furtheraccomplishment--his failed Bull Moose bid--his presidency has become almost afootnote to a fit of pique. "What he accomplished in the seven years of his twoterms seems small enough in contrast to the sweeping control exercised byWashington ever since the advent of the New Deal in 1933," Auchincloss observes,"but his importance is that of a pioneer."
So, where does Roosevelt stand in the pantheon of presidents?
In the twentieth century alone, Wilson, FDR, and Harry Truman all havestronger claims on greatness than TR. What the three have in common is that eachhad to confront a crisis of epic proportions: respectively, World War I, theGreat Depression and World War II, and the Cold War.
It's the tragedy of TR's life, if tragedy is what it can be called, that hewas always in search of a hill to ride up, a crisis to surmount, a terriblemoment to master. It seems almost Greek: The gods will condemn those who seekgreatness to live in a time of peace and plenty.
I imagine that Roosevelt would very much have wanted to be president in atime when the nation's commander in chief is being tested in the way he is rightnow.
