What If Theodore Roosevelt Were President Today?

During the height of World War I, when it seemed that a great pivot point in history had been reached, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt (he preferred the title “Colonel” over all others) stirred restlessly in uneasy retirement at his home, Sagamore Hill.  “How I wish I were President at this moment!” he declared, chagrined that fate had pushed him to the sidelines during an unprecedented global conflagration.  “This is one of those rare times which come along at long intervals in a nation’s history, when the action taken determines the basis of the life of the generations that follow.”

Roosevelt is long dead, but his irrepressible desire to lead during tumultuous times was so strong that it still reaches out to us from the grave nearly a century after his death.  His combative legacy, still vibrating with so much life after all this time, makes us wonder:  What would Theodore Roosevelt be fighting for today if he could miraculously rise up from his tomb in Oyster Bay and sit again in the presidential chair?  Where would he lead us during our own tumultuous times?

As someone who has spent the past few years of my life reading Roosevelt’s massive output of letters (there are about 150,000 of them), books (there are 20 volumes in his collected works), essays (100+ of these at least) and speeches (so numerous as to be uncountable), I have a few thoughts on where I think he would stand on some of the most important challenges we face today.

Islamic Terrorism

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “from the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohemmedan aggressor.”  Now that the western world is threatened again by militant Islam, Roosevelt probably would be as hawkish as Dick Cheney in our war against this century’s “Mohemmedan aggressor.”

Would he have invaded Iraq as President Bush did?  That is hard to say, but he certainly would not have feared such a course.  He believed that the United States must step up and take on more responsibilities in the world, urging, for example, that the nation govern the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war, even as many critics argued that we should not entangle ourselves in imperialistic adventures.

Would he have been willing to use harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding on Al Qaeda prisoners?  Probably.  As governor of New York, Roosevelt refused to commute the death sentences of murderers.  As a historian, he expressed no indignation at all with Andrew Jackson when Jackson executed, without recourse to civilian trials, insubordinate soldiers during the War of 1812 and British agents he captured in Florida during the Seminole War.

Roosevelt did not wring his hands and worry about the harsher aspects of war.  He believed war was a tough business and that sometimes terrible things happened as a matter of course.  In discussing the brutal warfare between Indians and pioneers on the western frontier, he noted and excused savage behavior by the white settlers because of “the terrible provocations they had endured.”  It is hard to imagine him worrying about reading Miranda rights to terrorists intent on perpetrating another 9/11 or any other attack on Americans.

Socialism

Given Roosevelt’s historical reputation as the first president who sought to aggressively regulate the economy, one might think that today he would support the drift we currently see towards socialism in the United States, but I don’t think he would.  Because Roosevelt condemned socialism during his own life, we can be certain he would not support it today, especially with a century’s worth of evidence now available that shows that socialism fails to increase prosperity and national power.

Yes, Roosevelt wanted to increase the power of government at the beginning of the twentieth century, but the nation’s problems were completely different then and, in fact, largely opposite of those we confront today.  After a horrific Civil War and decades of overheated, unregulated industrial growth in the period that followed, the American people demanded more from their government.  

As all democratically elected presidents should, Roosevelt listened to the people and acted on their behalf.  It is a good bet that if he were alive today he would be paying very close attention to the Tea Party movement just as he closely monitored the Populist movement of his own time.  It is notable that Roosevelt eventually incorporated many elements of the Populist movement into his own political agenda as president and as leader of the Progressive Party during the election of 1912.  Always pragmatic and flexible, he would not hesitate to graft pieces of the Tea Party’s agenda into his own plans if he thought they would help the country and his own political fortunes.

Responsive as he was to the desires of the American people, I think Theodore Roosevelt would want—strange as it may sound given the conventional wisdom about him—to shrink government today.  He did not want to remake the United States into a collectivist, socialist state.  He wanted to ensure that its trajectory toward ever increasing prosperity and power continued upward, and if he were president today he would use the best tools he could find to achieve that end, even if they were different tools than those he used during his own presidency. 

Massive Debt

Roosevelt readily admitted that he didn’t know much about economics or finance, so he would not be able to offer expert solutions to solve our nation’s current financial problems.  Nevertheless, he would be aghast at the massive debt and deficits of the United States today.

He always viewed economic problems through the lens of morality.  Thus, he opposed the free silver movement of William Jennings Bryan as an inflationary trick designed to legalize debt repudiation (i.e., he thought paying back debts with money worth a fraction of its original value was criminal).  He saw Bryan’s plan as a demagogic appeal to the baser instincts of the American people, urging them, in effect, to steal from those who had lent them money in good faith.

If Roosevelt were alive today, he would embrace the argument that the current generation is stealing from its children and grandchildren.  Not only would he oppose this “generational theft” on moral grounds, he would see it as dire threat to the future stability and progress of the United States.  Therefore, it is probable that he would be a deficit hawk set on controlling spending and, contrary to the popular view of him today, be very wary about adding new “ticking time bomb” entitlements like government subsidized health care for all Americans.

Health Care

Too much has been made by supporters of Obamacare that Theodore Roosevelt were the first president who tried to create a national health care system.  This claim distorts the truth.  Roosevelt ran for President in 1912 on the Progressive Party’s platform, which said, “We favor the union of all the existing agencies of the Federal Government dealing with the public health into a single national health service.”  The key word here is “existing.” 

Roosevelt did not want the government to take over and manage health care (which at the time was in its earliest stages of development), nor did he ever propose that the American people be taxed to pay for such a scheme.  His desires were simpler.  He wanted workers to be protected if, for instance, they got injured on the job—a noble idea which is found in the workmen compensation’s laws of today.

Illegal Immigration

Roosevelt’s track record on immigration is clear.  His primary concern was the plight of American workers.  Labor strikes and riots had flared up regularly during his life, and he saw no reason to pour additional fuel on a fire that threatened to explode into a revolution on American soil.  Thus, he signed into law a renewal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, first created in the 1880s, which prevented Chinese laborers from entering the United States.  He also made a separate “Gentleman’s Agreement” with Japan to prevent a similar influx of cheap labor from that nation.

Likewise, Roosevelt railed against hyphenated-Americans who refused to cut loose psychologically from their country of origin.  When World War I began he thought it was a good thing that German-Americans would be forced into patriotic displays of support for the United States.  If he were alive today, he would be infuriated to see Mexican flags flying in parades of Latinos down American streets.

As a farsighted politician, Roosevelt would be concerned about losing the support of Latino voters in future elections, and would try his best not alienate them with heavy handed policies.  But there can be no doubt that he would enforce the law and secure our borders.  He was a law and order guy, through and through, and he jealously guarded the sovereignty of the United States.

Bottom Line

What if Theodore Roosevelt were president today?  The short answer is that he would govern as he once did—as a leader whose policies were shaped not by a precut ideological template, but rather by the nature of the problems confronting the nation.  Knowing Roosevelt as I do, I believe he would be governing the United States in a very different manner than that of its current occupant, who is obviously more ideological and less pragmatic than Roosevelt.

We can be certain of this much:  Theodore Roosevelt would have never said, as President Obama said recently, “Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”  Roosevelt had no ambivalence about American power.  Believing as he did that the United States was an exceptional nation and a great force for good in the world, he wanted it to be able to withstand any test so that it could endure and prosper.  That’s why he doubled the size of the navy and sent the “Great White Fleet” around the world.  He believed, as Ronald Reagan did, in “peace through strength,” whereas our current president seems to believe in “peace through words.”