It is strange that Pres. Barack Obama has chosen to channel the spirit of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, the president he least resembles. Teddy Roosevelt was a rough-riding, safari-loving, war-adoring imperialist (ask the Panamanians), the man who sent the “Great White Fleet” on a round-the-world tour to make it clear to American rivals hither and yon that they had better mind their own business or face the wrath of a budding world power. Barack Obama was an undistinguished law professor and legislative back-bencher who once gave a very good speech. Roosevelt wrote 18 books on subjects ranging from naval warfare to naturalism, and not one soft-focus psychological self-examination about his tender feelings about his estranged father. Like President Obama, President Roosevelt was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Unlike President Obama, he earned it, having successfully negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War.
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Not exactly mirror images.
And yet Barack Obama, the great indoorsman and man of inaction, whose only instinct when faced with a national crisis is to deliver yet another speech, has trundled himself down to Osawatomie, Kan., where TR, by that point an ex-president, made his famous “New Nationalism” address, to try to get a little of that Bull Moose magic to rub off on himself. Color us skeptical, but we can see why TR’s New Nationalism might appeal to Barack Obama: It was an early instantiation of what our National Review colleague Jonah Goldberg has called, after H. G. Wells, “liberal fascism,” the central-planning, top-down, intrusively managerial approach to national government that has been the Left’s model for generations.
Let us briefly revisit the original scene: President Roosevelt came to Kansas, at the time a hotbed of radicalism, for a celebration of John Brown, whose cause — the abolition of slavery — was just, and whose means — massacres, terrorism, freelance warfare — were abominable. Lawlessness in the name of the good: a pretty fair description of liberalism operating at full steam, whether in the imaginative ad hoc judicial rewriting of the Constitution or the unauthorized overturning of U.S. bankruptcy law during the GM bailout fiasco. Whatever else he was, John Brown was a man of action, as terrorists by definition are, so he was admired by the action-worshipping President Roosevelt. Against that background, the president laid out an agenda of his own, one that was predicated not upon slaughtering his political opponents but upon taxing and regulating them into submission. Some of what he called for was good and proper: the enfranchisement of women, for instance. The two most notable of his demands, the creation of a redistributive, graduated income tax and the creation of a Bismarck-inspired social-insurance program, are the defining features of most Americans’ interactions with the federal government during our time. He also pledged “to destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics.” Perhaps President Obama can get one of the Goldman Sachs veterans on his team to put that into context.
President Obama’s speech, like President Roosevelt’s, was economically illiterate. Like TR, he juxtaposed the tycoons and the middle class, and committed the classic blunder of conflating the success of the former with the difficulties of the latter. The Democrat carried into office on a wave of Wall Street money called for a crackdown on Wall Street shenanigans even as he packs his administration with Wall Street veterans, while the Washington establishment’s perverse relations with Wall Street, and, especially, with the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, mighty contributors to the housing bubble, go unchallenged. It’s only greed when somebody else is making the money.
President Obama can't run on his record so he has to demagogue. His campaign will be based on telling the American people that we NEED a government that will keep the playing field fair for the middle and lower classes and safe from the greedy and exploitative wealthy class. But the question is: is America to be a fair society, or is America to be an equal society? The problem with fairness is that it's subjective. What one person deems is fair, another might find unfair. And who is to be the unlimate arbitrator of what is and isn't fair? The federal government? And if you aren't a member of whatever the governmen'ts favorite pet group is at the time, well, you're on your own; the powers that be may even act against you if they so choose.
So what? The government decideds what's fair and for who. Whats the big deal? Ok so, the government gets to decide what's fair (lets say, raising taxes on the rich and lowering them on the poor) and thats well and good for awhile until someone comes along and swings the pendulum back a little and now the rich pay a little less and the poor pay a little more. Is that fair? To the rich maybe. But the poor would probably say not. But it was the government's call so officially, yes, it is fair. And that goes on until some other demagogue comes along and swings the pendulum back on a platform or fairness for the lower classes and so it goes.As a result of the subjectiveness of fairness, a fair society is a society that is in constant unrest as groups are vying against eachother for the government's attention and support.
But here's the kicker: A fair society, and not an equal society (where everyone is equal before the law depending on the crime and not which socio-economic group they belong to, where everyone pays the same percentage in to the system according to what they earn, where everyone is afforded opportunities according to their personal merit and has the same opportunity to fail as they do to succeed), is what the Demecrats want because a society that is in constant flux is a society that depends on the government for stability and is a society that is willing to handover just a little bit more of its freedoms and its concerns if that means the government will take care of its problems.
Mr Obama is such a tight spot that he has to follow the instructions of his "team", regardless of how stupid those instructions make him appear.
Why? Well he is the first african-american President. If for no other reason he's desperate to be a two-term President. Anything less is an absolute failure. I mean heck anybody can be a one term guy (RE: Jimmy Carter) but it takes a particular fool (GHWB as an example) to lose as the incumbent.
Thus, this disinterested, ill-prepared, good-looking, possibly alien hack who made it via the affirmative action bridge to nowhere spews what he's told to spew (or reads it from the teleprompter if you are one who does not buy his much bally-hooed intellectual prowess) and then jumps the next Snoop Dog 747 to Hawaii to down some brews and to do what he really enjoys. Golf, and like most married men, watch bikinis on the beach that aren't overfilled with the wife's backside.
Seriously, his buffoonish handlers who continue to mismatch history and the President need to go if he wants to get his legacy out of reverse.
Carl,
While I agree with your basic view of the man, I think you underestimate his grandiosity. Clearly, the totally misguided narcissist came into office with a well defined intent: to fundamentally transform America, as he so modestly put it. His entire perspective on life has been marinated in the loony halls of elite academe, only to be reinforced by his own, utterly improbable rise to ever greater positions of authority. I don't think he's relying at all on his minders. I think he's brimming with the kind of nonsense he enunciated yesterday in Kansas. He learned well from the likes of his Columbia and Harvard dons, Jeremiah Wright, and that indomitable duo of wisdom, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dhorn. Frankly, he knows nothing else, blinded as he is by the stark realities of our world.
I would also add that Obama needs to pressed to reveal his smug, elitist beliefs in his debates with conservatives. He must never again be allowed to masquerade as a smooth "moderate" leader - albeit, a messianic one who believed that his own ascension would cool the planet and calm the seas.
In my opinion, Obama just does not get America. He prefers to believe the worst about us and the best about our enemies. This makes him a very dangerous president. It should also make him a one-term one, as well. I'd like to ask him why he is even running again, when it's become clear he resents having to deal with such backward, stupid people as Americans?
Hey Carl, "possibly alien" ? Do yourself a favor and just drop the crazy stuff. It would make it much easier to take you seriously when you do have a good point. Cordially, Bill
Actually the guy is an alien. I don't mean with the birth certificate stuff, but with his entire life.
Attended muslim schools in other countries, was surrounded by and mentored by some of the most extreme leftists of his day, never held a job in his life except for the Senate...
Even Hawaii is not exactly "the middle" for American views.
This is a guy that stated the morning muslim call to prayer is one of the most beautiful things. How many neighborhoods in America do you wake up hearing that?
How many 4th of July's did he celebrate in Indonesia? How many backyard barbeques? How many Thanksgivings?
How can someone that stated he "doesn't care" about the suburbs have a clue about America?
So this guy may not technically be an "alien" but he is alien to every aspect of American life...except how to work the system.
Why should this buffoon, whom happens to be leading the free world, receives a free pass to spout pure stupidity to the proletariat? Here are some quotes from his Kansas speech. America is finished with this clown destroying freedom. Hail Comrade Obama:
" We simply cannot return to this brand of "you're on your own" economics if we're serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country.
But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn't trickle down, well, that's the price of liberty.
Now, it's a simple theory. And we have to admit, it's one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That's in America's DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. But here's the problem: It doesn't work. It has never worked."
Obama's strategy is clear: Give those who aren't doing well somebody to blame other than him or them. Securing power by identifying scapegoats for followers to blame is a time-honored tradition. People don't want to hear that they're primarily responsible for their own circumstances, both good and bad. They don't want to be told that they bought a house they can't afford. They don't want to hear that they can't make ends meet because they chose to go into hock to get a degree that has no value in the job market. They'd rather blame the greed of nameless, faceless corporations and bankers than look in the mirror. They'd rather be told they're poor because someone else is rich.
As usual, a truly excellent editorial (NR should publish them more often.) I am glad to see that conservatives have freed themselves of the historian's consensus of great Presidents. Yes, Teddy Roosevelt was a patriotic American. He was also a statist. His imperialism is nothing to admire, either. It was anti-American - the Founders made very clear that they wanted to avoid European-style wars of conquest.
Obama is making use of the wages of sin to further his political ambitions. He's firing up the desperate masses using covetousness and envy with a heaping dose of class warfare added in for good measure. Obama cannot win on his record...every single metric of the nation's fiscal and societal health are in the dumps. So he's relying on emotion to carry his sorry carcass across the finish line. It worked in 2008, where emotion regarding his novelty as a candidate did the trick. But his race and uniqueness are old news now that we've had a 36+ month snootful of the guy.
I'm not quite sure how patriotic TR actually was in the aggregate, although he was a heroic military man with an enviable record...as POTUS he ignored and abridged the Constitution with selfish caprice. Teddy was a single-minded bully who used his position of power to promote actions and propose/endorse legislation that the Framers never intended to occur. As a strict constitutionalist, I am saddened by TR's presidency...and we are all diminished by his destructive term. This man's presidency, along with those of Wilson and the other Roosevelt, did more to cripple our nation, burden us with untenable debt and hasten our demise as viable national entity than any international enemy.
Now we have Obama emulating TR. Just what we need now -- more imperious dictation and power grabbing from the structurally obese and morally-bankrupt central government in DC, the very spawn of TR. Shame on any of us who fall for Obama's cancerous ideology and his divide and conquer mentality.
It would be fitting indeed that someday in the post-American future that astute historians and clear thinkers will look back and rightfully equate the architect of our demise, TR, with his 21st century, obedient acolyte, BO. And for their combined treachery against the American people, they will be deservedly reviled.
Obama's speech can be destroyed by simply pointing out the federal debt as a percentage of the overall economy in Teddy Roosevelt's 1910 versus the percentage today. All reasonable parallels to TR and Obama instantly fall away and the speech is exposed for the demagoguery and sophistry that it is.
Good article. But be careful when making snarky comments like "Perhaps President Obama can get one of the Goldman Sachs veterans on his team to put that into context." Remember, former Goldman Sachs CEO and erstwhile Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson orchestrated the most egregious example of crony capitalism of all time, and he had to get down on his knee to Princess Nancy to make it happen.
I understand NR's dislike of the Progressive Era as the opening of Pandora's box, and loved "Liberal Fascism." However, I have a hard time jumping on the anti-TR bandwagon. One of the key questions about conservatism is what exactlt it is that we want to conserve. We are often caricatured as laissez-faire folks who would prefer anarchic Somalia over even a legitimate use of the federal gub-mint for anything. But direction is not destination, and "less" does not mean "none." Most of us conservatives would be all too happy to set the clock back to just before the Great Society, while conserving many of the more sensible proposals of the New Deal. Likewise, although there were plenty of times when TR overreached (and, as the article points out, he did so in a time when that was not as empirically obvious as now), many of the innovations we associate with him were absolutely necessary in an era in which the USA was transitioning into a major power, both military and economic. I know that I don't look at the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 in quite the same way as I do at cap-and-trade, for example.
Rest Easy everyone. TR's face is still on the side of Mount Rushmore. If anyone really wants to know what Theodore Roosevelt really did for the United States of America, they need to read "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America" by Douglas Brinkley. Find out what TR's legacy to this country really is. HINT. HINT. Just remember that those trees out there will be around a lot longer than most people.
