Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (2001)

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (2001)

On September 6, 1901, anarchist Leon Csolgosz shot William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States. When McKinley died thirteen days later, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt suddenly became the youngest President in American history, stating in his single-sentence inauguration address:

In this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, the prosperity, and the honor of our beloved country. (Morris, 2001, p. 27)

Young Roosevelt’s seven-year Presidency would ultimately usher in wild reform, expansionism, diplomacy, and conservation the likes of which the nation had never yet seen, and his popularity would only increase from year to year. In the words of one political enemy in 1908, Roosevelt was “the most popular President the country has ever had” (p. 565).

In this review of Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, I will synopsize its 730-page exploration of Roosevelt’s presidency and then discuss some implications of that unique presidency to leadership in general.

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Book cover Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (2001)

Synopsis of Theodore Rex

Theodore Rex, the second installment to Edmond Morris’ Pulitzer-Prize winning trilogy of Teddy Roosevelt (following The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt), chronicles Roosevelt’s presidency in two parts, covering each of his two terms in office. In Part 1, covering the first term from 1901-1904, readers watch Teddy ease into his new office with a carefully controlled enthusiasm. After just a month in office, Roosevelt “had consoled and inspired a stricken country, steadied the stock market, established decent standards of patronage, and tempered the mutual hatreds of race and party,” hinting at a “future bright with possibilities of reform” (p. 76). As time progressed, Teddy’s burgeoning confidence and boldness in office grew, along with his seemingly endless appetite for sport and food.

His first term witnessed such events as the northeastern coal strike, violent months which threatened the wealth of the nation and the health and wellbeing of northern citizens facing a harsh and deadly winter. Roosevelt’s attacks against the wealthy ruling class—and against class warfare in general—resulted in his Square Deal which helped raise the living standards of the middle class and begin his lifelong pursuit of engaging in conservation projects across the country. He faced international drama during the Venezuelan crisis, culminating in a threatening display of naval force against Germany’s blockade in Venezuelan waters. This event not only displayed the booming power of the U.S. Navy under Roosevelt’s guidance, but also identified President Roosevelt as a world player whom none could bully.

During his first term, Roosevelt also showed his hand in race relations a bit too openly for the period, threatening his relationships with nearly all Southern Whites, when he both invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House and filled several Southern federal post with Black Americans. In Roosevelt’s eyes, “merit, not color, was his prime patronage concern” (p. 268) and the African American population understood it. Publisher and preacher William M. McGill wrote: “The Administration of President Roosevelt is to the Negro what the heart is to the body. It has pumped life blood into every artery of the Negro in this country” (p. 269). This section also includes Roosevelt’s re-nomination on the GOP ticket in 1904 and his fight to be viewed no longer as “His Accidency” in the White House but as the legitimate statesman than he had always viewed himself to be (p. 409).

In Part Two, readers witness Roosevelt’s landslide re-election victory and his second term in office, from 1905-1908. Readers witness many more of Roosevelt’s sly business deals, in this section, as well as his boisterous politicking and masterful diplomacy. These include his attempts to finally nail down “the Panamanian issue,” that fateful strip of land and the disastrous French canal project which would promise to connect the Atlantic to the Pacific and thus open a new era of global trade. Parcel to this also was the American backing of Panama’s revolution against its Columbian occupiers. Another diplomatic success came through Roosevelt’s overseeing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 which effectively ended the Russo-Japanese War (p. 546).

Within the United States during this term, the Brownsville event threatened to forever mar the Roosevelt Presidency. Following an unsubstantiated attack against the citizens of Brownsville, TX, and declarations by the citizens that the black soldiers stationed in the fort nearby were the perpetrators, Roosevelt forewent proper legal proceedings, instead choosing to dishonorably discharge all soldiers from the unit simply because they refused to admit their guilt. Only later did a proper investigation discover that the people of Brownsville, racists every one of them, had planted the evidence of shell-casings and military hats to frame the soldiers. Roosevelt later rescinded his declaration, but the damage had already been done. Despite being a general champion for eventual racial equality in the United States, the Brownsville incident turned many Black Americans against their President. Roosevelt chose not to run for a “second term,” which Constitutionally he had every right to try, but instead backed the GOP candidate William Howard Taft, and quietly removed himself from the scene. Whatever events followed are the subject matter of the final book in the trilogy, Colonel Roosevelt.

Implications

In leadership courses which I have attended, we have studied several leadership theories which warrant consideration. One outdated theory which has less bearing than most on a person’s true leadership value is the “Great Man” theory, the idea that some people are merely born leaders and that history is what it is namely because of the great and heroic individuals who have risen to the challenges of their day. Were this still a prominent theory, Theodore Roosevelt would have been a perfect Exhibit A. The problem is, Teddy did not start out this way, a vociferous leader and the Renaissance Man of American lore. Having already read this trilogy’s first installment, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, I have seen “Teedie’s” weaknesses in childhood, his life-and-death struggles with asthma, and his odd, anti-social fascination with taxidermy and natural history. Thus, it was hard for me to see the “Great Man” growing from such a weakly boy. As I continued reading of his growth though, his voracious appetite for books and learning, his actual genius, his almost superhuman energy, and the impact he had on all whom he met, I began to wonder: could Teddy really be the Great Man of Thomas Carlyle’s dreams? This section of the paper will look at President Roosevelt’s personality, philosophy, flaws, and legacy in hopes that through them we can gain some insight into the makings of a leader.

Roosevelt’s Personality

In terms of Teddy Roosevelt’s personality, I found him to be a driven yet balanced man who had such high morals and ethics that he felt justified at times to manipulate some people and to be downright ruthless to others—for their own good, of course. In describing how driven this President was, the author writes that “speed was his most astonishing characteristic, combined improbably with thoroughness” (p. 115), later quoting Henry Adams: “Theodore thinks of nothing, talks of nothing, and lives for nothing but his political interests. If you remark to him that God is Great, he asks naïvely how that will affect his election” (p. 427). The author also describes “Theodore Roosevelt’s lifelong obsession with balance: He loved the poised spin of the big globe in his office, the rhythm of neither-nor sentences, the give-and-take of boxing, the ebb and flow of political power play” (p. 507).

Roosevelt’s high moral standards are virtually a character in and of themselves throughout the books, and he apparently wore his piety on his sleeves, even while in Washington. Tom Reed famously joked of the President, “If there is one thing for which I admire you more than anything else, Theodore, it is your original discovery of the Ten Commandments” (p. 660). While genuine, Roosevelt had the keen ability to trump one righteous choice with another, sometimes to the detriment of others. Regarding his manipulation of the press, for example, we read that “more than any other previous [President], Roosevelt understood that the way to manipulate reporters was to let them imagine they were helping shape policy. A ‘consultation’ here, a confidence shared there, and the scribe was transformed into a pen for hire. (p. 566). Such manipulation did not stop there, however, but extended even into his confidante relationships, as the author beautifully describes:

Even to such intimates, he told only what he wanted to tell. Like a mirror-speckled sphere at a prom, sending out spangles of light, he beamed fragmentary particulars at different dancers. They circled beneath him (or did he revolve above them?) in movements of accelerating, apparently random intricacy. The resultant sweep and blur was enough to make any bystander dizzy, because it looked centrifugal; Roosevelt, however, felt only a centripetal energy, directed inward. (p. 519)

Whatever one thinks of his tactics, they turned him into a political star, the leader of a world power. The give and take of American life at the turn of the century seemed almost controlled by the man at the top of the ladder, and “Theodore Rex” knew precisely what he was doing (p. 493). Like another American President of recent years, while Roosevelt may not have been totally likeable, he sure kept the nation lively and entertained. As one newspaperman remarked during Roosevelt’s re-election campaign: “If politics was supposed to be interesting, then Theodore Roosevelt was elected already” (p. 465).

Rarely cold but constantly calculating, Roosevelt could also be, at times, somewhat ruthless. One ambassador said of him, “A good motto for him…would be Rem facias rem, si possis recte, si non quocunque modo rem—’The thing, get the thing, fairly if possible, if not, then however it can be gotten” (p. 624), and this was proven on several occasions when he was willing to skirt even the Constitution because something just did not sit right with him. In defense of one such offense, he declared: “The Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution” (p. 222).

Roosevelt’s Philosophy

The President’s philosophy stemmed entirely from his voracious reading habits. He was arguably the most well-read of all the Presidents, and his tastes, spanning the complete gamut of genres and periods, certainly informed his overall outlook on life. Said one person of the President: “His range of reading is amazing; he seems to be echoing with all the thought of his time, he has receptivity to the point of genius. And he does not merely receive, he digests and reconstructs; he thinks…He assimilates contemporary thought, delocalizes it and reverberates it. He is America for the first time vocal to itself” (p. 588). Certainly Roosevelt’s education, his travels, and his hobnobbing with the world’s leading thinkers and authors as President played a role, but he seems to have brought more to the table than he took when meeting with such men as Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Upton Sinclair, or Henry James.

Roosevelt, an optimist at heart who “was incapable of seeing negatives except in positive translation” (p. 619), tended toward a form of altruism, despite the occasional manipulative tendencies mentioned above. The author writes:

Out of his lessons in man and nature, Roosevelt had evolved a Darwinian philosophy that was harsh, yet wholly altruistic. No one reading his volumes of political and social essays…could have doubted what sort of President he would be. An anarchist [Czolgosz] had ironically elevated to power ‘the supreme political personality of our time, of all contemporary statesmen the one surest of his mission, and most capable of achieving it.’ (p. 554)

Roosevelt himself exclaimed during one fiery debate regarding the economic downturn of 1907:

“I do not represent public opinion: I represent the public. There is a wide difference between the two, between the real interests of the public, and the public’s opinion of these interests. I must represent not the excited opinion of the West, but the real interests of the whole people” (p. 572).

In Teddy’s opinion, the President’s role was to give the people what they needed not what they wanted, to supply what was best for them, but in his own estimation not in theirs.

Roosevelt’s Flaws

In terms of President Roosevelt’s flaws beyond his occasional ruthlessness, manipulation, and skirting of the Constitution, there exist in the text a few but not many. Edmund Morris, an eminent historian, pulls few punches when describing the gritty details of Roosevelt’s life from childhood on, so I trust that his choice of facts and anecdotes serve to paint a fully-shaded portrait of the President, warts and all. Still, one has to dig to find those flaws that make this President more human than merely a crafty politician. His flaws come in two main forms, his immaturity and his economic illiteracy.

Regarding his apparent immaturity, Cecil Spring Rice, once the President’s best man and a British Commissioner in Egypt said, “You must always remember that the President is about six” (p. 114). Few lines in the book make me chuckle as much as that, yet it references his childlike wonder or his tendency even as President to dash off into the woods after a bird.

Regarding Roosevelt’s economic illiteracy, it was during that same Wall Street scare of 1907 that he cried out: “Do I look as though those Wall Street fellows were really worrying me?…I’ve got them on the run.” [A Cabinet Member] later elucidated: “It was exchanges such as this that persuaded some men that Roosevelt was fiscally retarded” (p. 655).

Roosevelt’s Legacy

Finally, in terms of Theodore’s legacy, I found in this book two standout achievements and one missed opportunity. The missed opportunity for Roosevelt was his dream to have left office having had advanced the cause for Civil Rights beyond his time. While the President certainly maintained many bigoted ideals, he was nonetheless supremely anti-racist and about sixty years ahead of his time with regards to race relations in America. Still, the events at and fallout from Brownsville, TX, left such a scar upon his presidency that the majority of Black America had turned against him by 1908.

The President did leave some lasting legacies, including his diplomacy and his heart for conservation. In affecting peace between Russia and Japan, many recognized the truth that “Theodore Roosevelt was the most adroit tactician in American politics” at the time (p. 666). Perhaps his most important legacy involved his efforts at conserving America’s natural resources and land. In the waning months of his final year in office, Teddy Roosevelt gathered all of the nation’s state governors together to discuss and detail the available and potential resources within our national borders and ultimately established the National Conservation Commission. Through this commission and his partnership with Congress, Roosevelt ultimately set aside 230 million acres of land as public land, 150 million acres of which were established as national forests. He also established 51 Federal Bird Reserves and added 23 National Parks (NPS, 2017).

Conclusion

As I study the life of Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps America’s most unique President (at least prior to 2017), I do recognize these qualities which set him apart as a leader whom the majority wanted to follow. Roosevelt thirsted for knowledge, and he never took shortcuts in his pursuit to understand all he desired or needed to know. Roosevelt was a man of integrity who let his ethical standards be known, thereby keeping himself accountable not only to his confidantes but also to the public at large. Roosevelt admitted his mistakes, even retracting Executive Orders once he understood their faults. Roosevelt lived his mantra, to “speak softly and carry a big stick,” recognizing that true leadership requires action, not mere words (pp. 249, 289). Roosevelt also fought for his values, not merely with today in mind but future generations, illustrated most specifically in his fight for conservation.

Clearly, I adored this book and cannot wait to read the final installment. I highly recommend the trilogy, if you can handle two-thousand-plus pages in your reading schedule. No matter your political viewpoint or party, I do believe you would enjoy reading of the exploits and leadership of President Theodore Roosevelt, one of my own personal heroes.

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Synopsis of Theodore Rex

Implications

Roosevelt’s Personality

Roosevelt’s Philosophy

Roosevelt’s Flaws

Roosevelt’s Legacy

Conclusion

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