SPEAK HYSTERICALLY AND PUSH A BIG SCHTICK? NOT TEDDY

A manly man, one who pushes their manliness over the limit, uses a big schtick. We like them, we fear them, we want to be them.

But, there are conditions.

It’s hard being a soft man pretending to be a manly man. Do you know the difference? Here to help.

Teddy Roosevelt is attributed for saying, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

President Roosevelt was the Republican President at the turn of the last century. His leadership helped America turn the corner.

“How,” you ask?

Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for the anti-trust policy while supporting Progressive Era policies in the early 20th century. His face is depicted on Mount Rushmore alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.

He was a rich New Yorker who had an eye out for the little people, regular Americans, families. That’s how I read my Teddy. And he didn’t have to.

From most accounts, young Roosevelt was a pain in the establishment butt who wouldn’t leave well enough alone.

In 1900, the leading New York Republican Thomas C. Platt conspired with national party boss Mark Hanna to get Roosevelt named as McKinley’s running mate, in order to keep him from running for a second term in the governor’s office.

As a public person, Roosevelt veered off the expectations that got him appointed or elected. Those work habits got him to the Vice Presidency where he was expected to mind his manners and know his place. And he probably would have, except for that other thing.

On September 6, 1901, a deranged anarchist named Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley died eight days later, and Roosevelt was sworn in as the 26th president. Only 42 years old when he took office, he was the youngest president in the nation’s history, and his youth and vigor immediately transformed the public image of the presidency. 

The forty two year old Roosevelt took office after the elderly fifty eight year old McKinley died from gun shot wounds. I say elderly because people seemed to age differently back then.

The Man In Office Today Is Seventy Four

And he’s running for a second term. What would Teddy say to Mr. Trump?

Due to his experiences in private and public life, Roosevelt had a different world view than Mr. Trump. He ran for, and was elected, as a state governor. After McKinley’s death, he ran and won his own term in the White House.

The work he accomplished included preserving nature, ending a war, and protecting Americans from huge corporations. With planes, trains, and automobiles expanding the American Dream, Roosevelt worked to keep them in check.

The point for Roosevelt was that the government should enforce a “rule of reason” on business.  If a firm grew through reasonable means, then the government should not attack it.  However, if a firm grew through unfair practices, then government should enforce its power in order to protect the innocent. 

Who are these innocents being spoken of? People like you, people like me, regular Americans who deserve to share a piece of the star spangled pie. It’s a dream shared by many, yet denied by some who feel more entitled to a bigger piece than they deserve.

Teddy had an idea of what we deserved from his personal experience. The loss of his wife and mother on the same day pushed his life a different direction. After their deaths, he spent two years out west.

The double tragedy devastated Roosevelt. He ordered those around him not to mention his wife’s name. Burdened by grief, he abandoned politics, left the infant Alice with his sister Bamie, and, at the end of 1884, struck out for the Dakota territories, where he lived as a rancher and worked as a sheriff for two years. When not engrossed in raising cattle or acting as the local lawman, Roosevelt found time to indulge his passion for reading and writing history. 

Reading And Writing History

If we don’t need a weatherman to know which way the winds blows, do we need historians to record recent times? The answer is always yes, with the question of fairness. The big schtick is a problem for fairness.

Will Mr. Trump be celebrated as a friend to the natural environment?

Will he be celebrated as a protector of our national parks?

Heralded as a wildlife preservationist?

Mr. Trump is a man elected to the highest office in the land, but has little regard for the land, or the people living on it.

I like to think America wants the best American to hold the office of President of the United States. I like to feel that the best Americans want the best for America.

“Trump has an appalling ignorance of the current world, of history, of previous American engagement, of what former Presidents thought and did,” Geoffrey Kemp, who worked at the Pentagon during the Ford Administration and at the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration, reflected. “He has an almost studious rejection of the type of in-depth knowledge that virtually all of his predecessors eventually gained or had views on.”

Come November we vote. Will it be a vote for America, or a vote for the big schtick.