Volume 50, Number 12 · July 17, 2003
TR and the Road Not Taken
By James Chace
Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life
by Kathleen Dalton
Knopf, 708 pp., $35.00
For an increasing number of American politicians, New York's governor George Pataki and Arizona's senator John McCain among them, Theodore Roosevelt is the hero president. Polls of American historians over the past decade have placed Roosevelt within the magic circle of great presidents, ranking after Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. People can choose the Theodore Roosevelt they prefer: the progressive, the warrior, the realist, or the moralist. A century after his presidency, it seems a good time to recall that he was a reformer who wanted to tame the 'malefactors of great wealth,' as he called them, the corporate owners and managers who cheated their stockholders and destroyed the reputation of their companies. In foreign affairs, he can be seen as a man who understood the uses of power to advance the national interest, but whose policies encouraged the peaceful settlement of disputes among potentially warring nations.
Review, 4991 words
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