In my previous post I talked about how Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive president, especially in comparison to his predecessors, but he also had many less progressive ways about him. Theodore Roosevelt was known to be a fighter. He was often described as a "happy warrior" and enjoyed a good debate or battle. He formed his own military unit before his presidency that were known as the roughriders and he was not concerned about death or injury. He was often excited by the idea of war and glory and at the end of his presidency he regretted that he didn't fight through a great war like his hero Abraham Lincoln had. Along with this natural thirst for battle and struggle, though Theodore did break up many trusts, be left many untouched as he was not against business and thought it was necessary for society to thrive. He thought that trusts and corporations should be regulated to benefit society and the people. He showed very little interest in economics however and this took part in the great panic witnessed in his time. On his hunting trip, when he was informed of the news, he was unconcerned and went about with his trip. In the end he reached out to JP Morgan and recieved help that saved the country's economics. He also thought that muckrakers (he came up with the term) were negative and evil. They were only unnecessary stirring up the American people and were foolish for doing so. Another one of his less progressive views was that he though only the educated, right people should be in power, people like him, much like the believes of Hamilton. Some people also thought he interfered with the economy too much and used the position of executive too liberally to fulfill his own goals, such as conservation. he often went against congress and did things on his own. he thought he was the measure of the law and in this way he loved power. Because of his nature by the end of his presidency congress had stopped listening to him and he became very powerless and unliked by the government.
I do agree that Roosevelt could be considered as being somewhat conservative to an extent through his words and actions, however I think that some of your points could be more applicable to show that he was a progressive. For example, the fact that he chose to serve in the Spanish-American War and lead his own unit doesn't necessarily portray him as a conservative, as there were also many liberals who supported the war in addition to conservatives who didn't want the war to be fought. I think that Roosevelt's dedication towards fighting in this war and leading his own unit is more of an example of him being a progressive, since it shows that he was actively involved in changing things and acting as a leader to do. Also, Roosevelt's overly positive and enthusiastic views on the war could also show that he was a progressive, since many radical progressives are generally characterized as having unrealistically positive goals just as Roosevelt himself applied this mentality to an entire war. Additionally, I think that his radical actions taken towards promoting his political views near the end of his second term aren't really an example of him being conservative, since through trying to take all of this power and introduce reforms, his end goal of doing these things was still to promote progressivism (even though what he did was pretty extreme). Also, I believe that Roosevelt's choice to leave corporations alone to a certain extent through regulating them rather than trying to destroy them is more so an example of him being a moderate progressive during the middle of his presidential career rather than of him being a conservative. Rather than suddenly introducing radical political change in the US, Roosevelt chose to promote progressivism into the country at a more gradual pace, as he knew that this would allow both conservatives and liberals to support him and inevitably bolster his policies (excluding the end of his political career when he tried to radicalize liberalism in politics). So rather than this being an example of conservatism, I'd say it leans more towards it being an example of him using logic and reasoning to promote moderate progressivism, however to an extent this did involve pandering to conservatives, which to an extent could show that he had a bit of a conservative agenda.
ReplyDeleteI think this is an interesting point. While Roosevelt is praised as a progressive, of course he was not perfect. I think you make a great point about his love for battle and struggle because it was very unusual, but how does this connect to him not being progressive? I also really like your point about him asking Morgan for help in the economic crisis. He showed a lack of care about it, and then ending up supporting Morgan and his power in order to solve it. This went against his distaste of big businesses.
ReplyDeleteOne should also add to this discussion that the reason Theodore Roosevelt initially came to power was through the boss system in New York to appoint him to governor. However, once in power, he refused to be controlled by the boss that had got him there. Small bits of evidence could be added to support his non progressive side. For example, he believed that a woman's duty was to bear 4 children at least. He was against radical unions which doesn't necessarily mean he wasn't a progressive but just that he was not the most progressive. One can see that Roosevelt changed with the times because when he ran with the bull moose party, one could argue that he may have changed his agenda to get progressive votes.
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