[78-L] Bully for T.R.!

[buster]

from yesterday's paper:



October 27, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Theodore Roosevelt, Pundit

By EDMUND MORRIS
THE former president, born 150 years ago today, was interviewed in his  
childhood home at 28 East 20th Street. He has long been a ghostly  
presence there. The house is now the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace  
National Historic Site. Due to Roosevelt’s great age, it is difficult  
to tell how well he hears contemporary questions. But he is as  
forceful as ever in expressing himself. His statements below are drawn  
from the historic record and are uncut except when interrupted by his  
interviewer.

Q. Happy birthday, Mr. President! Or do you prefer being called Colonel?

ROOSEVELT I’ve had the title of president once — having it twice means  
nothing except peril to whatever reputation I achieved the first time.

Q. “Colonel,” then. Do you think the Congress elected two years ago as  
a foil to the Bush administration has fulfilled its mandate?

A. I am heartsick over the delay, the blundering, the fatuous and  
complacent inefficiency and the effort to substitute glittering  
rhetoric for action.

Q. Do you blame the House Democratic majority?

A. A goodly number of senators, even of my own party, have shown about  
as much backbone as so many angleworms.

Q. I hope that doesn’t include the pair running for the presidency!  
What do you think of Senator John McCain? He often cites you as a role  
model.

A. He is evidently a man who takes color from his surroundings.

Q. Weren’t you just as unpredictable in your time?

A. (laughing) They say that nothing is as independent as a hog on ice.  
If he doesn’t want to stand up, he can lie down.

Q. Mr. McCain has always prided himself on his independence. At least,  
until he began to take direction from chief executives and retired  
generals —

A. But the signs now are that these advisers have themselves awakened  
to the fact that they have almost ruined him.

Q. Does his vow to give Joe the Plumber a tax break remind you of  
Reaganomics?

A. This is merely the plan, already tested and found wanting, of  
giving prosperity to the big men on top, and trusting to their mercy  
to let something leak through to the mass of their countrymen below —  
which, in effect, means that there shall be no attempt to regulate the  
ferocious scramble in which greed and cunning reap the largest rewards.

Q. In Washington today, Colonel, you’re increasingly seen as the  
father of centralized, executive, regulatory control.

A. Great corporations exist only because they are created and  
safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and  
duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.

Q. Especially now that we’ve seen the end of another age of laissez- 
faire economics?

A. These new conditions make it necessary to shackle cunning, as in  
the past we have shackled force. The vast individual and corporate  
fortunes, the vast combinations of capital —

Q. Even vaster in your day! John D. Rockefeller was richer than Bill  
Gates, dollar for dollar.

A. Quite right. (He dislikes being interrupted.) And please, let this  
now be as much of a monologue as possible.

Q. Excuse me, you were saying that vast combinations of capital ...

A. ... create new conditions, and necessitate a change from the old  
attitude of the state and the nation toward the rules regulating the  
acquisition and untrammeled business use of property.

Q. So you approve of the federal bailout?

A. I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in  
governmental control is now necessary.

Q. Should we condone the huge severance packages paid to executives of  
rescued corporations?

A. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human  
activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their places cannot be  
supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing  
that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not  
transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded;  
and if what should be the reward exists without the service having  
been rendered, then admiration will come only from those who are mean  
of soul.

Q. So we should withhold our envy of Richard Fuld, the chairman of  
Lehman Brothers, for taking home half a billion before his company  
went down?

A. Envy and arrogance are the two opposite sides of the same black  
crystal.

Q. Extraordinary image, Colonel. What’s your impression of Barack Obama?

A. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the people have made up their mind  
that they wish some new instrument.

Q. You’re not afraid that he’s primarily a man of words? Like Woodrow  
Wilson, whom you once called a “Byzantine logothete”?

A. It is highly desirable that a leader of opinion in a democracy  
should be able to state his views clearly and convincingly.

Q. Not Mr. McCain’s strong point!

A. Some excellent public servants have not the gift at all, and must  
rely upon their deeds to speak for them; and unless the oratory does  
represent genuine conviction, based on good common sense and able to  
be translated into efficient performance, then the better the oratory  
the greater the damage to the public it deceives.

Q. Mr. McCain might argue that his life of service and suffering is  
eloquence enough. Have you read his autobiography?

A. I should like to have it circulated as a tract among an immense  
multitude of philanthropists, congressmen, newspaper editors,  
publicists, softheaded mothers and other people of sorts who think  
that life ought to consist of perpetual shrinking from effort, danger  
and pain.

Q. Has Mr. Obama not suffered too? Not at the heroic level of Mr.  
McCain, but in transcending centuries of race prejudice to become a  
viable presidential candidate — only to be nearly stopped by Hillary  
Clinton!

A. I think that he has learned some bitter lessons, and that  
independently of outside pressure he will try to act with greater  
firmness, and to look at things more from the standpoint of the  
interests of the people, and less from that of a technical lawyer —

Q. “Technical,” Colonel? He took his law degree straight onto the  
streets of Chicago and applied it to social problems.

A. He may and probably will turn out to be a perfectly respectable  
president, whose achievements will be disheartening compared with what  
we had expected, but who nevertheless will have done well enough to  
justify us in renominating him — for you must remember that to  
renominate him would be a very serious thing, only to be justified by  
really strong reasons.

Q. He doesn’t have Mr. McCain’s foreign policy experience. As  
president, how would he personify us around the world?

A. It always pays for a nation to be a gentleman.

Q. There’ll be Joe Biden to counsel him, of course. Assuming Mr. Obama  
can keep track of what he’s saying.

A. (laughing) You can’t nail marmalade against a wall.

Q. Talking of foreign policy, what do you think of Mr. McCain’s choice  
of a female running mate?

A. Times have changed (sigh). It is entirely inexcusable, however, to  
try to combine the unready hand with the unbridled tongue.

Q. How will you feel if Sarah Palin is elected?

A. I shall feel exactly the way a very small frog looks when it  
swallows a beetle the size of itself, with extremely stiff legs.

Q. What’s your impression of President Bush these days?

A. (suddenly serious) He looks like Judas, but unlike that gentleman  
has no capacity for remorse.

Q. Is that the best you can say of him?

A. I wish him well, but I wish him well at a good distance from me.

Q. One last question, Colonel. If you were campaigning now, would you  
still call yourself a Republican?

A. (after a long pause) No.

Edmund Morris is working on the third and final volume of his  
biography of Theodore Roosevelt.



On Oct 27, 2008, at 11:12 AM, Bob Rice wrote:

>  Teddy! Boy we NEED you, now! Where are ya?? Get that Time Machine  
> fixed
> and on line!
>
>     Bob
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <soundthink at aol.com>
> To: <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 2:06 PM
> Subject: [78-L] Bully for T.R.!
>
>
>> Today is the 150th birthday of President Theodore Roosevelt, who  
>> made a
>> handful of 78s of speeches for Victor in 1912.
>>
>> Cary Ginell
>> _______________________________________________
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>
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