Years of Sound and Fury
WEISBERGER, BERNARD
Years of Sound and Fury Theodore Rex By Edmund Morris Random. 772 pp. $35.00. Reviewed by Bernard Weisberger Former columnist, "American Heritage"; author, "America Afire: Jefferson,...
...He snatched Panama from what he called "those cat-rabbits" in Colombia by recognizing and protecting a "revolution" manufactured in New York and Washington, so that he could set the dirt flying on the interoceanic canal...
...But the majority of voters seemed to agree with him while he held the reins, which was when he tended to be at his best...
...For nations the yardstick was "civilized" behavior, and those that failed to measure up, particularly if small and weak, needed an occasional spanking...
...Roosevelt remains, as he was in life, good copy...
...But within that intentionally limited frame there is a great deal to enjoy...
...It was Roosevelt who forced coal mine operators to reach a deal with the striking United Mine Workers, without ever concealing his own distaste for unions...
...Isn't it a fine thing to be alive when so many great things are happening...
...Roosevelt fever infected sober men who were looking for answers to the riddles of the new age...
...Hennessy: Rosenfelt says it is...
...It all paid off politically...
...He bullied Caribbean governments to pay their debts to European creditors, using the Marines where necessary—but regardless of the Monroe Doctrine motive, his action shielded these small nations from bombardment by European fleets...
...His triumph over a neutral-gray Democrat, Alton B. Parker, was a walkover...
...At his desk he wrote or dictated a ceaseless stream of long letters crammed with informed, unshakable opinions on every conceivable subject...
...He saw himself as located between the extremes of incendiary radicalism and impossibly rigid conservatism, a benign steward of a necessary transition to modernity...
...The infectiousness of Roosevelt's enthusiasm was nicely captured in a dialogue in brogue between Mr...
...And it was true that he looked upon institutions as the lengthened shadows of individuals he judged to be righteous or not according to his own lights...
...Roosevelt came into office by virtue of an assassin's bullet...
...Dooley: Rockefeller says it isn't...
...That was too generous an estimate for some, who became discouraged with the contrast, at least in domestic politics, between his inspiring speeches and his contradictory compromises...
...Roosevelt's extraordinary energy mesmerized his generation...
...Hennessy: But annyhow, whether 'tis a success or not, it's been injiyable...
...Hennessy: I don't know whether th' Administration is a success or not...
...He reveled in parading himself and his charming family in its spotlight...
...Americans of every stripe flocked to hear him —in high-pitched voice and Harvard accent— celebrate from a hundred platforms the virtues of strength and striving...
...The new book tells the story of Roosevelt's seven and a half years—September 1901 to March 1909—as the buoyant President of a booming United States...
...The record suggests "all of the above...
...The "Theodore Rex" label was Henry James...
...The trustbuster or the man who chose to move, again in Dooley's words, "not so fast...
...He negotiated a solution to the Russo-Japanese War and won the Nobel Peace Prize, but he also sent an American fleet around the world in a demonstration of muscle meant for Japanese eyes that might covet the Philippines...
...William Allen White declared: "Theodore Roosevelt bit me and I went mad...
...He devoured a book or more a day in at least three languages, and could summarize each one crisply and accurately years later...
...He could easily have won in 1908 if he had not chosen retirement for a variety of reasons that he himself regretted and rejected four years later...
...In other words, 'TR' reflected very well the preponderant American old-boy sentiment of 1901—flag-waving, macho, self-interested and self-righteous, without ever quite rejecting the commitment to "liberty and justice for all...
...And there it may be left, with the question unanswered: Who was the "true" Roosevelt...
...The peacemaker and intellectual who delighted open-minded foreign ambassadors, or the jingo who sneered at "mollycoddles" preaching pacifism...
...Although easy to sentimentalize amid our current perplexities (especially when its darker aspects are overlooked), it is a compelling narrative, and Morris gives it the artfulness and excitement it deserves...
...Theodore Rex presents mostly Parkmanesque set pieces: scenes like Roosevelt's boneshaking buckboard ride down Adirondack dirt roads on the way to inheriting the Presidency, or blizzard-swept Washington on the March day in 1909 when he bade it farewell...
...He was a founding father of Federal preservation of wilderness areas, andhe enjoyednothing more than lining up wilderness animals in his gunsights for destruction...
...But by 1904 he was so hugely popular that they had no choice but to nominate him...
...Though there are fine sketches of his rivals and associates, Roosevelt's presence dominates almost every page, and readers will have to look elsewhere for analysis of the riptides and currents that were roiling the ranks of both parties in the progressive era...
...He bustled into office as an antitrust warrior, brandishing a lawsuit against the Northern Securities railroad holding company...
...It was he who pushed the Pure Food and Drug Act through Congress with the help of the furor caused by muckraker Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, and then condemned muckrakers in general...
...Henry Adams called him "pure act...
...Moreover, to opinionmakers caught in the euphoria of tum-ofthe-century imperialism, Roosevelt's bold assertion of a role for the United States in the drama of world power politics was a bracing revival of the theme of America's manifest destiny to lead...
...They came to view him as a moralizer with a dangerous tendency to substitute his own quick decisions for fixed guidelines arrived at in consultation...
...What he respected was power, especially power exercised—again, in his class-based judgment—with responsibility...
...His "rest" periods from official duty both in Washington and at his Long Island summer home were filled with swimming in icy waters, mountain climbing, horseback riding, hiking, hunting, boxing, playing tennis, and wood-chopping...
...He was distrusted and disliked by Old Guard Republican Party leaders who had hoped to bury him in the Vice Presidency...
...He also brings back the man whose zestful engagement with each new day was so irresistibly attractive...
...The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt...
...The democrat who ate with cowboys and kings, or the wealthy New Yorker who wanted to shoot Eugene V Debs, the leader of the Pullman strike of 1894...
...Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne's famous fictional barkeep, and his pal Mr...
...How could a society of theoretical political equals, and a consensus that the state should keep its hands off the economic race, be maintained in a changing, urbanizing America with huge disparities in power and income among its peoples...
...His own writings fill a lengthy shelf...
...Without diving into speculative psychological waters, Morris makes us aware of the anxieties and compulsions that this supremely self-confident man hid from the world and possibly himself...
...He loved it as his "bully pulpit," as the office that enabled him to exercise decisive command...
...Could the fruits of concentration be enjoyed without the indigestion of class conflict...
...How could Americans reconcile the power and wealth of their giant industrial nation with the ideals of government embodied in a Constitution conceived in the 18th century, and with the waves of democratization that left their mark on the 19th...
...Dooley: Me friends differ...
...Hennessy: Mr...
...If nothing else, they responded to his unabashed enjoyment of the Presidency...
...Yet as he expected, the Panama Canal gave the entire Latin American economy and world trade a healthy boost...
...Morris has not written a "life and times...
...author, "America Afire: Jefferson, Adams and the Election of 1800" AFTER AN unfortunate venture into blending fact and fiction in Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, Edmund Morris has returned to respectability as a historian with Theodore Rex, the sequel to his prize-winning volume of 20 years ago...
...He was a naturalist, a historian, and could easily have traded places with any of the friendly journalists who surrounded him...
...It was Roosevelt who invited Booker T. Washington to the White House to talk politics, to the outrage of the "white South," and who, on the basis of obviously biased evidence, personally discharged 160 "colored" Regular Army soldiers for allegedly shooting up Brownsville, Texas...
...Some onlookers may have caught Roosevelt fever simply from watching his demons manifest themselves in almost manic tests of strength...
...There was, of course, another side that eventually kept many "progressives" from staying the course with Roosevelt...
...Those years were full of sound and fury, and they typify the problem of getting a firm grip on who Roosevelt was and what he stood for...
...Roosevelt once asked his journalist friend Ray Stannard Baker...
...Roosevelt spoke to the hearts of such questioners with his vision of a Federal government and Chief Executive strong enough to act on behalf of all the people in restraining corporate, collective and individual selfishness, while still preserving freedom...
...But he soon made it clear that his enemies were only "bad" trusts that exalted stockholder profits over the national interest—the judgment remaining firmly in his own hands...
Vol. 84 • November 2001 • No. 6
