Third Book: Edmund Morris´ ¨Theodore Rex¨

Do not all these things interest you? Isn´t it a fine thing to be alive when so many great things are happening?

So quotes Edmund Morris of President Theodore Roosevelt in his political biography, ¨Theodore Rex.¨ I´m not usually prone to undertaking such political biographies. But when I found this one lying around here and read the first couple pages, I found it suitably engrossing. Morris writes clearly, and his well-researched narrative is chocked full of anecdotes. It is a definitive account of the Roosevelt presidency, the second in his trilogy about TR.

The dominant picture here is of TR the politician, coming to power in a moment of national trauma and guiding his country into a new age. It is his leadership style -- at times forceful, at times persuasive -- that is TR´s most potent weapon. Throughout the book, Morris challenges the conventional wisdom that TR was a rash bully, showing him to be more cautious and calculating in his decisions; indeed I found there to be something Clintonian in it. In several different instances, TR triangulates between the Old Guard Republicans and his Democratic opponents. He does this on each of the key issues of the day: labor rights, government regulation, international involvement, etc. Through a combination of boldness and realism, TR forges an entirely new Progressive movement capable of reshaping the American political landscape.

Reading about TR, however, there are issues with which I struggled. He seems to me, like most politicians, a man motivated both by principals and political expediency: This means that his actions are sometimes courageous and sometimes reprehensible. And then there are the difficulties that arise when considering the legacy of person from another era. Though his contemporaries often lauded him for being enlightened on matters of race and culture, it´s hard to overlook his prejudices against African Americans and non-European cultures and his tacit tolerance of anti-Semitism. Are we to judge him on the standards of his time, by which his record certainly seems progressive? Or are we to employ more eternal notions of justice and equality, and condemn him for not standing up more forcefully for the rights of the disenfranchised? In his imperialist swagger, there seems to be a disturbing disregard for the rights and welfare of the most marginalized.

But taking TR for a moment as a person, and not a president, it is hard not to admire (or even envy) the vigor with which he led his life. As a person, he cultivated a love of family and friends, literature and languages, nature and technology. He saw the world with peculiar acuteness, and strove in all his actions to forge from a mass of experience something meaningful.

Perhaps most interesting for me in this book is the portrait Morris paints of turn of the century America. It seems to me that 100 years ago, America shared a lot in common with the developing countries I visit today. The United States in 1901 is a country with a booming population (including immigration), a rapidly growing economy (with an equally rapid transition from rural to urban), still only beginning to utilize its great wealth of land and natural resources. At the same time, America is starting to look outward to the world as a great power, and the choices and challenges facing our leaders then mirror those that we face today. It´s truly amazing how many of the same issues -- militaristic proliferation, international terrorism, trade reciprocity, labor rights, environmental stewardship, government regulation of commerce -- we still wrestle with today. TR seemed to understand that sometimes a president´s role is merely to bring a topic to the forefront of debate, so that the public could consider it at its own pace. At other times -- most notably with regards to the environment -- it was at his urging that the government acted to preserve a vast amount of wilderness.

If indeed there was greatness in TR´s presidency, it was the fact that he, like other great presidents, called on Americans both to dream great things and to work towards their fulfillment. ¨Much has been given us and much will rightfully be expected of us,¨ TR declared during his second inauguration. Nowhere was his vision more clear than in the area of conservation. He was able to bring together the most progressive thinkers of his time on environmental issues, and with them to forge a consensus on what must be done to preserve America´s resources for generations to come. He protected large tracts of lands as national reserves and gave us not only this wilderness but the legacy for caring for it. Speaking about the Grand Canyon to native Arizonans, he said:

Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it--keep it for your children, your children´s children, and for all who come after you.

As for the genre itself, these historical biographies represented somewhat of a new endeavor for me. One thing unique about this book is that Morris confines all historical hindsight and judgments to the endnotes, creating a narrative that more closely resembled the flow of events at the time. Indeed I spent a lot of time reading Morris´ endnotes, trying to get a sense of where he was getting his information. I would like to know more about certain areas, such as why he privileges certain sources, and how he balanced contradicting information in certain situations. But seems to me that he did a good job using a range of sources, focusing on the most important incidents in TR´s presidency and adding an appropriate amount of color and storytelling with pertinent anecdotes. Overall, Morris presents a suitably engaging portrait of a man and the times he shaped.

(Next up: Tracey Kidder´s ¨House¨)