07:00 am
The Misappropriation of Theodore Roosevelt
Yesterday, I blogged about John McCain’s interview with the NYT, focusing on the fact that yet again, he admitted not understanding the intertubes. But something else about that story has been bugging me. Here it is:
Asked to name a conservative model, he skipped over the suggestions of three names typically associated with the conservative movement — Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Barry Goldwater, the founder of the modern-day conservative movement who occupied the Senate seat Mr. McCain holds today — to settle on Theodore Roosevelt.
Now to be fair to Senator McCain, this part of the article is so badly written, that it’s not clear whether McCain had called Roosevelt a conservative or the reporter just made the connection. Fortunately, the Times has the entire transcript. It’s worth quoting at length:
Q: How do you think of your self as a conservative? Do you think of yourself more as a Goldwater conservative or Reagan conservative or George W. Bush conservative?
Senator John McCain: A Teddy Roosevelt conservative, I think. He’s probably my major role model…. I think Teddy Roosevelt he had a great vision of America’s role in the 20th Century. He was a great environmentalist. He loved the country. He is the person who brought the government into a more modern – into the 20th century as well. He was probably engaged more in national security slash international affairs that any president [had] ever been. I understand that TR had failings. I understand that every one of my role models had failings…..
[snip]
Q: Roosevelt wasn’t really a small government person. He saw an active role for government what thing in your record in your record would you say are in a similar vein of using government to do things that…
Mr. McCain: Campaign Finance reform – obviously he was a great reformer — is one of them. Climate change is another. He was a great environmentalist
Q: You don’t believe in small government, the sort of classic conservative view of minimal government is not one you would necessarily share.
Mr. McCain: …I also believe there is a role for government. If there is abuses, TR was the first guy to enforce the Sherman anti-trust act against the quote trusts that were controlling the economy of America. Because I believe his quote was unfettered capitalism leads to corruption. So there certainly is a role for government but I want to keep that role minimal. And I want to keep it in the areas where only governments can perform those functions.
Government should take care of those in America who can’t care for themselves. That’s a role of government. It’s not that I’m for no government. It’s that I’m for government carrying out those responsibilities that otherwise can’t be exercised by individuals and the states — that’s the founding principles of our country — and at the same time recognizing there’s a role for our government and society to care for those who can’t care for themselves, to make sure there are not abuses of individual rights as well as the rights of groups of people and to defend our nation. And National Security is obviously No. 1.
So I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold.
So let me see if I have this straight. According to McCain, TR favored government intervention to put limits on “unfettered capitalism.” He believed that government should “take care of those in America who can’t care for themselves.” He was an environmentalist. And all that made TR a conservative.
Whoa. Suddenly I’m feeling dizzy, very dizzy.
I don’t know which is causing me the greater cognitive dissonance: McCain’s belief that TR was conservative, or his belief that TR stood for less government. You know, maybe this explains why Teddy keeps coming in last in every Presidents’ Race at Nationals Park: he is sooooo confused about what his politics are, he can’t find his way out of the bullpen.
Let’s correct some basic facts here. Roosevelt called himself a progresssive, not a conservative. He pushed for a greater degree of government intervention than any previous holder of that office — in fact, with the exception of Lincoln, FDR, LBJ (and unfortunately the present office-holder), he presided over one of the largest expansions of the federal government in American history. He rarely saw a regulation he didn’t like. He was hated by business for cracking down on laissez-faire capitalism. And in the end, he left the Republican Party because he was fed up with its cronyism and cuddly relationship with big business.
Don’t just take my word for it. On August 6, 1912, TR gave a speech accepting the nomination of the National Progressive Party to be their candidate for President. Here are some excerpts:
As a people we cannot afford to let any group of citizens or any individual citizen live or labor under conditions which are injurious to the common welfare. Industry, therefore, must submit to such public regulation as will make it a means of life and health, not of death or inefficiency….
We stand for a living wage….It is abnormal for any industry to throw back upon the community the human wreckage due to its wear and tear, and the hazzards of sickness, accident, invalidism, involuntary unemployment, and old age should be provided for through insurance….
The pure food law must be strengthened and efficiently enforced. In the National Government one department should be intrusted with all the agencies relating to the public health, from the enforcement of the pure food law to the administration of quarantine….
[W]e cannot permanently support conditions under which each family finds it increasingly difficult to secure the necessaries of life and a fair share of its comforts through the earnings of its members. The cost of living in this country has risen during the last few years out of all proportion to the increase in the rate of most salaries and wages….
I believe in a larger use of the governmental power to help remedy industrial wrongs, because it has been borne in on me by actual experience that without the exercise of such power many of the wrongs will go unremedied.
So TR stood for national health insurance, breaking up large monopolies, enforcement of existing laws, eliminating special treatment, fixing disparities in the cost of living as a result of inflation, a living wage, and using government to better the lives of citizens.
I’m sorry Senator, but that’s not conservativism we can believe in. In fact, if TR had made that speech in the 1950s, Nixon and McCarthy would have called him a Commie rat.
So make up your mind, Senator: do you share TR’s vision, or are you just using his name so you don’t have to associate yourself with Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan and Bush? You can’t have it both ways, sir. You can’t be a conservative and at the same time say you come from the TR mold.
Photo credit: Scott Ableman on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
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