They don't make them like this anymore, they did not make them like this beforehand either. This is Theodore Roosevelt, TR, Teddy. "Teddy" is the nickname his wife, Alice, gave him. President Roosevelt secretly despised anyone but his late first wife Alice calling him "Teddy" and we respect that. We respect TR.
We respect his very birth. He was born in New York City. Not Kennebunkport or Kenya but New York City. A city that means greatness to all Americans who are being honest. Our best city. And as a child, this sickly boy decided to rise above his fragile vessel and become great. Not with seeking instant gratification so do today's youth. No auditioning for an American Idol (as he was profoundly tone deaf) or wishing his way into an NBA (his asthma was nearly crippling) but by pursuing academic and physical endeavors through hard work and perseverance.
At the age of 6, TR witnessed Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession and knew he was in the presence of greatness. He knew that everyone has Lincoln-level greatness in them. So he started his journey early. His first academic challenge was taxidermy. He was fascinated with a seal carcass that he saw at a marketplace and begged his father to buy him the head. He taught himself to stuff that seal's head. He was 7.
Aside from spending his teens building up his weak body to master horseback riding, hiking and tennis. He molded himself into a formidable boxer. The asthmatic now had the skills to brutalize his peers in the ring. We tend to separate "jocks" and "nerds" as mutually exclusive today. One team mocks the other. But the teenage TR develop both with equal abundance and was accepted to Harvard.
We have not even scratched the surface yet and this was with his authoring a well-regarded history book, The Naval War of 1812, winning election to the New York State Assembly and a whirlwind romance all within a year of graduation. No, TR's life actually began with tragedy.
His mother died at his home in front of him and, hours later, his wife died. His precious Alice. He would lament "the light has gone out of my life." He would never, ever mention Alice again for the rest of his life to anyone in any context.
What he did next was almost Biblical. He moved in near-isolation to the Badlands of the Dakotas. He would train his body to the limits beyond human imagination. Famed Batman Begins director, Christopher Nolan, would later say that it was TR who was the inspiration for his Bruce Wayne.
There was no looking back for TR once he returned to civilization. Much like a character from the Batman comics, Commissioner Gordon, TR himself fought crime and internal police corruption as president of the Board of the NYC Police Commissioners. He even fought the then anti-Semitic institution by being the first to allow Jews to serve in the NYPD.
Then his nation called and he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy but actually was the one in charge as the sitting Navy Secretary was all but inactive. But he quit to so that he could fight in the Spanish-American War as one of the famed Rough Riders. His feats were legendary and he very much was a war hero but in a much more nuisance and less cartoonish way than usually depicted. Rather than continue to see his men die of malaria, he asked for their transfer so they could fight another day. This request was thought a show of cowardice and lost him the Medal of Honor until his was posthumously awarded in 2001 by objective eyes.
He returned from the war to run for governor of New York. He won, of course, but the powers that be did not like his political ascension nor his Progressive leanings. So his Republican party decided to shut him up the best way you can politically-they made him Vice President of the United States. This was then, as has been historically, the least powerful office in the land. The party's planned was working well until the actual President, William McKinley, was assassinated. This made TR our youngest President at the age of 42.
It should be noted what TR's Presidency represented. Roosevelt's goal was to move his turn-of-the-century Republican Party towards Progressivism. This was the populist movement that defined the generation. Government was never seen as an apparatus for change or a tool of looking out for the common people's interest. No President since Lincoln was even proactive never mind working for the needs of the average citizen. The Progressive movement gave us the 40 hour work week, women's suffrage, child labor laws and, yes, Prohibition but also, the populist will to demand its repeal.
TR was all but expected to be a President of his time, hands-off and pro-institutions. But, again, he rose above what was expected and presided as something better. 30 years before his cousin Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal, TR planted the seeds of the American Dream with his Square Deal. This series of reforms protected the average American from the unchecked power of monopolies, or trusts, that controlled everything from the railroads to the oil. TR was so militant, for his time at least, that he was nicknamed the Trustbuster, breaking monopolies that then dwarfed today's Microsofts' and Wal-Marts'. As average Americans started to finally get to move away from what can only be called American feudalism, Roosevelt pioneered the conservation movement and founded our National Parks. Americans could enjoy America.
And TR's vigilance for justice was not just for white men, the only people with full citizenship at the time, TR was a pioneer for Civil Rights. He already tried to pass desegregation as New York governor in 1899! As President, he invited the first African-American White House guest, Booker T. Washington. Even as this threatened his political prospects in the South, TR maintained his friendship with Washington out in the opened. He appointed an African-American as tariff collector in South Carolina! And an African-American woman, Minnie Cox, as Post Master of Mississippi! This was quite the challenge as even Cox, herself, wanted to resign. TR refused to accept her resignation and punished the bigoted town by demoting their post office to fourth class status.
His championing of Jewish Americans was unheard of, too. In addition to lifting the NYPD's ban on Jewish policemen, Roosevelt attacked anti-Semitism head-on. When a powerful German anti-Semitic preacher demanded protection, rather than deny him his First Amendment rights, he put his Jewish Police Sergeant in charge of the preacher's security detail as a reminder to said preacher that Jewish Americans are his equals. And TR formally petitioned the Russian government to cease their anti-Semitic ways.
And TR's vision of gender equality goes back to his college days in which he wrote his senior thesis on why it is not only right but practical for women's rights to exist in the law. Early feminists saw an ally in Roosevelt.
Even his foreign policy was for the benefit of the common man. The Panama Canal? That was his idea. The Atlantic and Pacific would finally connect saving months of travel for international shipping and growing the middle class. We know of his "speak softly and carry a big stick" approach to militarism but this doctrine (since perverted by war hawks) earned a Nobel Peace Prize for actually stopping a war, the Russo-Japanese War (go figure).
His Presidency was transcendent and credited with creating the America we know today. And that could only happen because Roosevelt was larger than life. TR swam nude in the Potomac River in the winter! He had a pet zebra. The "Teddy Bear" was named after him because he was sympathetic to a wounded bear and put it out of its misery rather than allowing the beast to die a slow, painful death. And yes, he was even a ninja or close to it. He was a third degree brownbelt in judo.
TR decided against seeking a third term immediately after his second term. A regret of his. He instead headed off to African for a safari and hunted, in the name of science, for Smithsonian and Natural History museums; he killed so many animals, over 11,000 in all, that it took years to prep and mount the subjects. But the science of zoology was advanced by decades as museums all of the country were able to study and duplicate the specimens. Roosevelt, ultimately helped save the lives of millions of animals.
He returned home and did not like the political hands he left his country in. He decided to seek that third term after all. He ran as a "3rd party" candidate and almost won if he hadn't been shot and had to cease his campaign towards the crucial end. In classic, TR form after getting shot and only having his eyeglass case to thank for his protection, he immediately got up, laughed it off and said he felt as strong as a bull moose, which became the name of his political party. (below his the actual X-Ray showing how close Roosevelt was to death)
TR then explored the Brazilian Amazon and they named a river after him, Rio Teodoro. He contracted malaria and took years to eventually die of it. He still boxed and won throughout.
There are many reasons to respect the full spectrum of manhood that Roosevelt represents. It is still an ideal in which we should live up to this President's Day 2010. We live in a political era in which our representatives are either slaves to the polls or pretend they are worth enough for us to believe their "gut." Times are tough today and American manhood is on the decline. This does not mean be a douchebag or be a chauvinist. It means that every man has the potential to be on Mt. Rushmore, like Roosevelt. Are you willing to be your best? Have you found the Teddy inside of you?
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