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The trouble with TR
National Review, Feb 23, 1998 by Matthew Spalding
Theodore Roosevelt may be the very model of a modern President-but not for conservatives.
Everybody loves Theodore Roosevelt. Speaker Newt Gingrich often touts TR, the most dynamic of Presidents, as his model for activist political reform. George Will appreciates Roosevelt's "invigorating strenuousness." Steve Forbes applauds Roosevelt for seeking "to expand individual opportunity and strengthen individual control." Marvin Olasky praises him for being a "defender of Biblical progressivism." Sen. John Ashcroft, a potential presidential contender, has joined the chorus.
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Liberals love Teddy, too. In a recent speech at Harvard's Kennedy School, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt set out "to create a progressive vision for a new century"; his models were Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson--and Teddy Roosevelt.
These invocations occur in the context of a discussion of what America means today, a discussion that penetrates to the soul of the Republic--and, as William Kristol and David Brooks of The Weekly Standard have recently argued, of the Republican Party. Kristol and Brooks claim TR for a conservative nationalist tradition beginning with Alexander Hamilton and carried on by Abraham Lincoln--a tradition of strong executive leadership, a muscular, morally grounded foreign policy, and governmental activism in the service of competition. They mean both to restore the majesty of democratic government and to resist the feminization of the culture.
All these aims are worthy. But Roosevelt is a poor ideal for American leaders at the beginning of a new century--and for conservatives in particular. For his nationalism, both at home and abroad, was indissolubly connected to a view of progress that is at odds with America's basic principles.
TR's image as a man of action has helped obscure his political thought--a problem compounded by most of his biographers. For instance, H. W. Brands's recent T.R.: The Last Romantic (Basic Books) provides an accurate and lively account of the historical details, but then concludes that Roosevelt was an irrational romantic.
Actually, he was a progressive open to the latest scientific thinking and quick to imbibe the racial theories popularized at the turn of the century. At Harvard and Columbia, the young Teddy studied social Darwinism and the impact of race on the development of social organization. Perhaps social Lamarckianism would be a better term: Roosevelt came to believe that peoples could acquire characteristics through civilizing influences and then transmit them to the next generation.
He learned from professors like John Burgess that the Teutonic race was at the cutting edge of societal evolution, and believed that superior races had a responsibility to civilize the barbaric races, foster social efficiency at home, and guard against their own descent into weakness and decadence. That's why TR promoted the vigorous virtues: "All the great masterful races have been fighting races, and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal to the best." He also opposed birth control for Americans ("No race has any chance to win a great place unless it consists of good breeders") and advocated tough immigration restrictions on the "alien races" he considered dangerous.
The purpose of foreign policy, then, is to inculcate these virtues and expand the reach of advanced civilizations. Roosevelt began strategizing about the world with Henry Cabot Lodge and A. T. Mahan, the theorist of naval power, when he was assistant secretary of the Navy in 1897, and he put their theories into practice as President from 1901 to 1909.
TR advocated a bigger and better Army and Navy so that America could "speak softly and carry a big stick." He faced down the Kaiser over German involvement in Venezuela, and used negotiations and veiled threats to take control of Santo Domingo's customs house and to force the repayment of the Dominican Republic's debts. When Colombia refused to ratify a treaty for a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, Roosevelt pushed a local revolt against that nation, used U.S. ships to prevent Colombian troops from suppressing the uprising, recognized a new Panamanian government, and signed the treaty with it instead.
"If we refrain from doing our part of the world's work," he wrote, other races won't and "we will have shown ourselves to be weaklings." Roosevelt's evolutionary perspective had implications for his domestic policy that conservatives should find even less palatable. For TR, the rise of administrative government was necessary in order to develop social efficiency. While it is "perfectly true that the laissez-faire doctrine of the old school of political economists is receiving less and less favor," Roosevelt noted, "if we look at events historically, we see that every race, as it has grown to civilized greatness, has used the power of the State more and more."
