Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 128

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Popular Culture Review

He established the foundation for the modem presidency and made it possible for
the American government to function effectively in today’s world. It is doubtful
that the U nited States or any other country will ever again see a leader
simultaneously so flamboyant and so effective.
TR, the first President to have been called affectionately by his initials,
had been both a New York dandy and a Western rancher and cowboy. He more
than held his own with the worst that the West could throw at him, either the
fiercest of nature’s elements or the roughest of its residents. He was a noted historian
(becoming president of the American Historical Association) and author and was a
recognized authority on numerous topics, including songbirds and big game animals.
By the age of 42, he had been a New York legislator, a U.S. Civil Service
Commissioner, a New York City Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, a genuine war hero. Governor of New York, Vice President of the United
States, and President.
Despite holding some opinions that were quaint, others that were
questionable, and yet others that at least in retrospect were clearly wrong, TR was
a person of integrity and good-will. He had a wide-ranging curiosity, a keen intellect,
and a skillful touch—even one that could be surprisingly subtle—in diplomacy
and politics. One so vigorous could hardly avoid being controversial, and Roosevelt
did not even try. The passage of time that has revealed additional, and favorable,
information about his presidency has also calmed the passions that the Bull Moose
once inspired so readily.
It now is evident that the unfavorable image Henry Pringle offered in his
Pulitzer-Prize winning biography misrepresented TR’s nature as a man and even
more as a President (Pringle 1931). Recent biographers have tended to be more
generous, beginning with John Morton Blum’s fine study The Republican Roosevelt
(Blum 1954). Even Brands (whose lively book is inclined to be somewhat critical
and to overlook much of TR’s complexity) presents a much more favorable picture
than Pringle’s (Brands 1997). More perceptive is the fine volume by Nathan Miller
(Miller 1992). The biographies by Edmund Morris and David McCullough also
are excellent, but McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback deals only with TR’s
earlier life (McCullough 1981), and Morris’s Rise o f Theodore Roosevelt is only
the first of a projected three-volume work, and thus ends before the Roosevelt
presidency (Morris 1979). His second volume, Theodore Rex, hasjust been released.
Morris had to put aside his work on TR to undertake his task as official biographer
for President Reagan. Arguably the best treatment remains William H. Harbaugh’s
Life and Times o f Theodore Roosevelt (Harbaugh 1975) that originally bore the
title Power and Responsibility.
Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. began the careful ranking of Presidents in 1948
and 1962 (Bailey 24-25). Since then, numerous other such rankings have followed