“A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy,” Theodore Roosevelt once said and it seems John McCain couldn’t agree more.
Captain McCain speaks of the warrior bond he shares with Colonel Roosevelt, but it’s McCain’s anti-special interest rhetoric that conjures the memory of the populist reformer who fought the New York political bosses and corporate contributors of a century ago.
The larger than life Roosevelt once said: “Like all Americans I like things big; big prairies, big forests, big factories, and everything else.”
Sometimes ‘everything else’ included big government, odd for a Republican, but TR greatly expanded the role of Federal Government as trust-buster, consumer regulator, and a labor-protector.
And he carried a big stick, of course. He transformed the US Navy into a “Great White Fleet,” secured the land for the Panama Canal, and cemented the Western Hemisphere as America’s backyard.
We’re reviewing the Theodore Roosevelt Century in this hour.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Edmund Morris, historian and Roosevelt biographer
Tweed Roosevelt
and E.J. Dione of the Washington Post.