The Comparison Not Made
This was going to be longer. It was longer. Until Blogger ate about 2,000 words of my draft.
I try to trust the universe when painful losses in writing occur. So I’m going to trust that not Blogger but the universe was telling me to present you with an idea that can be returned to late and amplified if I see that readers are seeking out this post as a topic of interest.
I had a few main points. History is almost a dead discipline. Along with other studies in humanities it has been captured by ideologues and turned into a kind of political propaganda, not a search for truth and helpful perspective.
All these historians who are building lists Best and Worst Presidents aren’t interested in examining the past with a fair and analyptical eye. They’re looking to use the past to promote their own positions on very topical issues.
The only President they seem to want to compare Trump to is Andrew Jackson, once admired as the founder of the Democrat Party, but transformed by revisionist doctrine into a loutish racist who butchered his way into office. His hands were soaked with the blood of both Native Americans and the British troops he slaughtered without mercy in a battle that was unnecessary because the War of 1812 had already been won. Comparisons to Trump? Fame acquired outside the political process. Rude behavior throughout his term in office. Scandals involving his second wife and their suspected immorality before the marriage. Stubborn political vendettas against an institution that would eventually become central to the economy of the United States. He set about murdering the central bank of the nation and succeeded at great economic cost. Anything else. He was famous for his outlandish hair, his volcanic temper, and too many lavish parties at the White House.
I had more, but that will do. There’s, irony at work here. The revisionist view of Jackson was propagated by historians who wanted to blame a great many excesses committed by Democrats for over a hundred years by blaming them on the villainous founder of the party, meaning Old Hickory, the bloodthirsty Indian fighter and xenophobe. Without him there might never have been a Confederate States of America, a Civil War, a Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow Laws, and Southern white trash Dixiecrats like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. All fixed now, though, and no need to think about him anymore. Unless it’s useful to hang Jackson around Trump’s neck as a throwback to barbaric white supremacist sentiments.
Trump, for his part, has mostly ignored it except to acknowledge that Jackson was a heroic and colorful icon of his time. No need to tear down his statues. Or Lee’s. Or Stonewall’s. or Jefferson’s. Or Washington’s. Or Lincoln’s. Just because liberal kids don’t know shit and their parents didn’t bring them up right.
The whole business of historical comparisons has gotten kind of a bad name because of distortions like this. Trump would prefer to be compared to Washington and Lincoln because he, like them, is trying to save the life of the nation and the Constitution. Nobody is buying so far because he doesn’t have a beard like Lincoln or a white wig like Washington.
Nevertheless. There is a presidential comparison that might be productive to point out, because it could everyone on both sides,of the aisle interpret Trump’s words and actions and overall persona more successfully.
The parallels between Trump and Theodore Roosevelt are both striking and instructive. Both were born New Yorkers and spiritually never left the place. Both had big aspirations from a very young age. Both had successful businessmen as fathers. Both got their degrees from Ivy League Schools. Both became famous beyond their years and accomplishments at an early age by writing popular books. Both were lifelong agents of change, born reformers because they looked at the ways people did things, saw ways to improve them, and then succeeded at improving them. Both lost a belovèd wife to premature death. Their careers were indifferent realms but both enjoyed spectacular successes that enhanced their fame.
Both became President of the United by an unexpected chain of events, TR inherited the presidency from William McKinley because of an assassin’s bullet. Trump may or not have entered the 2016 race on a lark, but soon scored heavily with Republican voters and shocked the world by winning the office when all the polls said he would lose badly to Hillary Clinton.
Both were assailed in their political lives by intrigues against them within their own parties. TR became McKinley’s VP candidate because the NY Republican Party wanted to get rid of him as Governor. They’d had enough of him rocking the boat with reforms and innovations designed to make government more effective and accountable. Trump’s first term was a crossfire between Democrat haters on the left and frightened GOP Deep Staters in league with Trump’s more vocal opponents. He survived, accomplished much, but fell victim to the COVID virus and its impact on the economy. Then came his wilderness years.
TR had wilderness years of his own. In the real wilderness of jungles and other challenging outdoor environments. Trump spent his four years out of office in courtrooms. Maybe not the same as San Juan Hill, but just as potentially deadly and much much much longer to endure.
After the wilderness came the battle for the second/third term (depending on how you count in both cases). At this point in his career, Teddy Roosevelt had not experienced an enormous public loss. But that’s what the bill-fated Bull Moose Party became for him. He sought to regain the White House because he saw in William Howard Taft a lessening of the reform spirit he himself lived for. He thought the arepublicans might be turning into RINO# before such a name existed for them. Not enough other people saw the danger, and he lost, putting Woodrow Wilson disastrously into the presidency.
Trump’s loss of the Presidency, however you want to classify, also resulted in a disastrous presidency. But atrump’s advantage in 2024 was that he had the example of a Theodore Roosevelt to learn from. There must have been talk of a third party run when so many of his former allies began looking for alternatives, believing his time had passed. But this was Trump’s San Juan Hill. There was no one who could, or would, do what he knew needed to be done. And he reconquered the whole Republican Party from within in an absolutely unprecedented comeback victory in November. He borrowed TR’s daring, and learned from TR’s strategic error to campaign brilliantly from ahead the whole way.
Just two more things to do here. First, look at how many things these two men had in common politically. And second, see what this tells us about how they were so successful in policy terms despite the obvious risks in their platforms. The end point being, how are we to interpret our own best responses to the baker as he puts the ingredients into his cake, mixes them, and bakes it, and why should we trust him to succeed in most of what he attempts.
Here’s what Wiki has to say about the highlights of Teddy Roosevelt’s 7+ years as president:
As a leader of the progressive movement, he championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies, which called for fairness for all citizens, breaking bad trusts, regulating railroads, and pure food and drugs. Roosevelt prioritized conservation and established national parks, forests, and monuments to preserve U.S. natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, beginning construction of the Panama Canal. Roosevelt expanded the Navy and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project naval power. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, the first American to win a Nobel Prize.
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