The Crowley Chronicles

I’m talking, of course, of the Teddy-bear Roosevelt.  (Though, when I get around to reading about his more famous nephew, I think I’ll like him, too.)

I just finished the first volume of a biography on Teddy (thanks, Nelli and Michael!) and, towards the end, I found this letter he’d written.  It sums up well one of the reasons I’d have voted for him, if I lived back then.  (There were a lot of good reasons to vote for him, this is just one.)

He’d just been accused by a Republican party ‘boss’ (a word, by the way, I’m learning connotes corruption) of being ‘altruistic,’ which meant the same thing as ‘socialistic.’  Here is an excerpt from his response.  In his answer, the term ‘Bryanism’ refers o the populist policies of democratic candidate ‘William Jennings Bryan.’

I appreciate all you say about what Bryanism means, and I also. . . [am] as strongly opposed to populism in every stage as the greatest representatives of corrupt wealth, but. . . these representatives . . . have themselves been responsible for a portion of the conditions against which Bryanism is in ignorant, and sometime wicked revolt.  I do not believe it is wise or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to say that there are no evils to be corrected.  It seems to me that our attitude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby showing, that, whereas the populists, socialst and others really do not correct the evils at all . . . the Republicans hold the just balance and set our faces as resolutely agains improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other.

How can you not like him?  I’d vote for a Roosevelt Republican any day.