OPINION:
Progressive believe the upcoming elections will be not about foreign policy, immigration or inflation, but about whether democracy itself will survive. They claim to regard former President Donald Trump as an unprecedented existential threat to the American idea who must be defeated at any cost.
Every election is characterized hyperbolically by candidates and party leaders as the most important ever. They warn about the dangers candidates of the other party pose not just to them but to the future of the republic itself, so what’s happening as the 2024 elections approach is not so unusual.
When President Theodore Roosevelt’s term ended in 1908, his good friend William Howard Taft was elected with Teddy’s enthusiastic support. The friendship ended partly because Taft differed with Teddy on a few policy questions but mostly because Roosevelt was thin-skinned and never forgot or forgave a slight.
The friendship was doomed shortly after Taft’s election when he sent Roosevelt an effusive letter thanking him for his support but including a line that enraged Teddy. His election would not have been possible, Taft wrote, without “you and my brother Charlie.” Comparing the value of his help to what anyone else could provide struck Teddy as outrageous. He headed off on an African expedition right after the election to brood and hunt.
Today, Teddy Roosevelt is considered a great president, but the political establishment then saw him as dangerous, erratic, a threat to the stability of the country. As governor of New York, he had so upset party leaders that they lobbied to get him the Republican vice presidential nomination in 1904. Kicking him up to the powerless vice presidency seemed like a great idea at the time, but Ohio’s Mark Hanna, that era’s Karl Rove, warned, “Don’t any of you realize that there is only one life between this madman and the White House?”
Six months later, Roosevelt moved into the Oval Office on the death of President William McKinley. He was elected on his own in 1908. At the Republican nominating convention that summer, the president issued an ultimatum remembered to this day. “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead” became the theme of his campaign. Believing that Arab pirates had kidnapped American businessman Ion Perdicaris, Teddy sent the Navy and Marines to Morocco to rescue him.
But there was a problem. As the fleet set sail, Roosevelt’s secretary of state informed him that the Greek-born Perdicaris, the American that Roosevelt had vowed to free at any cost, was not an American. The president looked his secretary of state in the eye and said, “He is now.”
Roosevelt would not admit to a mistake, call off the troops, or give up a great campaign slogan that could help reelect him.
Contemporary detractors considered Teddy Roosevelt purely transactional, prone to changing positions on domestic and foreign issues for political rather than substantive reasons. Mark Twain declared him “far and away the worst president we have ever had.” Roosevelt was, according to Twain, “ready to kick the Constitution into the backyard when it gets in the way.“
The nation survived four more years of Roosevelt, and he accomplished a good deal. He also became a celebrity as much as a politician. The public gobbled up his adventures, and thousands gathered wherever he appeared.
That celebrity and his increasing anger at Taft and the other Republicans who didn’t give him the respect he believed was his due persuaded Teddy to run against Taft in 1912 and win another term in the White House.
Roosevelt believed his celebrity and the crowds he drew as he campaigned would translate into convention delegates, but that turned out to be wishful thinking. As Taft piled up delegates, Roosevelt bellowed that the system was rigged, his enemies were stealing votes, and that in an honest contest, he would have been an easy winner. Investigations later found the usual shenanigans but concluded that Roosevelt had lost honestly.
The fiery Roosevelt didn’t have it in him to accept defeat. He ran as the “Bull Moose” alternative to Taft and Democrat Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, vowing to be a strong president who would get even with his enemies and reform the Supreme Court if it tried to block his initiatives.
The “Never Teddy” Republicans knew Taft couldn’t win with Roosevelt in the race but were convinced that their top priority should be keeping Roosevelt from getting back into power lest he scrap the Constitution and destroy the American republic.
Roosevelt lost, learning, as Sens. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern would later, that big crowds don’t always translate into votes. History may be repeating itself today in how many react to Donald Trump returning to the White House.
Today, Teddy is revered for the good he did as president rather than as the often ill-tempered cowboy his fellow Republicans couldn’t stand. Mr. Trump, too, may one day be remembered for his accomplishments rather than his coarseness and late-night tweets.
Regardless of what happens, however, we can take comfort that the nation, the presidency and the republic have seen and survived all of this before.
• David Keene is editor-at-large for The Washington Times.
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