A Square Deal All Around

The Republican Roosevelt – John Morton Blum

Blum was the associate editor of The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt. So after steeped in everything Teddy for literally years, he wrote this book, not exactly a biography but an essay that focuses on TR as a conservative in the sense of that time, as a professional politician, and as a leader of Congress. He brings up many interesting points, but as a general reader I have to observe that the author assumes an in-depth knowledge of the issues of the time. For example, Dingleyism seems to have riled Democrats up back in the day. Whatever that was 

Recently my state saw a governor go, one that hated the Left for its alienating visions like Defund the Police. Always there’s a strain between the principled and the practicable.  So, refreshingly, Blum focuses on Roosevelt's realistic concepts of the ends and means of political power. Blum makes a good argument that Roosevelt’s political philosophy was coherent and consistent throughout his career. He cites the example of the controversy over empowering the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates in 1906.

Roosevelt, Blum says, “concerned himself not with happiness but with hard work, duty, power, order.” TR was a strong individual, concentrated on extending executive power in order to implement his Square Deal, i.e. conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. Due to the usual factors (conservatism, inertia, and events such as a major war), this kind of progressive activism was in suspension until about 1933, when another Roosevelt entered the White House.

Recommended to readers into the topic, though by no means is this popular history.