Episode 13 - Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost

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Michael Patrick Cullinane, welcome to the Talk About Teddy podcast.

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Oh, it's great to be here, guys.

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as well as TR would say, I'm delighted.

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Yeah, we've been looking forward to this, for some time.

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So, Michael, you have, uh, this background, academic background publishing in, American you actually host, uh, a podcast also on, the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.

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so, where does your interest in Roosevelt come about? Well, uh, well, I'm glad you mentioned imperialism because we know that TR certainly had a strong position on American power in the world.

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He wanted to increase American power in the world.

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I think it's safe to say that, most accounts, TR was an imperialist.

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I mean, there's different guises in all that as well, and degrees.

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But, you know, T.

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R.

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definitely believed that the United States should have a larger role to play in world affairs and believed in intervening in world affairs, and the first group of people that I studied, uh, were, were a group of Americans known as the anti imperialists.

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And they were around at the end of the 19th century and they were opposed to American of places like the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, uh, but really the Yes.

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The Philippines is a city.

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5, 000 archipelago with 10, 10 million people living in it, and the anti imperialists were opposed to America's of those islands.

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Now, TR, um, sort of inherited the Philippines because the policies of McKinley are what dictated, uh, the acquisition of those islands to the United States, uh, but TR enthusiastically sought to, um, Well, he probably would have said civilize them.

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I think what, what he very much meant to do was to bring the ideas and institutions of American democracy to the Philippines.

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Um, of course there was a 15 year war that waged there and the people that were opposed to that policy really disliked TR's views.

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They really got on with him.

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I mean, not in all cases, but our politics now are so far removed from the difference between a policy disagreement and a personal dislike that I was fascinated by Roosevelt.

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How could Roosevelt be, you know, politically opposed to someone and break bread with them in the white house the day, the day after an argument, Yeah.

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So I would love if our politics could get back to what they were when, when TR was president.

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Amen Yeah, yeah yeah, so what you've written with your 2017 book, Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost, The History and Memory of an American Icon.

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this is not, uh, this is not a biography.

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This is not a straight academic historiography of, uh, of all of the hundreds of, works published on Roosevelt.

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So can you think of what caused this spark, uh, for you to, want to look at Roosevelt's history? Yes.

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So I remember exactly the moment that I, that I thought about this book and it was before I finished my PhD, which was about the anti imperialist movement.

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I was watching the 2000 Republican presidential primary debates in Iowa, and there were 10 candidates on the stage.

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And the moderator asked this really great, but challenging question to the 10 candidates.

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Who's your favorite philosopher? And, you know, there was some pretty wishy washy answers, and the last two people to comment, well, the penultimate answer was from John McCain.

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And John McCain was a big fan of Theodore Roosevelt, and straight away he goes, Theodore Roosevelt, you know, and I, oh, that's a good answer.

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Theodore Roosevelt, an American philosopher.

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And, uh, and then George W.

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Bush was last, and his answer was, Jesus Christ.

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And I said, well, the right answer, you know, because you're going to win voters with that answer more than you are with the Theodore Roosevelt.

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But the Theodore Roosevelt answer was really interesting because I thought how many politicians have invoked Theodore Roosevelt over the years? And it turns out.

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every president, with the exception of one, a most recent president, not, not Biden, but Donald Trump, invoked Theodore Roosevelt in their political proclamations or in signing legislation or even invoking them as their, you know, their lodestar and political guide.

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Bill Clinton and George W.

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Bush both said that they, you know, that they kind of worshipped Theodore Roosevelt as their, their political guru and Sherpa.

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Um, so I wanted to figure out how.

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that were so different could find the same inspiration in a man like Theodore Roosevelt.

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And it turns out that it's not just politics, but it's pop culture and historians and, you know, there's all these various, um, takes on Theodore Roosevelt since his death in 1919 that I thought we needed what I've kind of taken to call it as a posthumous biography.

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You know, it's a, it's a history of his life after he died because we've really used and abused him an awful lot in those 100 years.

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Well, I know after he died, your book mentions the memorials that, the vast array of those.

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Could you describe some of those for us? Mm of them are spectacular.

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I mean, let me give you a couple of examples that might interest listeners.

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So, listeners will know that, um, just recently a statue of Theodore Roosevelt came down in front of the American museum of natural history.

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It was a hmm.

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that James Earl Frazer did.

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It was friends with Theodore Roosevelt and it was taken down because has, uh, on horseback, uh, flanked, by a Masai warrior, an African Masai warrior, and a native American, I'm guessing a chief based on the Yeah.

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Um, so, it does not do a good job of, uh, Telling the story of racial equality.

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It's got a white man on horseback and it's got, uh, an African and a Native American on, on this side and lower down.

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So they removed that statue.

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Um, the really interesting thing is about the outrage that people had about it coming down because of course, Theodore Roosevelt was not a Confederate and we've seen so many Confederate statues come down, right? He was, uh, you know, he believed deeply in the reconstruction constitution.

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So, uh, and he never, his family didn't own slaves.

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So.

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So this was curious, you know, and for me, I knew that Theodore Roosevelt never wanted a statue of himself.

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In fact, he told his wife and his son, Mm hmm.

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and if anyone ever wants the sources on that, I'm happy to drag those up because plenty of people have told me, oh, how do you know what Theodore Roosevelt would want? Well, his wife and his son say he never wanted a statue, but particularly never wanted a statue of him on horseback.

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Now, how interesting is that, that we've decided over and over again to reproduce memorials of Theodore Roosevelt Either his image, his, hmm.

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statue of him, or on horseback.

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And, and frankly, we don't really listen to what the dead want at all, or even No.

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want in some cases.

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So another really good example is if you visit Manhattan, you can visit the site of Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace, which is Mm hmm.

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Street.

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That is a replica house, because Theodore Roosevelt's house was knocked down in, I think, 1905, 1906, something like that.

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And a, and a few years later, a commercial structure was erected there.

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only reason why the house was knocked down is because Theodore Roosevelt wanted it knocked down.

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In fact, there was a movement to try and save his house and create a sort of shrine to Theodore Roosevelt there.

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And he said, I don't want it.

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Uh, you know, and, and what, what happens? He passes away.

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And a few years later, uh, the Women's Roosevelt Memorial Association builds the thing that he didn't want.

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So We're really good at putting up things that we think replicate Mm embody or personify or portray a person, it's usually a reflection of what we want.

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And I think that's the kind of takeaway from the book is that we are really the agents of Roosevelt's memory.

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He's gone and we are, we're producing largely fictions in a lot of cases hmm.

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of the past.

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Yeah.

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Mm uh, little excerpt from the first part of your book it's a quote from, John Dewey, about, uh, everyone who goes into political life, um, gradually grows up a double, and that double consists of the acts of the original, uh, political party.

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individual reflected first in the imagination and then in the desires and the acts of other men.

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and that T.

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R.

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's double, is gonna grow immense over time because, he so captured that imagination, uh, of his countrymen.

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It, it dawned on me that maybe the only thing after he died that people actually, um, listened to was that his funeral be, simple, uh, But after that, it seems as if none of his desires, for memorialization or, or how he'd be remembered or legacy.

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Is what he would have wanted right? Yeah, and don't want to be too despondent about that because I think you could.

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I think you can get down and say, Oh, well, we can't really get the exact truth and understand the past exactly as it was lived.

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But I think that's okay too.

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I think that ultimately we can, we can take away lessons as long as we say to ourselves with the degree of.

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Self awareness that this isn't exactly what it was, you know, that is gone in terms of TR I mean gosh There are so many lessons that we can take from his life and things that we can learn and applications of his legacy But we have to just realize that it's through our eyes that we're we're doing that and that it's really that we're the agents of those Actions not TR.

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I Yeah.

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I think it's great that you brought up the um I mean, John Dewey's pretty heavy, heavy stuff.

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So you gotta do a little bit of lifting, uh, even in reading Dewey.

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But another really good example is when, uh, James Earl Fraser, the same guy who made that statue in the, um, in front of the American Museum of Natural History.

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also cast the death mask and the, uh, casting of TR's hands.

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So when TR died, Kermit Roosevelt, his wife, allowed Frasier to go upstairs, or I think it was actually downstairs, into the north room where he was laying in state, and he put Placer of Paris on T.

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R.

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's face, and that's really the first memorial we have of T.

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R.,

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and what's interesting is Yeah.

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directly from the man itself, so you can't get more direct, and Mm people that saw the mask, they said, well, this isn't him, hmm.

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know, and there's a poet who wrote a famously It just lacks TR's soul.

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Yeah.

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interesting too, that people, people knew that there wasn't, you know, not that all these memorials aren't exactly the real thing.

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They require us to put our souls into them in order to interpret them.

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He was so multifaceted, even in his lifetime, yeah.

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he, he meant so many different things to so many people while he lived.

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It's not surprising that in his death that continues.

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Yeah, that's absolutely right.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, and I know in your book the memorials you mentioned weren't just statues.

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There were some I think he may have actually been pleased with.

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Things like nature preserves I think he would have enjoyed.

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You know, Theodore Roosevelt National Park later I think he would have thought that was a bully idea.

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Heh heh heh heh heh.

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Mm those are the memorials that require you to get involved, hmm.

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just something that's that you look upon, but that you have to get outdoors.

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And know, in terms of his legacy, I don't think there's any other president that loved the outdoors as much as he did.

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Um, so kind of without question, things that would get people Uh, involved in outdoors would certainly be a great one.

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I think there's a lot of, um, movies and films that he would have loved, actually, that depict him.

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I think A Night at the Museum is a great film.

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Um, and also, you know, that whole tongue in cheek.

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There's a scene where, um, Ben Stiller is talking to Robin Williams.

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You know, Robin Williams plays Mm hmm.

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Theodore Roosevelt character.

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And Robin Williams looks to Ben Stiller and says something like, You know, this is all make believe.

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I'm just made out of wax.

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Thanks.

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Mm hmm.

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Mm hmm.

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And that I think, you know, there's a, there's a humor behind that, that would have been appealing too.

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So there's, there's, there's lots of things that I think we can take away in terms of legacy.

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The book sets out five major areas.

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One is T.

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R.

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's Americanism.

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Um, another is his progressivism, is conservation, the, and one of the last ones, I think probably one of the most important ones, the TR was a preacher, you know, he was a great publicist and that is really what makes him someone that we remember nowadays.

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The reason why he was an effective president is because he was able to get his ideas to the American public and convince them that they were the right, the right ideas.

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So, um, so much to take away in terms of leadership there.

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Um, And I think the, you know, the cowboy image is another one.

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All of those images also have two sides to them, which is also going back to, you know, your, your point about him being multifaceted, you know, take the progressive for a moment, right? Progressive.

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I mean, that's a dirty word for some people, but for other people, it's, it's, it identifies their political identity.

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So TR straddled or maybe sat on that fence a little bit too.

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So when he died, socialists said, ah, he wasn't progressive enough.

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Right.

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And you know, diehard conservatives were like, ah, he was far too progressive for Mm hmm.

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has allowed him to transcend a lot of the political debates.

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you know, people can take parts of his progressivism and say it fits with their own political identity.

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Uh, I was going to ask if you could speak to the memorial associations that began to form, uh, immediately after his death in 1919.

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Yeah, sure.

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So I mean, three days after he dies in New York, um, there is a meeting of really a number of prominent men and uh, it is all men and they're called the Roosevelt Memorial Association.

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And they begin a fundraising campaign that's wildly successful.

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they raise millions of dollars within the first year to erect a national memorial to Roosevelt.

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And they, they have other ideas as well.

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A competing group emerges, uh, maybe only a few days later of women.

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And, uh, they are wildly successful, not in raising money, but creating a memorial that they believe is going to speak to Roosevelt's Americanism.

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So they, uh, within four years purchased the birthplace, or the site of the birthplace, in East 20th Street.

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And they, you know, their plan is, is a very political plan, interestingly, these, uh, these women, which are heh heh.

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New York socialites.

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And, and they want to make the, the house a memorial.

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a teaching grounds or a Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, And there's a connotation in there too, that immigrants might have on American values.

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And they talked about, uh, making sure that there was no anarchists and communists in America.

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And they were worried that immigrants might be the most likely candidates for those sort of political ideologies.

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they're not successful in the long run because they're political, whereas the men's group is decidedly apolitical, and they want to focus on a memorial that is artistic in nature that can transcend a single generation.

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So while Americanism was a very popular idea in the 1920s, like this is the first Red Scare, you can imagine that that sort of patriotic ideology would have been very popular.

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The men said that, and they knew and they were cognizant that that would.

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and that they would need something that's more lasting, but it takes them forever to come up with a memorial plan that is suitable to the country.

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So yeah, yeah, is memorialized today.

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Theodore Roosevelt was meant to be memorialized, and the men's group sets up a competition to create a memorial in the Tidal Basin.

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And John Russell Pope wins that competition, and there's a huge, expansive memorial.

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marble, uh, field and, uh, 150 colonnades and a big 200 foot geyser that's supposed to spout up in the middle of the, the tidal basin.

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And, and basically it all comes together in about 1924.

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And that's the year that Woodrow Wilson dies.

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And of course, TR and Wilson did not get along and the politics of it all are basically laid bare before the American public.

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doesn't get the spot on the tidal basin.

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And so the Roosevelt Memorial Association needs to realign or, or, or rejig their efforts to find a more suitable space.

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And they settle on what was then known as Anal Osten Island, which is now known as TR Island, which is a 88 acre island in the middle of the Potomac, just due west of the Lincoln Memorial.

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And it's a, I think it's a wonderful spot for TR for a number of reasons.

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It's, uh, it's designed by Frederick Law Olmsted is one of the greatest landscape architects ever.

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yeah, yeah, he wanted to make a primeval forest on the, on the space there.

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And that seems to me in keeping with the idea of TR as an outdoorsman and a conservationist.

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course, in time, people, you know, as I was saying at the outset of this talk, people decide that they have a better idea.

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And so they put a statue there and they put a, you know, a grander memorial that, you know, probably undermined the idea that Olmsted had.

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Um, but what's great about it is it's not easy to get to and it makes people work.

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And I think that is something that is very Rooseveltian as well.

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You go there and you're rewarded you know, a bit of nature, but also a bit of how in the world did he get here? Um, and so these two groups eventually merged, the women's group and the men's group eventually merged in the 1950s.

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And they're also responsible then for other places like Sagamore Hill becoming a national memorial and, and other spots like Oyster Bay Memorial Park and others.

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So they're, I mean, they're really important.

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They are, they are the main agents of TR's memory in the world yeah, exist today.

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The Theodore Roosevelt Association mm hmm, is still around.

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Same, same congressionally chartered organization.

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Yeah, you have, a few pictures of some of the, the schematics of some of those really grand designs yeah, thrown around there in the early and mid twenties, uh, it, for the title base and what's going to become the Jefferson Memorial, um, Just, that's astonishing to look at the, the scale of some, some of those early designs, uh, and then see what, what they ended up mm hmm, getting, uh, on T.

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R.

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Island, uh, um, with the exception of, what is it, like a 16, 17 foot statue of yeah, presiding over the island.

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the Roosevelt family, um, his wife Edith, his children knew, as you said, how he felt about statues, particularly equestrian yeah, and, and didn't want to be, um, memorialized in marble, uh, and yet, was it just the persuasiveness of, Some of these memorialization groups that persuaded them little by little to support those kinds of efforts.

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How Just happenstance and how some of the original designs of these memorials didn't fit with their conception yeah, father either.

195
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So if we ignore the title basin for a moment and just go to the island where he's memorialized today, we forget that there were other designs for that space.

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So Olmstead does the landscape, uh, design, but there is an architect who designed what was, uh, it's called an armillary sphere.

197
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It looks like a bunch of rings, uh, that kind of, they're not in motion, but they look like they could be in motion.

198
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And there was like a little bronze flame in the middle of this giant armillary sphere.

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the, the kids didn't like that either.

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So Alice I think called them Donuts in Limbo when she saw them.

201
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And other, other kids were, were like, you know, this is, this is so abstract that it doesn't capture the essence of their father either.

202
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So when they see Paul Manship's design for the 16 foot statue, that's there now, uh, they didn't like that either.

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But they kind of were like at the end of their, their tether, you know, I mean, it had been years and nothing went up.

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So I think you resign yourself in some cases too, to say that nothing is really going to be perfect.

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And, you know, TR wouldn't have wanted these things perhaps.

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And we, and we know that pretty definitively.

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TR is not around anymore.

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No, he doesn't get much of a say now.

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With that said, there are some memorials that I think, you know, very much the family had a hand in.

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So, whether it's Sagamore Hill, which when you go to Sagamore Hill, I think you really oh, the essence of Theodore yes, it's his home, it's his stuff, it's arranged the way he would have liked it arranged.

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And, know, there's something about that that seems really genuine.

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I think the birthplace, although it's a replica, There's some really, you know, some really sincere elements of that that make you feel like you're going back in time to the 1850s in New York City.

213
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Um, which is a remarkable, you know, feat for any memorial to pull off.

214
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But, you know, you guys mentioned as well some of the things that either bear his imprinter or they bear his name.

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Like, um, you know, this, Island Bird Preserve, or there's Devil's Tower, the first national monument in mm hmm.

216
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monument.

217
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Um, all of those bear a little bit of TR, and I think they're, some of them are really special as well.,

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Your book mentions a lot of the biographies that were written Mm hmm.

219
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almost like memorials to him.

220
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Um, and I know the family wasn't real pleased with some of those.

221
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Could you describe some of the biographies that came about as memorials to help shape T.

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R.

223
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's legacy and memory? Yes, so there's two things that are happening in 1920 around the time that TR, so TR dies in 1919.

224
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There's a revolution in biography that's happening at that moment where any amateur thinks that they can write a biography.

225
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And so there's loads of people that are coming out of the woodwork when he dies that said, Oh, I knew TR and this is the man as I knew him.

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So for example, his one, uh, uh, a New York city, uh, is he a pastor? I think Pat, but he's a, he's a clergyman, you know, writes about TR and how religious TR Yeah.

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And, you know, there's, uh, Owen Wister writes a book about, you know, my friend TR and, you know, just about everyone that knew him, you know, about him, you know, T.

228
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R.

229
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the intellectual, T.

230
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R.

231
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the cowboy, T.

232
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R.,

233
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you know, whatever.

234
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And all of them, I mean, all of them aren't wrong in the sense that he was all of those things, but this is where perspective is really important.

235
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If you, if you add all these things together, you might wind up with something that's really wonderful, but they were all What we would call hagiographies.

236
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You Yeah.

237
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trying to make TR out as a saint.

238
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And that's a, that's a bad idea in biography because what you wind up doing is, is dehumanizing the person.

239
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Yeah.

240
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biography tends to go through this sort of, um, these sort of ups and downs, like a rollercoaster.

241
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So you often start out, especially with presidents, uh, hagiographies, you know, saintly version of the president.

242
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I mean, I remember when Gerald Ford died, everyone said, Oh, you know, Gerald Ford really saved the country.

243
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You know, but if you ask people in 1974, when Gerald Ford, when he pardoned Richard Nixon, they would not have said that was a good thing, but that was forgotten the day he died.

244
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Now, as time goes on, that changes again.

245
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So in the case of Theodore Roosevelt, there's about 10 years.

246
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Where you have biographers writing nothing but glowing Yeah.

247
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in 1931, there's an academic treatment of Roosevelt.

248
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Henry Pringle writes biography in which he characterizes Roosevelt as a juvenile delinquent and an Yeah.

249
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And it's so focused on that character trait of him being an egomaniac that it sheds almost all of the other material.

250
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I mean, and I can get why he wrote it too, because a decade, you have these glowing biographies.

251
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So it's so easy to just say, well, it's.

252
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Actually, TR was the opposite of that.

253
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And it sells a lot of books.

254
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It wins the Pulitzer Prize.

255
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And for a generation, that is the dominant view of TR.

256
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Yeah.

257
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So it really is not until the 1990s that we get really solid academic nuance in, um, sorry, 1970s, I should say.

258
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We get books like Edmund Morris The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.

259
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We get David McCullough's book, Morning on Horsebacks.

260
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Yeah.

261
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Uh, we get, uh, in the 2000s, we get My favorite biography, Kathy Dalton's strenuous Yes.

262
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Um, and we've had some fantastic biographies since then too.

263
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But what we've done is we've gone through the ups and downs of saint and sinner, and we've settled somewhere in the middle, which is actually a rather human portrait of a man who was at the end of the day, the human being, he had flaws and he Yes.

264
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Yeah.

265
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he had wonderful characteristics as well.

266
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I know Henry Pringle's biography of T.

267
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R.

268
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really angered Edith, T.

269
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R.

270
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's wife.

271
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And in Sylvia Jukes Morris's biography of Edith, she talks about the strong opinions that the whole family had in the 1920s and 30s about all the different biographies.

272
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I mean, Edith couldn't stand having Herman Hagedorn, um, like she said, the starry eyed mixture of fact and fiction.

273
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But I think my favorite reaction is Edith's to Herman Hagedorn.

274
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Pringle's book when she writes to Ethel and she quotes and says on each page is a sneer or a slap at father I cannot read it.

275
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I should like to burn it and mail the ashes back to its author do you really feel? Yes Well, you Herman Hagedorn.

276
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I, I wrote down a quote from Hagedorn who is amongst that, uh, First generation of,, hagiographies for, for certain.

277
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Um, he said in his, uh, boy's life of TR, which was, I believe, still written, uh, in the last year of Roosevelt's life.

278
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Um, one cannot explain him any more than you can explain electricity or falling in love.

279
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And I love, I love that quote.

280
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I think that is actually, that's, um, That's a great metaphor for TR.

281
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I mean, the energy is, it's hard to explain.

282
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And the, there's some things about, um, Hagedorn's work.

283
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I mean, Hagedorn is kind of like the high priest of Roosevelt memorialization because he's not just a writer.

284
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Um, you know, he, he made films, he collected, I mean, a lot of the reason why the Harvard collection is so big is down to one man.

285
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So I think we've got to give credit where credit is due.

286
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He was a major figure in the, uh, the memory of, of Theodore Roosevelt.

287
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And we owe, we actually owe a lot to him, but he was also a pretty bombastic and hyperbolic writer.

288
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And when he was, when he was, you know, really at the height of his career in world war one and just after world war one, was writing a lot of tripe.

289
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Um, but.

290
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TR, what I can say too, is he got better over time.

291
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When he writes, um, you know, Roosevelt's The Sagamore Hill, that's a much more yeah, book than A Boy's Life or yeah, Stuff.

292
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And, I think that's, what's really interesting is that he was quite tempered early on by, by other figures who were more mature.

293
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So in that first meeting of the Memorial Association in New York, three days after Roosevelt dies, Hagedorn says, And remember, Hagrid was a kind of small player in yeah He's not as well known as, we're talking about like, Elihu Root, you know, New York senator and Former Secretary of State is in the room.

294
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And, and Hagedorn says, We gotta talk about TR and Americanism.

295
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We need to stop the communists.

296
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And this is in 1919.

297
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That fits.

298
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And Root says to Hagedorn, you know, kind of like, sit down, young fella.

299
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Yeah, we're not gonna do that at all.

300
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We're gonna, you know, we're gonna have an artistic thing that's gonna last for generations to come.

301
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And I think what Hagedorn got back Certainly by the time he passed away in 1963, that you can't make anything for one time.

302
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Whatever you, whatever you make and do, you have to think long term when you're, at least when you're talking about memory.

303
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yeah, because it can't last and gosh, we've got, we've got so much going on at the moment with TR's legacy, whether it's presidential library, the library that's being built in Medora, uh, whether we're talking about, you know, Morris's papers, whether, yeah.

304
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just so much going on right now that I think we're at this inflection point where everyone needs to be thinking longterm because we will still be talking about Theodore Roosevelt a hundred years from now.

305
00:29:01,556.9035 --> 00:29:02,76.9035
Oh, yeah.

306
00:29:02,661.9035 --> 00:29:03,311.9035
Definitely.

307
00:29:03,781.9035 --> 00:29:15,781.9035
With Herman Hagedorn, you talked about him wearing out his shoe leather, tirelessly walking the corridors of the Senate office building, trying to organize a national celebration of TR's 100th birthday.

308
00:29:16,281.9035 --> 00:29:19,521.904
And he doesn't get the recognition that he deserves.

309
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At times, we look at things that he did, taking the Rough Riders interviews and turning that into a novel.

310
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Rather than something historic, you know, a good, you know, historic piece, but yeah, he really deserves a lot of credit.

311
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I mean, the centennial, so the centennial is held in 1958.

312
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It's actually held for a year from 1957 to 1958, but you know, that is largely down to Hagedorn.

313
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And he was able to mobilize the president, that's Eisenhower at the time, uh, and a number of really key senators and in just about every state.

314
00:29:57,532.9035 --> 00:30:00,472.9035
Now that is, when you think about it, that is incredible.

315
00:30:00,887.9035 --> 00:30:11,977.9035
Um, and every one of those people, the, the politicians as well as Hagedorn and many of the other centenary staff were laser focused on making that year all about TR.

316
00:30:12,27.9035 --> 00:30:18,447.9035
And there are some major outcomes from that, that we still have, whether it's books, whether it's the name of certain places.

317
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And, uh, I mean, there's, there's a lot of memorialization that comes out of that.

318
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And.

319
00:30:22,772.9035 --> 00:30:28,651.8035
Hagedorn returned to his theme of Americanism, and he, he found a more receptive audience in the 1950s heh.

320
00:30:28,682.9035 --> 00:30:31,71.9035
were in the middle of a second Red Scare, Yeah.

321
00:30:31,72.0035 --> 00:30:32,921.8035
Heh heh heh heh heh.

322
00:30:32,932.9035 --> 00:30:45,332.9035
but, you know, communism was still a very dirty word in America in the 1950s, maybe it still is, and he, he latched onto that and conservation as the two core themes of Roosevelt's 100th anniversary.

323
00:30:46,772.9035 --> 00:30:53,612.9035
you probably can't overemphasize enough Hagedorn's role in, uh, keeping that memory and legacy alive.

324
00:30:54,762.9035 --> 00:31:01,601.9035
Really separate, uh, the Roosevelt Memorial Association and Herman Hagedorn during his life, I guess, but could you Yeah.

325
00:31:02,662.9035 --> 00:31:20,192.9035
some of those developments in the 1940s into the 50s, um, with, with academics, with, with papers Hagedorn maybe had a role in that started to revive, um, Roosevelt's legacy after being drug into the depths with Pringle's biography.

326
00:31:21,2.9035 --> 00:31:33,892.9035
Sure, yeah, and I, I just should say as well at the outset that, um, I'm the public historian for the Theodore Roosevelt Association, and this is the organization that's still, uh, around from, from 1920.

327
00:31:34,662.9035 --> 00:31:45,747.9035
When they, when they merge with the Women's Memorial Association in the late 40s and early 50s, they really refocus on a number of things, but academic pursuits is one of them.

328
00:31:46,227.9035 --> 00:31:57,577.9035
And the thing that counters the Pringle biography or offers an alternative view of Roosevelt is a project that starts in the late 40s and early 50s around TR's letters.

329
00:31:57,617.9035 --> 00:32:09,297.9035
Because what Pringle, what made him such an authority was that he had access to a lot of personal papers at Sagamore Hill and at the Library of Congress that previous biographers didn't have access to.

330
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But he didn't have access to everything, and particularly the post presidential years were absent from Pringle's biography.

331
00:32:16,747.9035 --> 00:32:30,587.9035
And Herman Hagedorn, as well as a bunch of other far sighted members of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, decided to start a letters project that would put together all of TR's most important letters.

332
00:32:31,212.9035 --> 00:32:39,172.9035
And that's not an easy thing, because TR, we estimate, wrote anywhere from 150 to maybe as much as 200, 000 letters during his lifetime.

333
00:32:39,271.9035 --> 00:32:39,561.9035
Yeah.

334
00:32:39,692.9035 --> 00:32:42,62.9025
then Mm the letters that come in to him as well, so.

335
00:32:42,902.9035 --> 00:32:50,802.9025
This is a, you know, this is an incredible project, and it's led by a chap called Elting Morrison, who was a professor at MIT.

336
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And he had written a brilliant biography of Admiral Sim, who was a World hmm.

337
00:32:54,872.0035 --> 00:32:55,271.8025
Yeah.

338
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pilot.

339
00:32:56,17.9035 --> 00:32:56,387.9035
genius.

340
00:32:57,107.9035 --> 00:33:08,547.9025
And, uh, he was, he was hired by the Theodore Roosevelt Association and worked with Harvard University where the Memorial Association's papers were being moved in the, in the 40s.

341
00:33:09,337.9035 --> 00:33:13,781.9035
they went through every letter they could find of Theodore Roosevelt Mm of hmm.

342
00:33:13,887.9025 --> 00:33:15,537.9035
from the Harvard archives.

343
00:33:15,647.9035 --> 00:33:21,307.9035
And they, they collected them in eight volumes and published them in the early 50s, from 1950 to 1954.

344
00:33:22,792.9035 --> 00:33:26,792.9035
And those letters change people's minds about Theodore Roosevelt.

345
00:33:26,832.9035 --> 00:33:28,178.6031667
So a really good Yeah.

346
00:33:28,178.6031667 --> 00:33:28,795.2028333
Yeah.

347
00:33:28,795.2028333 --> 00:33:49,962.9035
Mm one of America's most prominent professors of history at the time is a guy called Richard Hofstadter from Columbia university who would have written, um, you know, important books about the political tradition in America, about the age of reform and his views of Roosevelt start out in the late forties and early fifties as extremely negative.

348
00:33:50,322.9035 --> 00:33:54,472.9035
And they sort of morph into a much, much varied and more nuanced view.

349
00:33:54,751.9025 --> 00:33:54,911.9025
hmm.

350
00:33:55,102.9035 --> 00:34:07,827.9035
And we get a bunch of other historians like, um, uh, John Morton Bloom and, uh, and others that, that are writing about TR as part of a, a political tradition in America rather than an outlier.

351
00:34:08,287.9035 --> 00:34:24,187.9025
And that really brings him, uh, really brings him back from the precipice where he was with Pringle as just, uh, an outsized personality, a gnashing teeth and a egomaniac, you know, Yeah, or as one, as Kathy Dalton calls that the crazy Teddy view of Theodore Roosevelt.

352
00:34:24,207.9035 --> 00:34:30,797.9035
That's, not extinguished by the 1950s, but it's the TRA and its foresight to fund that letters project.

353
00:34:30,797.9035 --> 00:34:34,727.9035
It then leads to a revival in, in his image.

354
00:34:34,921.9035 --> 00:34:38,491.9035
yeah, dispels the arsenic and old lace, T.

355
00:34:38,491.9035 --> 00:34:38,811.9035
R.

356
00:34:39,557.9035 --> 00:34:39,917.9035
Right.

357
00:34:40,177.9035 --> 00:34:43,227.9035
Teddy Brewster charging up the stairs thinking they're San Juan Heights.

358
00:34:44,462.9035 --> 00:34:45,42.9035
Oh dear.

359
00:34:45,102.9035 --> 00:34:45,482.9035
Yeah.

360
00:34:45,483.0035 --> 00:34:45,520.4035
Yeah.

361
00:34:45,520.4035 --> 00:34:45,557.8035
Yeah.

362
00:34:46,201.9025 --> 00:34:51,671.9015
In your book you devoted quite a few pages to the influence and success of Dr.

363
00:34:51,671.9025 --> 00:34:54,861.9025
John Cable, who was the executive director of the T.

364
00:34:54,861.9025 --> 00:34:55,61.9025
R.

365
00:34:55,61.9025 --> 00:34:55,291.9025
A.

366
00:34:55,831.9025 --> 00:34:59,457.9025
Um, would you tell us about his work? Yes.

367
00:34:59,477.9025 --> 00:35:05,17.9025
So John Gable is incredibly important and it's a great regret that I never got a chance to meet the man.

368
00:35:05,137.9025 --> 00:35:09,317.9025
John Gable died, I believe it's 2004, I might be off by a year.

369
00:35:10,397.9025 --> 00:35:16,192.9025
Died rather suddenly, but he became the He became the Herman Hagedorn of the next generation.

370
00:35:16,192.9025 --> 00:35:20,802.9025
So Yeah, the directorship of the Theodore Roosevelt Association in 1975.

371
00:35:20,892.9025 --> 00:35:29,392.9015
And I think the association, it's safe to say it was kind of on the ropes, having lost Herman Hagedorn and a bit of direction and enthusiasm in those intervening years.

372
00:35:29,697.9025 --> 00:35:35,207.9025
And John Gable, really, with the help of Ethel Roosevelt, uh, Derby, and, um, and P.

373
00:35:35,207.9025 --> 00:35:43,877.9025
James Roosevelt, you know, two prominent yeah, they, they come up with a new strategic plan for the association that sees it into the next generation.

374
00:35:43,937.9025 --> 00:35:47,917.9015
So, John Gable is responsible for the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal.

375
00:35:48,327.9025 --> 00:35:51,777.9025
Which is an academic, uh, an academic, uh, peer reviewed journal.

376
00:35:52,257.9025 --> 00:36:04,947.9025
And, uh, he's responsible for increasing membership and making sure effectively that I wouldn't say negative depictions, but a historical depictions of Roosevelt were, were targeted.

377
00:36:04,957.9025 --> 00:36:11,147.9025
And he, he solicited a network of friends.

378
00:36:11,148.0025 --> 00:36:16,847.9015
I mean, a really good example is, uh, Edmund Morrison, who became a close friend of John Gable.

379
00:36:17,227.9025 --> 00:36:30,737.9025
Edmund Morris, uh, was, uh, writing the, uh, Rise, the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which eventually mm hmm, Prize, and kind of, kind of takes us to the other side of Pringle, you know, a very, uh, Sort of the great man biography of Theodore Roosevelt.

380
00:36:31,897.9025 --> 00:36:43,307.9015
Gable would write to Edmund Morris and say, you know, have you looked at this aspect of, of And, oh, you can find elements of, uh, of this story you're trying to tell here.

381
00:36:43,841.9015 --> 00:36:45,827.9025
yeah, with a number of others as well.

382
00:36:45,827.9025 --> 00:36:51,37.9015
You know, he was, he became a reference for anyone interested in Theodore Roosevelt.

383
00:36:51,57.9025 --> 00:36:57,802.9025
And that's so important because it, it yeah, It channeled a lot of the ideas that people were having through John Gable.

384
00:36:58,102.9025 --> 00:37:00,152.9025
And, and, you know, Gable was an academic himself.

385
00:37:00,152.9025 --> 00:37:01,362.9025
He studied at Brown.

386
00:37:01,532.9025 --> 00:37:04,552.9025
He wrote a mm TR and the Progressive Party.

387
00:37:04,841.9015 --> 00:37:05,681.9015
hmm.

388
00:37:05,702.9025 --> 00:37:12,962.9015
uh, you know, he's probably, uh, one of the most instrumental people in, in keeping TR's legacy alive after Herman Hagedorn.

389
00:37:12,962.9025 --> 00:37:14,972.9025
And, you know, it's not just, uh, academics.

390
00:37:14,972.9025 --> 00:37:19,782.9025
He, um, he's responsible for birthday parties for TR at the White House.

391
00:37:20,902.9025 --> 00:37:25,922.9025
he's responsible for overseas ventures like the, uh, Roosevelt Study Center in Middleburg.

392
00:37:26,442.9025 --> 00:37:30,862.9025
Um, you know, so he's a, he's a really important player in that world.

393
00:37:30,922.9025 --> 00:37:38,232.9015
And I think, um, I think we owe a lot to both of them actually, in terms of their legacy is still felt in that TR universe.

394
00:37:40,557.9025 --> 00:37:52,292.9025
You had mentioned, in your book about how, uh, academic treatments often, uh, Um, precede the popular culture, uh, depictions, whether it's in movies, uh, or, uh, or other forms.

395
00:37:52,782.9025 --> 00:37:58,242.8035
Uh, could you talk a little bit about, how Mm hmm.

396
00:37:59,313.9035 --> 00:38:05,233.9035
determine how Roosevelt is portrayed in various movies over time? Yeah, sure.

397
00:38:05,233.9035 --> 00:38:07,763.9035
I mean, um, I'll give you a really great example.

398
00:38:07,763.9035 --> 00:38:16,583.9035
One of my favorite examples of this is when the United States is facing the prospect of war with Germany after 1939.

399
00:38:17,353.9035 --> 00:38:25,423.9035
So Franklin Roosevelt is of course left with the decision to Stay neutral at the outset of the war and, uh, and does so.

400
00:38:25,483.9035 --> 00:38:28,823.9035
And there's a movie released called the Monroe Doctrine in 1939.

401
00:38:29,63.9035 --> 00:38:30,973.9025
Now it's a, it's a movie that most people won't know.

402
00:38:30,973.9035 --> 00:38:46,162.9035
So you can't, you're not going to easily find this, but it's a, it's a 20 minute reel to reel that is, uh, the features, uh, obviously president Monroe, who is the, uh, well, not the author, but the, the, the sort of the one whose name is affixed to Yeah.

403
00:38:46,623.9035 --> 00:38:51,273.9035
And basically the Monroe Doctrine, of course, is the idea that the United States will stay out of European.

404
00:38:51,618.9035 --> 00:38:56,612.9035
Matters and Europeans need to stay out of Western Hemispheric Yeah.

405
00:38:56,828.9035 --> 00:38:58,988.9035
no longer colonize the Western Hemisphere.

406
00:39:00,218.9035 --> 00:39:08,908.9025
the film ends with TR, who of course is the TR corollary, or the Roosevelt corollary, is the corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

407
00:39:08,928.9025 --> 00:39:09,552.9035
Which Yeah.

408
00:39:09,898.9025 --> 00:39:16,248.9035
TR expanded the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine to say that not only should Europeans stay out of the Americas, but the Americas is.

409
00:39:16,858.9035 --> 00:39:21,818.9035
Are going to be monitored and policed basically by the United States by force if necessary.

410
00:39:22,452.9035 --> 00:39:22,652.9035
Yeah.

411
00:39:23,238.9035 --> 00:39:30,318.9025
it showed that TR was a part of this long tradition of out of European affairs in Europe, keeping out of American affairs.

412
00:39:30,708.9035 --> 00:39:36,798.9035
And in 1939, that movie made so much sense to people because, you know, Franklin Roosevelt is saying the same thing.

413
00:39:36,799.0035 --> 00:39:39,928.9035
We're going to stay out of war and let's hope that this ends soon.

414
00:39:40,778.9035 --> 00:39:46,418.9035
Two years later after Pearl Harbor and after the United States gets, you know, into the war.

415
00:39:46,798.9035 --> 00:39:50,52.9035
There's another film that's released called Teddy and the Rough Riders, Yeah.

416
00:39:50,118.9035 --> 00:39:53,228.9035
again a 20 minute short released by the same studio.

417
00:39:53,228.9035 --> 00:40:03,52.9035
The same actor is playing Roosevelt, but instead this time he's an interventionist and we have the historical narrative of the Spanish American war where the United States has to get involved, right? Mm hmm.

418
00:40:03,68.9025 --> 00:40:06,788.9035
Uh, have to get involved to save Cuba from, you know, the terrible Spanish.

419
00:40:06,798.9035 --> 00:40:24,508.9025
And now it makes sense that Franklin Roosevelt, Is saving the world from Nazism and Japanese autocracy, right? So, I mean, these are the reason why these are so good examples is because the format is the same, the studio is the same, the actor is the same, and yet the narrative couldn't be any more different.

420
00:40:24,878.9035 --> 00:40:29,8.8035
So my point about film in particular is that it always follows.

421
00:40:29,628.9035 --> 00:40:31,658.9035
times that we're living in to an extent.

422
00:40:32,428.9035 --> 00:40:51,688.9035
I do think that film has gotten pretty absurd now, and we've got so many depictions of TR and whether it's on the or whether it's on, you know, uh, there's so many, you know, like we said, the night at the museum, it's gotten a little bit abstract, but still the serious films, you can see that there's some relationship to the context in which they're made.

423
00:40:53,93.9035 --> 00:40:59,33.9035
Reminded of like, uh, the 1970s depiction at the conclusion of, of our involvement in Vietnam.

424
00:40:59,43.9025 --> 00:41:00,462.9035
You've got the wind and the Yeah.

425
00:41:00,722.9035 --> 00:41:01,162.9035
Mm hmm.

426
00:41:01,413.9025 --> 00:41:04,92.9035
pretty outlandish, um, Oh, yeah.

427
00:41:04,933.9035 --> 00:41:06,193.9035
of, of Roosevelt.

428
00:41:06,228.9035 --> 00:41:09,42.9035
follow, that doesn't even follow history No.

429
00:41:09,308.9035 --> 00:41:09,728.9035
about.

430
00:41:10,518.9035 --> 00:41:12,468.9035
Theodore Roosevelt in the film invades Morocco.

431
00:41:12,468.9035 --> 00:41:13,998.9035
I mean, he never did that in real life.

432
00:41:14,172.9035 --> 00:41:14,527.8035
Ha ha ha.

433
00:41:14,718.9035 --> 00:41:20,878.9035
this is really, it's, it's an abstraction, but there's that connection to the Mayaguez incident in 1975.

434
00:41:20,878.9035 --> 00:41:25,588.9025
It's the last, most people see it as the last battle of the, of the Vietnam War.

435
00:41:25,938.9035 --> 00:41:37,198.9025
And again, America is this bombastic interventionist foreign policy, Yeah, that they're trying to relate TR to, uh, basically the, the Johnson and Nixon administration.

436
00:41:37,557.9035 --> 00:41:53,637.9035
going along with that, I know not just, you mentioned presidents have used TR and invoked him in many of their speeches and policies, but also commercial marketing has used TR quite a bit, from even before his death.

437
00:41:54,97.9035 --> 00:41:59,387.9035
So, please tell us some of the ways that companies have used TR to promote their products.

438
00:41:59,387.9035 --> 00:42:02,428.9035
Ha, there's so many ways.

439
00:42:02,488.9035 --> 00:42:08,188.9035
I mean, presidents are, say this, some presidents are really good spokespeople for companies.

440
00:42:08,228.9035 --> 00:42:13,577.9035
Some presidents, you know, you might turn off consumers if you, if you put their Yup.

441
00:42:13,578.0035 --> 00:42:17,977.9035
Uh huh.

442
00:42:17,977.9035 --> 00:42:24,633.9025
Yup x6 uh, in the 1910s and 20s.

443
00:42:25,823.9035 --> 00:42:32,33.9035
Uh, there are a number of strange advertisements, like for cigarettes, TR didn't smoke.

444
00:42:32,393.9035 --> 00:42:36,93.9035
Um, a number of whiskeys, presidents, almost every president has a whiskey.

445
00:42:36,103.9035 --> 00:42:38,83.9035
Even if you're a bad president, you get a whiskey.

446
00:42:38,493.9035 --> 00:42:45,338.9035
Um, but, um, So there's a number of, including, there's a absolutely delicious Hudson Valley, uh, Roughriders whiskey that you can buy nowadays.

447
00:42:45,338.9035 --> 00:42:46,138.9035
I think I should be getting.

448
00:42:46,538.9035 --> 00:43:14,747.9035
Paid something for that plug, but um, I mean computers there's a there's a tv station about wellness that uses quotes from theodore roosevelt, uh, you can check out cadillac in 2015 Had a integrated what we would call a guerrilla marketing campaign where they ask people to dare greatly, which is a quote from Theodore roosevelt, they read out a big speech from that citizenship in a republic speech that roosevelt gave in 1910 Yeah.

449
00:43:14,918.9035 --> 00:43:17,918.9035
for You In some of these, you never even see the car.

450
00:43:17,918.9035 --> 00:43:18,938.9035
You never see the Cadillac.

451
00:43:18,958.9035 --> 00:43:22,968.9035
You just the brand at the end and it's associated with Roosevelt.

452
00:43:22,988.9035 --> 00:43:25,753.9035
So, I Those, those were really well done.

453
00:43:26,608.9025 --> 00:43:34,108.903
yeah, some of these are exceptional and Oh, yeah, you remember them and that is, that is the purpose is that you remember them.

454
00:43:34,108.903 --> 00:43:38,338.9035
And TR is a, is a character in, in all of these that you can remember.

455
00:43:38,338.9035 --> 00:43:43,338.9035
Easily identifiable, trustworthy, right? Which is key to, uh, branding.

456
00:43:43,748.9035 --> 00:43:46,148.9035
So that, that makes him pretty powerful.

457
00:43:46,178.9035 --> 00:43:50,508.9035
And, um, and a lot, I can't say my favorite, my favorite one is Schlitz.

458
00:43:51,77.9035 --> 00:43:51,617.9035
yes.

459
00:43:52,28.9025 --> 00:44:02,38.9035
I, do you guys remember Schlitz? I mean, most people nowadays probably don't remember Schlitz, but Schlitz was the king of beers before Budweiser was the king of beers in the 1950s and sixties.

460
00:44:02,48.9035 --> 00:44:03,968.9035
They were kind of on the decline in two.

461
00:44:04,678.9035 --> 00:44:17,58.9025
sort of stop that skid, they brought in TR and they had this ad where they said TR a consignment of Schlitz sent to Mombasa when he was visiting Africa they made a big deal out of this.

462
00:44:17,58.9035 --> 00:44:21,188.9035
And later on they had Sorrel Book, who was an actor from Dukes of Hazard.

463
00:44:21,208.9035 --> 00:44:22,407.9025
He was boss hog Yup.

464
00:44:23,538.9035 --> 00:44:24,958.9035
advertising him as TR.

465
00:44:24,968.9025 --> 00:44:27,968.9035
He was the actor and for Schlitz malt liquor.

466
00:44:28,128.9035 --> 00:44:31,343.9035
And, uh, Anyway, none of this ever happened here.

467
00:44:31,343.9035 --> 00:44:32,93.9035
Never drank Schlitz.

468
00:44:32,103.9035 --> 00:44:32,767.9035
He never Now.

469
00:44:32,768.0035 --> 00:44:35,794.6035
Oh, yeah.

470
00:44:35,794.6035 --> 00:44:37,307.9035
Yeah.

471
00:44:37,307.9035 --> 00:44:38,821.2035
Yeah.

472
00:44:38,821.2035 --> 00:44:40,334.5035
Yeah.

473
00:44:40,334.5035 --> 00:44:49,343.9025
Yeah, and TR, there are some really serious, know, books and articles about this, but there's no evidence.

474
00:44:49,543.9025 --> 00:44:55,113.8035
So, I mean, this, there's any number of ways you can imagine they've used them.

475
00:44:55,993.9035 --> 00:44:58,143.9535
That's why that needed the pigskin covers.

476
00:44:58,153.9535 --> 00:45:03,73.9525
It's just easier to clean all the, the malt liquor when you spill it all over your book collection.

477
00:45:06,218.9535 --> 00:45:24,488.9535
You know, you said the, uh, those, those themes for classifying TR that have been used for memorialization, the Americanism, the, the cowboy myth, the progressivism, conservation, preacher of righteousness, man of letters, um, that that has been pretty consistently used.

478
00:45:24,588.9535 --> 00:45:26,898.9535
but, uh, more in the 21st century.

479
00:45:26,898.9535 --> 00:45:31,918.9535
You said there's been, his portrayals become more of a, an abstraction.

480
00:45:32,288.9525 --> 00:45:35,593.9535
Uh, can you talk to that a little bit? Yeah, sure.

481
00:45:35,593.9535 --> 00:45:46,663.9535
I mean, I think, um, I think we've gotten some of the best biographies out there about Roosevelt now, and we have a pretty good idea of who he is, and now I think we're starting to just toy around with his image a little bit.

482
00:45:47,923.9535 --> 00:45:59,823.9535
I think that's, nothing wrong with that as long as we start saying, well, you know, this is an abstraction rather than, um, let me give you an example from, um, you know, that has a real relevance to today.

483
00:46:00,113.9535 --> 00:46:01,473.9535
Obviously, uh, yeah.

484
00:46:01,738.9535 --> 00:46:16,928.9525
Gender norms in TR's time were pretty straightforward, uh, men and women, and obviously now, you know, transgender, uh, identities, and queerness, and, uh, this is all very, a very modern or contemporary thing.

485
00:46:17,248.9535 --> 00:46:23,363.9535
And I think, although TR didn't grapple with, uh, gender as being any more than male or female.

486
00:46:24,213.9535 --> 00:46:27,603.9535
are people that are looking at things like masculinity and femininity.

487
00:46:27,613.9535 --> 00:46:36,623.9535
And there's a, there's a troop of, um, theater actors in Brooklyn that have done this play called Rose of Elvis, which mashes together Theodore Roosevelt and Elvis.

488
00:46:37,313.9535 --> 00:46:41,383.9535
it's an all female cast that plays around with the, it really bends gender.

489
00:46:42,553.9535 --> 00:46:47,793.9535
I mean, this is where the contemporary meets the past on a really hot topic in America right now.

490
00:46:48,803.9535 --> 00:46:53,163.9535
what you come up with is a really bizarre treatment of the past.

491
00:46:54,403.9535 --> 00:46:56,23.9535
Something that is still very compelling.

492
00:46:56,238.9535 --> 00:47:08,708.9535
So that's what I mean about it being abstract, is that, you know, because we, we see everything through our own time, we lead with that, and that means that it's not really true, and as long as you go, well, that's not really true, that's okay.

493
00:47:09,18.9535 --> 00:47:12,388.9535
As soon as you start saying that, actually was a woman.

494
00:47:12,518.9535 --> 00:47:15,338.9535
Well, you might have some, some disagreement there.

495
00:47:15,338.9535 --> 00:47:18,408.9535
But, you know, some of the movies are the same.

496
00:47:18,508.9535 --> 00:47:30,93.9535
You know, The Simpsons, um, there's a great episode called, uh, Smell the Roosevelt, like Smell the Roses, where, uh, Theodore Roosevelt takes Bart along on a ride and sort of schools him on, on life.

497
00:47:30,503.9535 --> 00:47:34,523.9535
And it is, you know, it's kind of nonsense, but it's, it's fun.

498
00:47:34,523.9535 --> 00:47:37,53.9535
And you, you kind of get the lesson for our time in that.

499
00:47:37,73.9535 --> 00:47:51,653.9535
So that, that happened in art a long time ago when art went abstract, right? I mean, when, when Picasso drew a woman, she had a square eye, right? I mean, so we're kind of there now we're getting the essence of these things, but it's through a much different lens.

500
00:47:52,638.9525 --> 00:48:10,878.9535
I guess that reminds me of, of Hamilton, right? Uh, that, that Yeah, with, genders and, and racial, depictions and, and, I don't know if that opened the door for, what did you say the name of it was? Rosa Velvez? I, I had not even heard of that yet.

501
00:48:11,102.9535 --> 00:48:11,942.9535
I hadn't either.

502
00:48:12,578.9535 --> 00:48:13,818.9535
Something to look up.

503
00:48:13,933.9535 --> 00:48:14,403.9535
a look.

504
00:48:14,482.9535 --> 00:48:29,163.953
Yeah, you need to spend some time with it because it's not a, it's not an easy play to get into, but Hamilton's great example because of course, I'm pretty, well, I'm pretty sure Alexander Hamilton didn't know hip hop, right? So I mean, yeah, that's where we are.

505
00:48:29,163.953 --> 00:48:30,293.9535
We see it through our own eyes.

506
00:48:30,762.9535 --> 00:48:31,42.9535
yeah.

507
00:48:31,982.9535 --> 00:48:40,772.9535
And it gets people interested in the historical person and they may take that beyond what they've seen and research more.

508
00:48:42,368.9535 --> 00:48:50,988.9535
I, I think we forgot really to, uh, to talk about when we were getting into those, the early years after Roosevelt's death.

509
00:48:51,18.9535 --> 00:48:56,748.9535
the role of, of family in, uh, shaping t's memory, particularly Edith.

510
00:48:56,808.9535 --> 00:48:57,552.9535
Uh, yeah.

511
00:48:57,708.9535 --> 00:49:07,78.9535
a little bit about her? What was her role in shaping Roosevelt's memory and legacy? Yeah, I mean, Edith is pretty central to this.

512
00:49:07,398.9535 --> 00:49:21,338.8535
She, early on, tries to stop people from publishing letters that they have from Roosevelt, but for fear that they'll be taken out of context and, you know, they might depict Roosevelt in a negative way.

513
00:49:22,328.9535 --> 00:49:25,648.9535
So she's very conscious of that.

514
00:49:25,668.9535 --> 00:49:36,197.8535
And also Herman Hagedorn is not yet, um, quite her confidant in, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, mm hmm.

515
00:49:36,208.9535 --> 00:49:37,408.9535
Island that knew TR.

516
00:49:37,998.9535 --> 00:49:42,338.9535
And Edith kind of shot him down and said she didn't think it was a good idea and told neighbors not to speak to him.

517
00:49:43,68.9535 --> 00:49:58,658.9535
So, she was instrumental, and when it comes to Pringle, she thought that Pringle's biography that, because he was looking at archives and, uh, and correspondence, she, you know, she thought his biography was going to be a strong contender for the best of all the biographies, but she was let down there.

518
00:49:59,78.9525 --> 00:50:04,478.9535
So, she's kind of a gatekeeper, uh, and so is her eldest son, Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

519
00:50:05,443.9535 --> 00:50:09,473.9535
he's very much a gatekeeper as well until his death in 1945.

520
00:50:09,873.9535 --> 00:50:14,983.9535
And he lives on the grounds of Sagamore Hill next door to his mother for a number of years.

521
00:50:15,3.9535 --> 00:50:17,803.9525
So, um, they're not the only ones.

522
00:50:17,873.9535 --> 00:50:21,833.9525
Ethel Roosevelt, Dar BTR's youngest daughter, is very much a gatekeeper as well.

523
00:50:21,833.9525 --> 00:50:24,183.9535
She's, she's, Uh, very much responsible for Dr.

524
00:50:24,183.9535 --> 00:50:28,263.9535
John Gable's appointment as the director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association.

525
00:50:28,753.9535 --> 00:50:37,843.953
And um, and she's also, she stays in Long Island too, so she's, you know, looking over a lot of those properties like Sagamore Hill helping curators go through the archives there.

526
00:50:37,843.953 --> 00:50:42,373.9535
So, The family is, is really, really important in maintaining.

527
00:50:42,403.9535 --> 00:50:44,113.9535
And I think that's still the case too.

528
00:50:44,583.9535 --> 00:50:49,853.9535
I mean, you'll, you'll see today, there's there's family members on the board of directors of Theodore Roosevelt presidential library.

529
00:50:50,213.9535 --> 00:50:56,453.9525
Um, there are a number of family members with, uh, that are, uh, vice presidents in the Theodore Roosevelt association.

530
00:50:57,203.9535 --> 00:51:06,863.9535
You know, this is, it's, if I was a family member and I'm not, but if I am, I would feel a strong connection and, uh, a drive or a an impetus to protect that legacy as well.

531
00:51:06,873.9535 --> 00:51:08,63.9535
I think that's only natural.

532
00:51:08,498.9535 --> 00:51:10,178.9535
Um, it's just, you know, T.

533
00:51:10,178.9535 --> 00:51:10,408.9535
R.

534
00:51:10,408.9535 --> 00:51:24,578.9535
is much more famous than my great, great, great grandparents were, but I, I get the same, I get the same rationale for why you'd want to maintain the legacy in a way that speaks to person that you knew or that's been handed down to you.

535
00:51:24,987.9535 --> 00:51:27,467.9535
I wanted to, uh, to ask you one more question.

536
00:51:27,467.9535 --> 00:51:34,761.9535
That has to do with role with the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Museum Mm hmm.

537
00:51:34,897.9535 --> 00:51:36,957.9535
construction in Maduro.

538
00:51:37,57.9535 --> 00:51:56,572.953
Um, so could you talk a little bit about, your inputs to that, that library that's under construction and, how you envision people's, experience, what will they take away from Roosevelt with his legacy and his memory when they see that in a couple of years? Sure.

539
00:51:56,582.953 --> 00:52:02,342.953
Well, I think first of all, credit needs to be given to the leaders of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.

540
00:52:02,432.953 --> 00:52:08,161.953
Um, there's two people in particular, uh, Ed O'Keefe, who's the CEO and has Yeah.

541
00:52:08,422.953 --> 00:52:10,142.952
on this project for a number of years.

542
00:52:10,522.953 --> 00:52:25,262.953
And I think his work with the board to develop the values of the library, they fit very closely to what Theodore Roosevelt's best values were, uh, whether it was that idea of daring greatly or thinking boldly or caring, caring deeply.

543
00:52:25,292.952 --> 00:52:29,877.953
Um, Those are all ideas that I think will resonate with people for years to come.

544
00:52:29,877.953 --> 00:52:35,487.953
And everyone that comes into the library is going to be getting that sort of treatment from, from TR.

545
00:52:35,527.953 --> 00:52:42,881.953
I mean, it, the way it's designed is to, to basically put you into Theodore Roosevelt's shoes in a way and Mm hmm.

546
00:52:43,522.953 --> 00:52:50,922.953
Understand Theodore Roosevelt's life and the lessons that we might be able to draw from his life, um, through the experiences of those lives.

547
00:52:51,12.953 --> 00:52:54,132.953
So, I mean, and it's not all, um, it's not all fun and games.

548
00:52:54,252.952 --> 00:52:58,192.953
It's not all, um, you know, adventures and exploration.

549
00:52:58,222.953 --> 00:53:05,392.953
Some of it is, um, traumatic, like loss, you know, as we all know that he lost his mother and his wife on Valentine's day.

550
00:53:05,392.953 --> 00:53:09,102.953
And that is a, that's a trauma that would haunt him from, for years to come.

551
00:53:09,362.953 --> 00:53:10,441.953
I mean, even the Yeah.

552
00:53:10,691.952 --> 00:53:13,467.853
Mm and, um, and his youth and his.

553
00:53:13,797.953 --> 00:53:14,547.953
sickly health.

554
00:53:14,897.953 --> 00:53:31,247.953
Um, you know, that's, that's something that should stay with you, you know, and one of the big themes I think is perseverance, taking, you know, that idea of going above and beyond what you think is possible, that thinking boldly idea.

555
00:53:31,587.953 --> 00:53:34,577.952
Um, that's something that follows Theodore Roosevelt around in his life.

556
00:53:34,587.953 --> 00:53:42,357.953
And that, those are things that we, we can take from, from his, his life and say, You know, that makes me more resilient.

557
00:53:42,367.953 --> 00:53:43,867.953
That makes me more effective.

558
00:53:43,897.953 --> 00:53:44,381.953
That hmm.

559
00:53:44,797.953 --> 00:53:45,887.953
exciting and creative.

560
00:53:46,367.953 --> 00:53:50,817.953
Um, so I, my hope is, is that when people go in there, that that's, that's what they're going to take away.

561
00:53:50,877.953 --> 00:53:56,167.953
And I can tell you actually that the way it's been designed so far, that's exactly what they're aiming to do.

562
00:53:56,477.953 --> 00:54:01,187.953
Every part of the museum is, um, is, is loaded with that sort of.

563
00:54:01,397.953 --> 00:54:04,927.953
Value and character and Ed is very much responsible for this.

564
00:54:04,927.953 --> 00:54:13,817.953
He's been shepherding the project along for the last, I don't know, is it as many as five years now? But, um, it's, it's, it's being built right now.

565
00:54:13,817.953 --> 00:54:15,327.953
I mean, it's not an idea anymore.

566
00:54:15,551.953 --> 00:54:15,851.953
No.

567
00:54:16,347.953 --> 00:54:19,127.953
And that alone is, is a very exciting thing.

568
00:54:19,497.952 --> 00:54:26,67.953
The interior isn't, you know, isn't yet finished, but the exterior is going up and it's really, it's a beautiful building.

569
00:54:26,77.953 --> 00:54:28,857.953
It's the design is by an architecture firm called Snohetta.

570
00:54:29,322.953 --> 00:54:32,272.953
And, uh, they've, they've thought about sustainability.

571
00:54:32,472.953 --> 00:54:36,631.953
They've thought about ecology, how this building fits with the environment, Yes.

572
00:54:36,642.953 --> 00:54:42,872.953
the visual aspects of it, but, you know, indigenous species that, you know, we're, we're around in TR's time.

573
00:54:42,872.953 --> 00:54:48,401.953
And so, I mean, it's really an incredibly detail oriented project Yeah.

574
00:54:48,782.952 --> 00:54:52,881.953
I just cannot wait until 2026 when the doors open and we get to Oh, yeah.

575
00:54:53,282.953 --> 00:54:55,202.853
we get to learn from TR.

576
00:54:55,281.953 --> 00:54:58,401.953
I also have to give a shout out as well to the Theodore Roosevelt association.

577
00:54:58,501.953 --> 00:55:02,301.953
I mean, they're doing some really exciting things too, with experiential tours.

578
00:55:02,311.952 --> 00:55:04,941.953
They have an annual yeah, year that gets better and better.

579
00:55:05,261.952 --> 00:55:20,851.953
Um, you know, the, the partners, the, the, the institutions that are a part of TR and TR memorialization, they are really dynamic groups that are doing things to not just, not just kind of keep TR's legacy alive, but to.

580
00:55:21,566.953 --> 00:55:22,376.953
you in his shoes.

581
00:55:22,396.953 --> 00:55:40,846.953
Like yeah, for example, uh, the Theodore Roosevelt Association is a tour with me and others in the Adirondacks where yeah, first listened to birds and not first, but you know, first yeah, And, uh, you know, and really fell in love with nature and understood how nature interacted with humans.

582
00:55:40,846.953 --> 00:55:49,515.953
I mean, this, these are, these are great experiences and I think they're important for us to kind of go and walk in his footsteps sometimes to see, see the yeah.

583
00:55:49,700.953 --> 00:55:51,390.953
Very much.

584
00:55:52,427.0155 --> 00:55:57,977.0155
You write a wonderful summary at the end of the book on page 218.

585
00:55:58,57.0155 --> 00:56:01,587.0155
And It says, Roosevelt's ghost appears in all quarters of American life.

586
00:56:02,227.0155 --> 00:56:07,657.0155
This book only presents the most important sightings as examples of the interpretations of public memory.

587
00:56:08,357.0155 --> 00:56:15,947.0155
The mythical Roosevelt, as John Allen Gable put it, surpassed the real Roosevelt almost instantly after he died in 1919.

588
00:56:16,717.0155 --> 00:56:23,77.0155
That myth or ghost has evolved continuously, a derivative of the personal ambitions of those who conjured T.

589
00:56:23,77.0155 --> 00:56:23,317.0155
R.

590
00:56:24,117.0155 --> 00:56:32,477.0155
By considering Roosevelt for their various perspectives, we can clearly see how memorializers created legacy themes and consequently transformed T.

591
00:56:32,477.0155 --> 00:56:32,617.0155
R.

592
00:56:32,627.0155 --> 00:56:34,567.0155
's popular image again and again.

593
00:56:35,397.0155 --> 00:56:38,257.0155
The only apparent constant is Roosevelt's popularity.

594
00:56:38,767.0155 --> 00:56:41,277.0155
He remains as germane today as a century ago.

595
00:56:41,777.0145 --> 00:56:52,937.0155
Our impressions of him may change, but until the time when his memory is entirely insignificant, a scenario that seems utterly unlikely, Roosevelt's ghost will continue to inspire debate and interest.

596
00:56:53,487.0155 --> 00:56:54,477.0145
Like the Cheshire Cat.

597
00:56:54,967.0155 --> 00:57:00,47.0155
The image of Roosevelt's toothy smile flourishes in our imaginations.

598
00:57:00,517.0155 --> 00:57:03,817.0155
And even when they fade, the image leaves a lasting impression.

599
00:57:03,827.0155 --> 00:57:07,887.015
I think that is just a, a wonderful description of T.

600
00:57:07,887.015 --> 00:57:08,237.0145
R.

601
00:57:08,807.0155 --> 00:57:11,947.0155
It's like, he occupies a place in your heart and soul.

602
00:57:12,357.0155 --> 00:57:12,797.0155
So.

603
00:57:13,457.0155 --> 00:57:14,537.0155
Thank you for writing that.

604
00:57:15,133.0155 --> 00:57:15,753.0155
Well, thank you.

605
00:57:15,753.0155 --> 00:57:17,803.0155
That's quite, uh, it's quite touching.

606
00:57:17,853.0155 --> 00:57:31,83.0155
And I mean, uh, as an author, I think you hope that what you're writing resonates with people and it's, uh, absolute pure, pure delight that, uh, it's, it's percolated with you guys and you've, you've thought about it and you've read the book so thoroughly.

607
00:57:31,123.0155 --> 00:57:33,173.0155
So thank you both so very much.

608
00:57:34,147.0155 --> 00:57:34,777.0155
Thank you.

609
00:57:35,533.0155 --> 00:57:46,713.0165
Well, I think that's probably going to, wrap up our discussion here of,, Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost, the History and Memory of an American Icon by Michael Patrick Cullinane.

610
00:57:46,863.0165 --> 00:57:54,542.954
Uh, Michael, how can folks learn more about your work? You can find me on michaelpatrickculinane.

611
00:57:54,582.954 --> 00:58:10,636.954
com and you can also check out my podcast it's called the gilded age and progressive era it's on all major platforms and of course if you want to buy a copy of theodore roosevelt's ghost it's as they say it's with all good booksellers and you know who they are good.

612
00:58:11,553.0165 --> 00:58:14,456.954
Well, thank for being on the, Talk About Teddy podcast.