Theodore Roosevelt or \u201cT.R.\u201d as his staff called him, wasn\u2019t the kind of Republican we think of today.\u00a0\u00a0He was a \u201cProgressive\u201d Republican, interested in conservation (he established five national parks) and in reducing the power of the massive business monopolies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was serving as Governor of New York when President McKinley asked him to run for Vice President in 1900. McKinley needed to replace his first Vice President who died of heart failure in 1899. Roosevelt\u2019s nomination also gave New York\u2019s more conservative Republican Party the opportunity to get rid of him. T.R. gave the McKinley campaign the \u201cspark\u201d of youth (he was forty-one) and energy from his Rough Rider background. It helped win the state and nation in a tough election campaign against Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hope of Republican Party leaders was that Roosevelt would disappear in the background like most Vice Presidents. But when anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley in September of 1901, everything changed. The President died a week later, and the Party was stuck with Roosevelt. As Ohioan and National Republican Boss Mark Hanna said: \u201cNow look, that damned cowboy is President of the United States\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roosevelt served the remaining three and a half years of McKinley\u2019s term, then earned his own overwhelming re-election in 1904. In 1908 he felt bound by Washington\u2019s precedent of two terms and chose not to run. He threw his support to the Secretary of War, Cincinnati\u2019s William Howard Taft, who defeated Democrat Bryan once again. T.R. soon left on a world tour that included a massive safari of Africa, and didn\u2019t return to the United States for over a year. As Taft’s term progressed, he began to \u201cstray\u201d towards more traditional conservative Republicanism and Roosevelt tried to reorganize the Party to favor more Progressive ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1912 he ran against Taft for the Republican nomination.\u00a0\u00a0In spite of Roosevelt\u2019s popularity, Taft had the regular Party support and won the convention vote. T.R. then ran as a third party candidate for the Progressive Party, dubbed the \u201cBull Moose\u201d Party in Roosevelt\u2019s honor.\u00a0\u00a0It was during that campaign that Teddy Roosevelt was shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On October 14, 1912, Roosevelt was scheduled to give a speech in Milwaukee. As he left his hotel for the engagement, a saloonkeeper named John Schrank fired a bullet into T.R. It passed through the fifty pages of his address and a steel reinforced eyeglass case before entering the former President\u2019s chest. The assembled crowd grabbed the shooter. Only Roosevelt\u2019s personal intervention prevented a lynching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roosevelt knew he was shot.\u00a0\u00a0His staff wanted to transport him immediately to a hospital.\u00a0\u00a0But Roosevelt coughed and realized that there wasn\u2019t blood.\u00a0\u00a0He assumed correctly that the bullet had not penetrated his lung, so demanded to continue with the speech.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stood at the podium as his staff waited for him to collapse. Teddy delivered a new opening line, displaying the tattered speech and blood soaked shirt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He then proceeded to deliver the full ninety-minute speech, glaring at his over-attentive assistants. Afterwards he went to the hospital where they used the newly acquired X-Ray machine to find the bullet lodged in his chest muscle. It remained there for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saturday afternoon President Trump emulated Roosevelt, trying to show that COVID cannot kill a Trump. The problem is, that while Roosevelt was risking his own life on the platform in Milwaukee, President Trump continues to risk the lives of his supporters. More than 2,000 were invited, but only a few hundred, some paid to be there, gathered on the White House lawn to listen to a campaign speech delivered from the Truman Balcony. The one thing the President did prove is that he could maintain his coherence in a twenty-minute campaign oration. That improved on his rant and profanity laced two-hour radio interview with Rush Limbaugh the day before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But he still gathered a crowd in defiance of COVID protocols, just as he did at the \u201csuper-spreader\u201d Supreme Court Justice nomination.\u00a0\u00a0And he also risked his own recovery, trying to prove that he is \u201ca winner\u201d over COVID.\u00a0\u00a0Even those who don\u2019t support the President still hope he recovers.\u00a0\u00a0But he\u2019s less than a week from leaving the hospital, and likely is still infectious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Donald Trump is desperate to get back on the campaign trail. And he\u2019s also desperate to keep the spotlight on his candidacy, and not on the drip-drip-drip of news from his tax returns emerging from the New York Times. The \u201cOctober Surprises\u201d he was counting on seem to be waning. Attorney General Bill Barr says he can\u2019t deliver a \u201cBiden Indictment\u201d from the Durham investigation. And the Johnson Senate Committee investigation of Ukraine and Biden was unable to turn Russian disinformation into any actual charges or evidence in an eighty page report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Secretary of State Pompeo is now promising Hillary Clinton\u2019s 30,000 lost emails before Election Day. That might have been an effective \u201csurprise\u201d: if Donald Trump was still running against Clinton. Since he isn\u2019t \u2013 so what? But in all likelihood Pompeo is spoofing Trump along until after November 3rd<\/sup>. That way he doesn\u2019t have to endure the criticism that Barr is taking from the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teddy Roosevelt \u201cdoubled down\u201d on his image by delivering the Milwaukee speech.\u00a0\u00a0It was exactly what the public expected him to do.\u00a0\u00a0And while it was courageous, and reckless, and probably foolish, it made for great spectacle.\u00a0\u00a0Donald Trump hopes to find that same spectacle in his \u201ccourageous\u201d recovery from the COVID \u201cplague\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0His visual of choice:\u00a0\u00a0standing on the Truman Balcony overlooking his \u201cadmiring masses\u201d. It has \u201cMussolini\u201d overtones.\u00a0\u00a0But to his base, he looks courageous and perhaps reckless.\u00a0\u00a0The problem, of course, is to everyone else he not only looks foolish; he looks desperate.\u00a0\u00a0And that\u2019s not a \u201cgood\u201d image for re-election.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roosevelt lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912.\u00a0\u00a0Taft came in third. Twenty-three days left until we learn of Trump’s fate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Risking Life<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
October Surprise<\/h3>\n\n\n\n