Theodore Roosevelt Exuberance EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Listen to Presidential at http://wapo.st/presidential This transcript was run through an automated transcription service and then lightly edited for clarity. There may be typos or small discrepancies from the podcast audio. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: In the early 20th century, William Allen White was an iconic newspaper editor. He ran the Emporia Gazette in Kansas and, like many journalists at the time, he had a close relationship with Theodore Roosevelt. When reflecting back on T.R.'s life, this is how White described him, “I have held through a generation my first flash of Theodore Roosevelt -- a tallish, yet stockly built man, physically hard and rugged, obviously fighting down the young moon crescent of his vest. Quick-speaking, forthright. A dynamo of energy, given to gestures and grimaces, letting his voice run its full gamut from face to falsetto. He seemed spiritually to be dancing in the exuberance of a deep physical joy of life.” Until this point in the podcast, and this point in the American presidency, we've had presidents who didn't want to be presidents. We've had presidents who said they didn't want to be president, whether they really wanted to or not. We've had presidents who talked about the great burden of leadership responsibility. And we've even had presidents who described leaving the White House as just like leaving prison. But now, we have a president who is dancing in exuberance. So yes, for this Teddy Roosevelt episode, we will talk a bit about the bully pulpit and the Square Deal. But mostly I just want to talk about joy. I want to talk about how someone altered the presidency and the country and the course of 20th century history basically by being an unstoppable ball of energy. I want to talk about someone unlike anyone we've talked about until now -- someone who unabashedly loved being president. Someone who thought that being president was just the absolute best, coolest, most fun job on Earth. I'm Lillian Cunningham, and this is the 25th episode of Presidential. PRESIDENTIAL THEME MUSIC My two wonderful guests for this episode are Michelle Krowl from the Library of Congress and the delightful historian David McCullough, who wrote the biography 'Mornings on Horseback' about Theodore Roosevelt. Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 1 Just as a heads up, I'm going to jump between the two of their interviews in this episode to help tell the story of how T.R.'s exuberant, intensely engaged personality created a new activist style of American presidential leadership. OK, well first of all, I mean, I can't believe that we're here at the Teddy Roosevelt episode finally. You started with Lincoln, guiding me from Lincoln, and now we're all the way at Roosevelt. I would love your thoughts a little bit on to what extent, leading up until this point in the presidency, we've sort of been preparing for T.R. How natural an extension is it that a president like him comes along, versus should we sort of rightly be caught off guard by how different his style seems to be from the presidents who came before him? MICHELLE KROWL: Well, in some ways, we've been preparing for him, because T.R. is the first president we will encounter in this series, at least beginning with Lincoln, who was not an adult during the Civil War. T.R., who's born in 1858, saw Lincoln's funeral procession in New York from his grandfather's house. There are pictures of him and his brother leaning out the window. And so to some degree, with the passing of McKinley, we're now also passing the torch to a new generation, and now we're going to see a progressive era where the things of the past are being either reevaluated or changed. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Now, of course, the country is wrestling with deep challenges. Industrialization and immigration mean that there's overcrowding in cities and horrible working conditions in factories. In the South, African-Americans are actually losing many of their voting rights. And women are still trying to get the right to vote in the first place. Big business, meanwhile, is getting bigger and bigger and consolidating into mega trusts and monopolies. But amid all this, there is a sense that the new tools and technology and voices and ideas of this era can solve all these problems. Here's David McCullough. DAVID MCCULLOUGH: Roosevelt became president at a time when America was on the uprise, in terms of vitality and invention and progress. And there was every reason to believe in progress. The horrors of the First World War were still over the horizon. So he was exactly the vital, confident, optimistic public figure that the times welcomed. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, here we have it. An America that is turning the corner into the 20th century. An America that feels like the worst of its division is behind it, and that the future before it can be bright and strong, if only we can stay ahead of that pace of change. Enter Theodore Roosevelt. Born in 1858, a young boy who grew up with horrible asthma in a wealthy family in New York City. He was a boy who at first had only a sharp curious mind trapped in a sickly little body. But then through relentless exercise, he willed that body to conquer its own weakness. So, you know, what would T.R. be like on a blind date? I asked David McCullough. DAVID MCCULLOUGH: Like a hundred and ten watt light bulb. He was full of energy and vitality Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 2 and bursting with talk and ideas. And here's what Michelle Krowl said. MICHELLE KROWL: One word came to mind for me about going on a blind date with Theodore Roosevelt, and the word is “exhausting,” in a very good way, though. It takes a particular kind of person to either be married to Teddy Roosevelt or to be his friend or to even be a diplomat in his Washington -- because T.R. is just a ball of energy. Often people think of the teddy bear, because the teddy bear was named after Theodore Roosevelt and it's cute and it's cuddly. But the character that comes to mind for me is that Warner Brothers cartoon Tasmanian devil, who's just a whirling dervish of activity. And he just plows through everything, sometimes leaving destruction in his wake, because he is just energy personified. So, if you went on a blind date with him, heaven knows what you'd be in for exactly, because -- well, I was going to say the young Theodore Roosevelt, but even the older Theodore Roosevelt -- he might take you out rowing. He might take you for a hike. And in their family, they have a tradition that when you hit an obstruction, you don't go around it. You just go right over it. So, if it's a rock, you go over it. It's this kind of point to point -- that whatever is in front of you, you're charging through it. He's sort of 'Action Man.' Whatever gets into his mind is what he does. It's one of those things that, if you are not particularly outdoorsy or you're not up for an adventure, you would not get along with Theodore Roosevelt at all -- you would just absolutely find him too much, and many people did find him too much. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Alright, so we are going to back up now to the woman Teddy fell in love with during college because it's important, I think, to understand that his enthusiasm and his energy for life did not actually come from an absence of pain. MICHELLE KROWL: Theodore Roosevelt kept some diaries when he was younger, and in his 1880 diary is when we get introduced to Alice Hathaway Lee, a girl he fell in love with at Harvard, who was from a local family. And he's got this very cute diary entry from February 13, 1880, talking about about Alice. “She is so marvelously sweet and pure and lovable and pretty, that I seem to love her more and more every time I see her. Though, I love her so much now that I really cannot love her more. I do not think ever a man loved a woman more than I love her. For a year and a quarter now, I have never -- even when hunting --gone to sleep or waked up without thinking of her. And I doubt if an hour has passed that I have not thought of her.” They remain madly in love with each other. They get married. And almost exactly four years to the day after that diary entry -- so, now on February 12, 1884 -- Alice gives birth to a baby girl. At this point, Teddy has finished school, and he's entered politics, so he's up in Albany, New York, serving in the state legislature. Alice is back at his family home in New York City. So, first Teddy gets a telegram about the birth, and he's so excited because, well, because of the news that he has a child and also because his little girl's birthday is the same as Lincoln's -- and Teddy Roosevelt just adores Lincoln. Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 3 But then he starts getting some other telegrams that follow shortly behind the first, and those telegrams start saying that things are actually not going well, and he has to come home fast.