Prompt 1: What makes a good president? Roosevelt is frequently listed in the top 5 of all presidents. Explain what makes Teddy a good president, keeping in mind the attacks against him in some of these readings.
Teddy Roosevelt strikes me as less of a “good President” than just a man who was loved by the nation and had good intentions. There’s a striking parallel between him and John F. Kennedy, in this sense. John F. Kennedy had all these grand ideas about how to make the nation a better place, but he really never got any legislation through. Similarly, Roosevelt had great ideas for conservation or fighting big business, but, as discussed in the “Bully Boy” excerpt, nothing worked out as planned. And both of these men are now seen as “great” Presidents, often making top 10 in the lists of greatest Presidents, despite this.
They were also both great presences in the public eye, with “dynamic personality” (Bully Boy). Teddy was known for his trademark glasses and grin, and it was Kennedy’s charisma that got him into office. The nation loved them.
With how little either of these men really got done towards their goals, and, for Roosevelt, considering his ideas of race, I wouldn’t peg either of these men as “good” Presidents. I think the public just remembers them as such because they look back and only remember the public personas. They remember what the men had intended to get done, rather than what actually happened, and they remember that they were good men. And in this case, they’re both misremembered.
The public memory of them has gone through heroification, like Laura talked about in her post last week, to the point we no longer hear about things like Roosevelt’s racism.
A truly “good” President should be one that solves problems by getting good legislation through, and leads the nation to a better place than where it was when he first got into office. But because the President is just one man, rather than, like Congress, a group seen as one that is much more difficult to see in terms of individuals, the nation’s like or dislike of the man becomes much more personal, and likely to be based on reasons other than whether or not he is a legitimately good leader.