POLITICO.COM
Barack Obama channels Teddy Roosevelt
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE & JENNIFER EPSTEIN
December 6, 2011
Barack Obama channels Teddy Roosevelt
Some excerpts :
A hundred years after Teddy Roosevelt delivered his speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, Obama is scheduled to tout similar politics in the same location on Tuesday, December 6, 2011
By conjuring the legacy of a president who was both a pioneer in taking on Wall Street and a Republican icon, Obama is working some big-stick politicking of his own, trying to harness the Occupy Wall Street populist passion and also the frustrated moderates he needs to win next year.
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Obama’s echoes of TR stir memories of a larger-than-life fighter, a fearless American hero — and someone GOP stars such as John McCain love to bring up.
Democrats say Obama may have found a new way to channel the forceful voice they’ve been hoping for on opposing corporate greed and protecting the middle class, and offer a resounding response: Bully!
“He’s almost found a trans-partisan way to invoke this theme of ‘Who’s fighting for you, who’s standing up for you, who’s on your side,’” Democratic strategist Bob Shrum said. “I think it’s very, very novel and interesting way to get at it.”
Roosevelt is still a popular figure in Republican circles. McCain regularly referred to him as a hero during his 2008 campaign. Among this year’s Republican candidates, Newt Gingrich has described himself as a Roosevelt Republican, and Jon Huntsman touted the endorsement of Theodore Roosevelt IV.
Yet the Roosevelt that Obama’s attaching himself to by speaking in Osawatomie is the one who unveiled the radical anti-corporate philosophy that broke him from the Republican Party. He famously declared, “Our public men must be genuinely progressive.”
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But Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris said Obama’s connection makes sense.
Roosevelt’s speech “lamented the power that Wall Street had developed” as “the great banking houses, which were not being regulated properly, worked hand-in-hand with a very conservative Congress,” Morris said.
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Obama’s move to progressive rhetoric is “a welcome shift in our political dialogue,” said Eliot Spitzer, the former New York governor who often cast himself as carrying on Roosevelt’s legacy — and even named his now-canceled CNN show “In the Arena” after the Roosevelt speech that presaged his 1912 campaign.
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“Invoking Teddy Roosevelt and the imagery of Teddy Roosevelt is certainly a positive and important step — let’s see where it goes,” Spitzer said.
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“People are just mad as hell that [Wall Street executives] are still getting bonuses and the banks got bailed out while people are still unemployed,” Wagnon added.
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And there’s reason to believe the benefits of turning Obama into Roosevelt redux might outweigh whatever negative associations and name-calling that Obama has now exposed himself to.
“I leave that kind of fine print to the historians,” Democratic Strategist Robert Shrum said. “Teddy Roosevelt’s on Mount Rushmore, so I wouldn’t worry about the fact that some hack who worked for William Howard Taft called him a socialist.”
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