- Inaugural Remarks of LtCol Gregory A. Wynn, New Chair and President of the Theodore Roosevelt Association page 7
- Introduction to a New Column in the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal by Gregory A. Wynn page 8
- On the Origin of “Elkhorn” Theodore Roosevelt, Lifelong Naturalist #1 by Darrin Lunde pages 9-16
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- Presidential Snapshot #46 page 17
- George P. McLean: A Rooseveltian Senator in the 1910s and 1920s (a feature review of Will McLean Greeley, Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington: Senator George P. McLean, Birdman of the Senate) by William N. Tilchin pages 18-27
- The Theodore Roosevelt Association Gratefully Acknowledges Its Leading Financial Supporters pages 28-31
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Notes from the Editor
Theodore Roosevelt valued expertise and public-spiritedness in government from the onset of his political career in 1881 until the end of his life in 1919—most notably as a U.S. Civil Service commissioner from 1889 to 1895 and as President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt sought to elevate for government service people who were highly competent and (to use TR’s preferred word) “disinterested” (misunderstood by some to mean “uninterested” but actually meaning “unbiased”) over individuals whose principal credential was partisan political loyalty. Such an approach, TR strongly believed, would sharply reduce corruption while greatly increasing efficiency, resulting in a government that would prioritize the well-being of the nation and its citizens.
For Roosevelt, an efficient government was also an orderly government. He detested and, as President, acted resolutely against anarchists and all others who in his view stood for chaos and violence.
TR was convinced that major national problems should be dealt with, whenever possible, through a strategy combining nonpartisanship and professionalism. Such a strategy was particularly in evidence during the three-day Conference of Governors convened by Roosevelt to address serious challenges pertaining to conservation in May 1908. Republican and Democratic governors, top federal government officials, experts in various fields, business and labor leaders, and other stakeholders participated. Among their achievements, a National Conservation Commission was appointed by the President to take inventory of the nation’s resources, an effort that produced an extremely valuable three-volume report in February 1909. To the benefit of the common good, a cooperative spirit and a broadness of vision had prevailed over narrow partisanship and selfish short-term interests.
In more recent times—with an administrative apparatus largely staffed by very well-trained professionals ever more firmly in place—certain complex problems whose solutions required bipartisan cooperation have been managed successfully. While partisanship has remained (as it was in 1908) a central factor in American political life, bipartisan cooperation proved essential to the establishment and maintenance of American global leadership in the decades following World War II. As another example, in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, bipartisanship enabled the country to preserve the solvency of the imperiled Social Security Trust Fund well into the future.
Although nobody can prove that a political leader from the past would hold particular views about contemporary questions, I and many other all-in Rooseveltians (see “Faithfully Yours,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. XLI, No. 3, Summer 2020, p. 4) are quite confident in our judgments of what Roosevelt would think about some important contemporary matters. TR would defend the modern administrative state (frequently labeled by detractors in the present era as the “deep state”) and would vigorously reject all attempts to dismantle or to undermine it. He would condemn isolationism and politicians who express admiration for brutal anti-American dictators and who side with them against America’s democratic friends and allies. He would castigate officeholders and candidates who incite chaos and domestic terrorism. He would be harshly critical of those who, out of political calculation and cowardice, remain silent as political figures and prosecutors and judges and low-level and mid-level public servants are threatened with violent retribution for working to ensure the integrity of federal, state, and local elections and for upholding the rule of law. And the United States’ foremost environmentalist President undoubtedly would lament the current impossibility of a broad-based bipartisan project— perhaps modeled on the Conference of Governors in 1908—to tackle constructively the present and future dangers to our nation and our planet posed by rapid climate change.
William Tilchin
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