Like many of my fellow Americans, I have no interest in the cheesy, self-aggrandizing events that President Donald Trump has planned for the nation’s 250th birthday. None of this is about us or our real story. Trump’s semicentennial celebrations are instead focused on himself and a sanitized (and, frankly, rather boring) version of America’s otherwise rich and complex history.
Instead, I’m heading to Medora, North Dakota to the grand opening from the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, which is directly adjacent to a large portion of the national park that also bears Roosevelt’s name. It is the only national park in the country directly named after a person.
Roosevelt became president just months after America turned 125, half its current age. Looking back on what a truly great Republican president accomplished back in the day is a better way to guide our path forward than ghoulishly considering continuing the pathetic and corrupt legacy of Donald Trump.
First of all, even though Teddy Roosevelt had an “R” in his name when he was in office, his policies had more in common with those of his distant cousin FDR, a Democrat who served a few decades later, than with those of the current occupant of the White House (in case you were wondering, FDR was the first president to create a presidential library, which is why Theodore Roosevelt only just got one). For example, although he was not able to fully realize it during his lifetime (and no one else was able to fully realize it over a century later), Teddy Roosevelt supported “the protection of family life against the hazards of illness, irregular work and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American practice. »
What Roosevelt accomplished, however, was enough to firmly establish his place among the greatest American presidents of all time. Unlike Trump, who has repeatedly asked for the Nobel Peace Prize but will never receive it because he is single-handedly starting new arbitrary wars. while exacerbating existing problems those, Roosevelt won the Peace Prize “for his role in ending the recent bloody war between two of the world’s greatest powers, Japan and Russia.” Roosevelt was the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any category.
Although Roosevelt was also criticized as an imperialist for, among other things, fight personally and killing an enemy soldier in the Spanish-American War before his term, the fact is that the United States did not engage in any major foreign wars during Roosevelt’s term. Trump, obviously, shares neither Roosevelt’s military background nor his predilection for a peaceful American foreign policy.
War and Peace may be better stories for today’s museum-going public, but Roosevelt’s contemporary reputation as a “confidence killer” dismantling big business and protecting workers probably won the respect of a large portion of his voters during his 1904 re-election campaign. Between 1902 and 1909, the Roosevelt administration filed suit under the Sherman Antitrust Act against 44 large companies. During his second term, Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” policy portfolio aimed at improving relations between capital and labor earned him many enemies in his own party who believed that ordinary Joes were already getting too square a deal. Trump, for his part, places today’s tech oligarchs in prestigious locations at nearly every presidential event, solicits billions of dollars from wealthy individuals and corporations and reimburse these monopolists for ideological favoritism on their platforms with an essentially “hands-off” regulatory approach (as long as they stay online, of course).
Of course, Roosevelt is best remembered today for his tireless environmental advocacy. The man protected approximately 230 million acres of public lands during his presidency and became our “conservationist president.” Indeed, it is one of the reasons why his presidential library will be located in Medora, near the site where as a young man he established his Elkhorn Ranch and first observed firsthand the decimation of America’s natural resources, which saddened him immensely.
On the other hand, during his second term alone, Trump began to lift federal protection. over 86 million acres public lands. Few things seem to please Trump more than trying to pollutes the air we breathe with soot, waste the water we drink with pollutants, and eradicate native wildlife fewer and fewer of us live among them.
I’m disgusted to have to report this Trump announced his intention to visit the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library a few days before me, before it was fully open to the public. I wish he could get something out of this visit, but he won’t. Trump has proven himself incapable of learning or growing.
If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he would hate Donald Trump and be utterly repugnant to almost every policy of this administration. This undeniable historical fact seems to escape our current president.
Nevertheless, as America turns 250, I hope you will join me in remembering past positive examples of America’s true greatness and putting aside, for a moment, the misery of America’s sordid present. Halfway through 250, Teddy Roosevelt moved us forward, not backward. We should all be inspired by his example to start this process again. Happy 4th of July everyone.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil trial lawyer and author of Your debt-free JD (affiliate link). He taught legal writing, wrote for a wide variety of publications, and made it his duty and pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any opinions he expresses are probably pure gold, but nonetheless they are solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization he is affiliated with. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at (email protected).
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