by Russell H. Smith

Created on: July 31, 2007   Last Updated: January 12, 2009

President, statesman, historian, biographer, political writer, soldier, conservationist, travel writer, essayist, and autobiographer so reads the resume of the twenty-sixth president of the U.S. Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt. None of these descriptors are arbitrary all are earned and legitimate. Teddy Roosevelt remains a towering figure on the historical and political landscape of America, peerage is but a handful equals even less. His presidential legacy (1901-1909) Sphinx-like and imposing as its Rushmorian edifice, his prose lauded in London as was his Victorian intellect, his pride in "duty and glory" the "Rough Rider" quintessentially American a solider-statesman.

Overcoming the frailty of his junior years he would mature into to the youngest non-elected U.S. president at age 42, upon the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Unequivocal in his believe during the McKinley era of an expansionist and imperialist American foreign policy, Roosevelt was a prominent member of the intellectual and political cadre known as "Lafayette Square" in the 1890s. Individuals included the historian Henry Adams, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, John Hay, Abraham Lincoln's former assistant and biographer and later McKinley's secretary of state and influential theorist Alfred Mahan. These like-minded individuals would be influential actors in the ensuing Spanish-American War of 1898, in Cuba and the subsequent annexation of the Philippines by the McKinley administration. Roosevelt would resign as assistant secretary of the navy and lead his regiment of New Yorkers in the celebrated battle at San Juan Hill.

Theodore Roosevelt would eventually eclipse the "Lafayette Square" intellectuals in both fame and influence and would also abruptly break ranks with their imperialist strategy. Like any good U.S. president and statesman Roosevelt would adhere to the maxim: "A politician thinks about the next election while a statesman thinks about the next generation." Having the courage to re-model himself, Roosevelt would become the first American president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his international diplomacy on settling the Russo-Japanese War. He would often grumble to his good friend Lodge: "The more I see of the Czar, the Kaiser and the Mikado, the better I am content with democracy."

In the four major biographers of Roosevelt in the last fifty years there is insight into a complex individual with family centric values, understanding of the America's Puritan roots an a conscious even deliberate styling of his public persona and manliness. His authorship betrays his seminal belief the Teutonic races (Germanic peoples) would dominate humankind and was the recurring theme in the volumes of "The Winning of the West". He would show his versatility particularly in Congress where he would debate and bully the chamber on passing pure food, drug and meat inspection laws. Team up with chief forester Gifford Pinchot beginning a revolution in American Conservation by adding 150 million acres to the nation's public lands including 5 national parks and 51 wildlife refuges.

Theodore Roosevelt left the White House at age 50, a two-term Republican President whose legacy still gazers down on the nation he so loved.

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