Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

This was remarkable praise for a man of the opposite party who had himself served two Presidential terms.

This quotation is important for two reasons. First, this is one of the most negative attacks on an opponent in a Presidential election in all of American History—to call the opponent ‘dangerous’ to the nation. Second, it is a classic example of two close political friends and allies, after a falling out. Roosevelt had in effect made Taft President in 1908, but Roosevelt was extremely disappointed as Taft was controllable by the Republican Party bosses, who hated Roosevelt. TR then challenged the then sitting President for the Republican Presidential nomination. At that time there were 12 states that had primary elections and Roosevelt won 9 of them. La Follette won 2 and Taft only 1. The majority of the states did not then have primaries allowing the party bosses to make the decision of which candidate to support. Party leaders generally did not like Roosevelt who was a major reformer, so they voted for Taft at the convention pushing him over the top when he clearly was the less popular of all 3 candidates. Roosevelt, outraged by the party bosses overriding the will of the people, then walked out of the convention and organized his own convention and TR ran as the Progressive Party (Bull Moose Party). In the general election Roosevelt got more votes than Taft, but the two of them had split the majority Republican vote and the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson was the winner.

Browder, had been prohibited by Court Order from touring the country during the 1940 Presidential Campaign. He personally blamed FDR although the Communist vote was so small that no matter where and how Browder campaigned it would not have made any difference. However, the court order gave Browder the opening leading some to believe that the communist following was larger than it was—why else would the establishment want to keep the campaign limited?

Incredible as it seems today, no Black person had ever dined in the White House as a guest of the President. African American servants were common. And Abraham Lincoln had received many Black visitors as had Presidents after him. But no president had ever had a Black person to dine as a social equal. The photo, reproduced here, illustrates the parity. But that was the worst thing a President could do so far as Tillman and his fellow racists were concerned. They had, since the end of the Civil war, used violence and terrorism to murder, maim and/or intimidate the Negro population to remain in an economic and socially inferior position. In Tillman’s state over these decades they had more lynchings than legal executions and there were plenty of them. Newspapers over the South riled up the whites and there was a wave of terror to be sure that the President’s importune action would not be taken as an endorsement of the Negro’s right to any equality or even dignity. This dinner essentially wedded all the Blacks to the Republican Party and all the Southern Whites to the Democratic Party. This would remain the political situation for over 60 years until the Democrats passed the LBJ Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Republicans decided to solicit the Southern White racists who accepted the invitation and within a few years, there was a complete reversal of party loyalty of most Blacks and most Southern White Racists.

Ford was outraged about the President’s administration making rules and regulations to cope with the worst economic crash in American History. Former President Hoover had been voted out of office because philosophically he believed like Ford that the Federal Government should not be actively involved with private business and the economy. Some view regulation as meddling and interference while others see it as fulfilling its responsibility for the majority of citizens. See {642381} for Ford’s view of the Great Depression.

Coughlin was an early and valued supporter of FDR, but after Roosevelt’s election the priest became dissatisfied that Roosevelt was not radical enough. FDR also wanted to distance himself from many of the Fascist and Socialist ideas of Coughlin and especially his racism and anti-Semitism. Coughlin then flip-flopped and became a vicious Roosevelt Critic. Few realize that he ever supported Roosevelt.

Roosevelt, after refusing to run for a third term in 1908, decided to run in 1912:

Theodore Roosevelt, became President when President McKinley was assassinated. One thing that he did was to have the Negro leader, Booker T. Washington to lunch at the White House. He had previously had Blacks in his famous Rough Riders. Although Roosevelt had not taken a public position in inter-racial marriage, in the South, and much of rest of the country, accusing someone of favoring miscegenation was as serious an insult as there was. The accusation was used to attack anyone who did not favor segregation, lynching and Jim Crow in the same way that people who favored Medicare or Labor Unions were called “communists”. Cardamon himself was the target of many for his disrespectful and gross description of the president. See Quotation

TR worked very hard for his press coverage. He literally met with the press every day—often several times. Daily, his barber had to cut and shave with the President talking to the reporters and answering questions. The only time he stopped talking was when the barber was shaving his chin or upper lip.

Lindbergh, a great aviator, was a Fascist who was a great admirer and supporter of Hitler and Mussolini. By this time, even Lindbergh had seen much of the German aggression, and his opposition to the war was on the pragmatic ground that we could not win. He thought that democracy was too unsuited to a country being a major power.

Referring to Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then contesting for the Democratic presidential nomination: