Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

American Forum - Unreasonable Men: Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Rebels Who Created Progressive Politics

October 29, 2014
11:00AM - 12:30PM (EDT)
Michael Wolraich

VIDEO 56:56

Transcript tasters. If you have never heard of Prince Alfred frock coats this is for you! Wonderful history. A fascinating read for me.

[...] takes us into the heart of the epic power struggle that created the progressive movement and defined modern American politics. Recounting the fateful clash between the pragmatic Theodore Roosevelt and the radical “Fighting Bob” La Follette of Wisconsin, Wolraich’s narrative reveals how a few Republican insurgents broke the conservative chokehold on Congress and initiated the greatest period of political change in America’s history.

00:11:57:22 - Wolraich: There was both. There was a lot of corruption certainly. More so at the state level not the federal level. The local parties were in each state run by a political machines. There would be a boss and the boss would hand out jobs to his supporters in return for them drumming up votes. This was called the Patronage System. But he needed money to run his operation and that came from business. And that could be bribery, there could be delegates bribed or bought. But a lot of it was a form that was familiar today. A lot of it was campaign contributions. And that certainly happened at the Federal level. Theodore Roosevelt who despite coming out very strongly against the trusts, his campaign raised a lot of money from the large tycoons. J. D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, a lot of the railroad tycoons, etc.

00:13:01:25 - Blackmon: And so Teddy Roosevelt is a rich guy from Oyster Bay, New York. What role is he playing in all this in the decade before he emerges as a national figure? Where does he fit in the tumult that you just described?

00:13:16:17 - Wolraich: Well, Roosevelt as everyone knows he was somebody different. He was idiosyncratic. He was his own man. And cut a very different course through politics than people were used to. He was always a reformer even early on as a legislature in the state government of New York. He pushed for reforms. He was anti-corruption. He was trying to change the patronage system to switch to a more mesocratic way of recognizing and elevating public servants. But he was not necessarily, he was not the crusader that he was often remembered as and in the you know Ken Burns had a Roosevelt special which presented him as this fighter, this man who wouldn’t take no and wouldn’t compromise with his enemies. And that was not actually Theodore Roosevelt. He was very cautious about it. He wanted to change the country incrementally one step at a time. This was partly, as you said, he came from, old money and he was concerned about the populace agitation that was happening particularly out west what we now call the Midwest. He was concerned that it was too drastic, too violent, too dangerous. But the other thing was he was a very practical man. And he knew that if he pushed for aggressive measures to change the country that conservative powers in government would shut them down. This happened in New York State and it happened also once he became President. So he would work with his opponents and compromise with them to get as much change as he felt he could accomplished.

[...]

00:57:04:17 - Wolraich: Exactly, Wilson was also influenced by these changes at the time and he was more cerebral about it than Theodore Roosevelt. He had been conservative before he became governor of New Jersey. In fact it was the conservative political bosses in New Jersey hand picked him and put him, and chose him for their nominee because they felt that he would represent the conservative interests, the political machine interests. It was at that time in 1910 that Wilson started to belatedly embrace the progressive ideas that La Follette and some other Democrats like William Jennings Bryan were supporting. And so he becomes a Progressive leader but he didn’t start out that way. And then, you know, I think another important point that people don’t remember is that once he became President and once he was pushing for these tremendous changes in Congress, you know, from the income taxes to labor laws, to anti-trust laws, and ultimately women’s suffrage. These were supported not, these were not pushed through by the Democrats over the heads of the Republicans. There were a lot of Progressive Republicans mainly from La Follette’s faction who were working with Progressive Democrats and they were opposed by conservative Democrats and conservative Republicans at that time. So it was this bipartisan Progressive alliance that really pushed through the famous changes that we associate with Woodrow Wilson’s administration.

Much more interesting bits here, you gotta do it .. http://millercenter.org/events/2014/unreasonable-men-theodore-roosevelt-and-the-republican-rebels-who-created-p

It is an easy read. :)