At NRO, Michael Knox Beran gives his take on John McCain’s love for Teddy Roosevelt. Although I have previously noted TR’s progressivism, Beran argues that TR was neither conservative nor progressive:
[I]f Roosevelt was not a capitalist, neither was he deeply or sincerely a Progressive. He was a man of the state. Robert La Follette perceived the falseness of his reformist strutting: “Theodore Roosevelt is the ablest living interpreter of what I would call the superficial public sentiment of a given time, and he is spontaneous in his reactions to it.†Teddy’s Progressive agenda was driven not by principle but by political opportunism and a heightened sensitivity to the mood of the moment. The deviousness with which he negotiated the shoals of public opinion might have passed for wisdom, had it not been so patently pressed into the service of self-glorification.
In advertising his hero-worship of Teddy, Sen. McCain exhibits a little too blatantly an aspect of his own psyche that would best be kept under wraps. He, too, has been accused of political narcissism. If he wants to reassure conservatives, he needs to persuade them that, unlike Roosevelt’s, his own policies will be grounded in something more solid than expediency and a canny reading of the whimsies of the moment.
I do not entirely agree with that, though it is arguably consistent with the cynical way in which “robber barons” actually used progressives to stifle their competition. What struck me was the degree to which “political narcissism,” “deviousness patently pressed into the service of self-glorification” or “expediency and a canny reading of the whimsies of the moment” equally describes the politics of John McCain and Barack Obama. Meet the new boss; same as last century’s boss.
I dunno; I think I’d believe McCain over Beran about TR, because, after all, McCain was there….
Then again, anybody who wrote “I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,'” can’t be all bad. Try getting Baracky to say that.
“though it is arguably consistent with the cynical way in which “robber barons†actually used progressives to stifle their competition”
The ‘modern’ corollary is the Warmer/Peaker hysteria which is the much beloved child of the state oil oligopoly. There is just nothing better than a nonexistent “problem” to be “fixed” by a massive regressive tax to be imposed worldwide. Combine it with a justification for packing the herd more tightly (the better to be reached by community organizers) while championing abortion in order to “help” those rendered destitute by the tax increases and socialist nirvana is “within reach”. A perfect project, fitting the three legged stool of progressivism (slavery, taxes and death) to a T.
Beran is trying to measure Roosevelt’s Progressivism by the yardstick of modern Progressivism, which is not Progressivism at all. To that extent, he’s right, in much the same way as if he were to insist that a string bean is not a zebra.
RTO,
Your point is why I tend to disagree w/Beran. But I do think it a fair point that a certain type of progressive pol is interested in progressivism as a vehicle for self-glorification as much as (s)he is interested in it as an ideology per se.
Yes. I just wicsh we could tag tehm wiht a more appropriate moniker. Bull Moose Progressivism was actually admirable and you can still see the good parts of it in the Constitutions of Kansas and Oklahoma (for examples).
Letting “those people” hijack the name is a real problem.