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TJ or TR?
The filmmaker Ken Burns has a new documentary coming out this week called The Roosevelts, which profiles Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor. This prompted a discussion on the latest episode of The Thomas Jefferson Hour podcast. Humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson (who portrays Thomas Jefferson on the show) also portrays Theodore Roosevelt and has participated in several of Burns’ documentaries, including this latest.
The discussion on the show was about what these two men would have thought of each other. Because Jefferson died 32 years before Roosevelt was born, we don’t know how he would have viewed his fellow president. But since TR wrote plenty and wasn’t exactly shy, we do know what he thought about Jefferson. He was… not a fan.
As TR put it, Jefferson’s “influence upon the United States as a whole was very distinctly evil.” Jefferson’s modesty in foreign policy was not to Roosevelt’s taste. Jefferson believed in limited government, Roosevelt — not so much. Jefferson saw the Constitution as listing what the federal government could do. Theodore Roosevelt saw the Constitution as saying what it couldn’t do.
Their political philosophies were irreconcilable with one another. Jefferson was the arch-minarchist. Roosevelt was on the leading edge of progressivism and a devout believer in the muscular executive.
So my question to you all is:
Which do you prefer as a president? TJ or TR?
And as the person who asked the question, I’m going to rule that “both of them, they’re both awesome” is a cop out.
TJ, but I’m biased because I grew up a block from his summer home and played football in the front yard.
TR. Because of the teeth. Also note my avatar. It goes with this post.
Personally, I think TR had a better character in many ways. As a President, I’d have to go with TJ, who better understood the proper role of government.
That really puts America’s age as a nation in perspective!
Can I choose “none of the above”?
No?
OK, then, I choose TJ. Not because I like him much, but because of how much I dislike TR.
I dislike TJ intensely because he didn’t fully understand the necessity of a national military and banking system. He was a dedicated enemy of my favorite founder, Alexander Hamilton, who basically invented the capitalist system in America and was responsible for setting up this country to be the financial success it became. (The fact that Democrats chose to hijack and distort Hamilton’s strategy is hardly his fault.)
TJ also gets a “thumbs down” for his support of the French Revolution- a bloody, third-world type massacre and hardly one based upon democratic principles.
He was also wildly irresponsible in terms of his finances but I suppose I should be grateful; otherwise, the Library of Congress would not exist.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but TR was essentially a prototypical Progressive. Right?
To clarify, Jefferson died 32 years before T. Roosevelt was born.
Roosevelt was a better a person than Jefferson. He was progressive when it came to race relations being the first president to invite a black man to the White House for dinner. Jefferson was a slave holder who slept and had children (allegedly) with a 14 year old slave girl. Politically they were different times. Jefferson presided during an agrarian age and Roosevelt in an industrial age. Industrialization presented more problems that Roosevelt had to deal with. I’d say I’m more “bully” on Roosevelt.
A Jefferson impregnated Sally Hemmings; the DNA evidence on that front is clear. But because of who has survived to the present day, we don’t know if it was Thomas or one of his nephews. However, either he did it, or he helped cover up one of his nephews doing it, and it wouldn’t have happened had she not been his slave.
@thelonious: Younger brother Randolph may have been responsible as well; in fact, many historians believe he is the most likely suspect.
Not “essentially”, he founded the Progressive party. He laid the ground that Wilson trod on…
If limited strictly to their Presidencies and not acts before or after nor their character or political philosophies I would narrowly prefer TR to TJ. Although I heartedly endorse TJ’s Louisiana Purchase despite his doubts as to his Constitutional authority to do the deal he was derelict in mismatching an aggressive foreign policy vs Britain with a debilitating approach to building the military needed to support it.
While I disagree with TR’s progressive philosophy (read Jean Yarbrough’s Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition for more detail) while in office he was limited in what he did to further it and it wasn’t until after his Presidency that he really went off the rails; particularly in 1912 as the candidate of the Progressive Party. The 1912 TR would have been a disaster as President. This piece I wrote on Elihu Root, TR’s Secretary of State who broke with him in 1912, and his eloquent 1913 Princeton lectures on “Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution” provides additional background on the break. Root’s lectures remain one of the best explanations of the importance of limits on government.
TJ. But all those non-interventionist libertarians out there should note that Jefferson’s presidency saw America fight its first foreign war.
Okay, so according to the DNA evidence, a Jefferson impregnated Sally Hemmings. It could have been Randolph. Fine.
I’m sure it was Thomas Jefferson and here is why. Jefferson’s wife Martha was Sally’s half sister. Sally and Martha had the same father. And Sally was light skinned and looked like Martha. (Some of Sally’s children were so light they could pass.)
So, you have Thomas Jefferson, widower, and Sally, who looks like a younger version of his now dead wife. It’s not a stretch to think he took up with her.
Jefferson was a minarchist… except when he wasn’t. He was in favor of trade protectionism, despised merchants and manufacturing, and was not above using the government to punish political enemies (vis. Aaron Burr). From 1806-1808 he attempted to embargo all US foreign trade (not just to Britain), causing economic ruin in New England (which led to a healthy amount of secession talk). His instincts may have been generally beneficial regarding keeping the government small, but his economic ideas were extremely foolish.
Personally I’d rather not have to choose between him and TR. TR was prescient on US military power and the value of a navy, but clearly laid the groundwork for the Progressives, and his economic ideas were foolish in the opposite extreme from Jefferson.
“His modesty in foreign policy was not to Roosevelt’s taste.”
Jefferson had a distrust of standing armies rooted in the Whig tradition. That does not mean he was opposed to the vigorous use of the small military available to him as he demonstrated during the first Barbary war. If today’s non-interventionists were not so eager to claim Jefferson’s legacy as to forgo their usual consistency they would denounce Jefferson as a sort of proto-bush when it comes to mid-east intervention.
No love for TJ, Midge?
That’s fine. When it comes to politicians, I will always consider None of the Above to be an acceptable answer.
I… have… no… words… for… this…
To he powers that be: I’m sure if you asked, Clay Jenkinson would be happy to do the flagship podcast! #justsayin
(His contact information can be found here.)
I’ve long thought the clincher was that Jefferson was at Monticello when all three of Hemmings children were conceived.
For obvious reasons, I’m voting TJ, but with some caveats:
Tom, I’ll agree with you about your second point. As a politician, Jefferson was brutal.
However, the whole point of the embargo was to avoid a shooting war. (The embargo was an un-Jeffersonian train wreck, no doubt.)
Jefferson was always a dreamer. He dreamed that maybe he could accomplish things without resorting to war.
But we can’t really blame the Wo1812 on Jefferson.
Unless you mean that it was Jefferson’s plan to trick the British into burning down Washington DC. In which case, since the burning is something I approve of, I’d think that goes in the credit column.
The embargo was a very Jeffersonian train wreck, he despised the New England merchants and their lack of, to use a modern expression, “economic patriotism”. What finally got the embargo lifted was that for want of shipping he left the US coffers drained of any revenue and was faced with levying internal taxes. He hurt his own beloved farming base as much as the merchants.
Eh, not so much. It was more that he feared and loathed the idea of a standing army or navy, unless of course it was used to conquer Canada (of which he was very much in favor).
Right. What I mean was (and maybe I wasn’t clear) is that he lots of un-Jeffersonian things in pursuing that policy.
In 2011 Paul Rahe wrote a useful piece on this here at Ricochet. Though it is a dissent from a panel he was on based on my reading of the materials Paul has the better of the argument.
I guess it depends on which Jefferson you hold up for study – Jefferson from his writings, or Jefferson from his deeds. It’s like reading Rousseau’s advice on child rearing – Emile sounds great (well so some anyway, I never liked it), but Rousseau was a horrendous actual father.
I tend to view Jefferson as the archetypal lefty (and I’ve toyed with this as a post unto itself), full of lofty rhetoric about rights and such in his writings and speeches, filled with high-minded utopian dreams and rosy views of the ideal life, but doomed like all other utopians to turn a tyrant when humanity fails to meet his expectations.
In that sense his deeds are all too Jeffersonian, tyrannical projections of his attempts to make others conform to his utopia.