Roosevelt's Selection As McKinley's Vice President example essay topic

Roosevelt, Theodore (American President) (c. 1858-1919) Roosevelt's presidency began with the chaos of McKinley's assassination in 1901, when Roosevelt was 43 years old, and ended after his second term, achieved by his election to President in 1904. Although Roosevelt's selection as McKinley's Vice-President was more of a political pay-off, and the New York political machine, fearing an independent Roosevelt, was more than ready to say good-bye to Roosevelt as Governor, Roosevelt is acknowledged by most historians as having waged a vigorous and winning campaign, while his presidential candidate seemed content to stay behind. With McKinley's assassination, the Republicans and the country had bought themselves an activist president who, in the span of seven years, turned an isolationist America into a world power which created American leadership and power in world affairs, dealt corporations a new set of rules, enacted a philosophy and policy of environmental conservation, set forth a progressive agenda which held Victorian values at its fulcrum, and dealt with the social and economic issues presented by the burst of immigrants.

The issues of non-english speaking immigrants, large corporate trusts acting with greed, defining America's role in the world politic, all faced Roosevelt, as they face Bush today. Moreover, Roosevelt fashioned policies, rationales, and enacted legislation to engage this challenge and pursued an even more aggressive presidential activism in his second term. This activist president, currently the public icon invoked by members of both parties, was descended from a mixed cluster of immigrant lineage: Welsh, German, and French, to name a few. Influencing his political ambitions and policies were his wealthy background; he was the son of a wealthy and successful glassware merchant whose Dutch family of origin, the Knickerbockers, had been residents of Manhattan since the mid-1600's. Born on October 27, 1858 in New York City, "Tee die" was known as a scrawny, weak child, sick from asthma, until his father's comments regarding his physique as representative of his manhood, turned young Teddy around.

Because of his father's tremendous influence over the young boy, Teddy responded to his father's encouragement and began to work out vigorously in a gym installed in the home by his father. Despite his efforts to improve his physical abilities and strengths, it took a beating from a bully to turn Teddy Roosevelt, the thinker, avid reader, and natural scientist, into an opponent who now should be feared, for Teddy turned to the art of boxing, jujitsu and other adversarial and highly physical sports. After graduating from Harvard in 1876, his future lay ahead of him. An zealous adherent to the Victorian values of marriage and family, Roosevelt was engaged to be married to Alice Lee before he graduated.

The year of his marriage also became the beginning of his political career. Roosevelt quit law school after one year and pursued a career in politics in New York City wards. He was able to get elected to the New York legislature. He immediately began to expose corruption and special interests which dominated the political arena at the time. After serving in several political appointments from New York City Police Commissioner to a Colonel in the American Army charging hills in Cuba, Roosevelt knew his life would be in public service. In what has been called one Roosevelt's greatest tragedies was the loss of his wife and mother on the same day: Valentine's Day, 1884.

His wife, Alice, had given birth to a daughter, Alice Lee. After spending two years in mourning, during which he spent much time in the western frontiers and wilderness raising cattle and hunting buffalo, he authored several books including the Naval War of 1812 and volumes on the rigors and requirements for settling the western frontiers. Roosevelt married a young woman named Edith Carol. His family grew to two daughters and four sons. He is reputed to have encouraged this brood to perform childish antics in the White House, resulting in sporadic laughter throughout the building.

Although Roosevelt had suffered personal tragedies in his life, and was manor-born, he scorned the wealthy antics of his peers in New York, who viewed politics with scorn and derision. Roosevelt, on the other hand, derided the Carnegie's, the Morgans, and the Rockefellers of his day, calling their single minded pursuit of money as being both cruel and sleazy. Roosevelt leap-frogged from one political position to another, each increasing in visibility and widening the scope of his influence. However, these positions were always at the bidding of others, the back room handshakes and deals made to hide or rescue Roosevelt.

Roosevelt kept his pursuit of the moral "right", using the basis of the values of the Victorian era as his fulcrum from which flowed his politics and presidential policies. Before Roosevelt would claim the presidency, he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Navy Secretary John D. Long in 1897. While Long was absent on a Friday afternoon following the Maine incident, Roosevelt took it upon himself to reposition Dewey's Navy to Hong Kong in order to be in a position to seize Manila and he placed part of the fleet in and around Cuba within striking distance to the island. He placed the remainder of the fleet on alert and ready for war. He accomplished all of this on a Friday afternoon. Shortly afterwards, in April, 1898, McKinley's peace efforts failed and the U.S. went to war with Spain.

Roosevelt gained McKinley's approval to recruit a division of volunteers, now famous as the Rough Riders. The charge up San Juan Hill was made famous because Roosevelt made sure it was covered by the media. That lesson was never lost on him. Arriving back in the States as a hero, Roosevelt sought and was elected as Governor of New York. Roosevelt's ambition didn't end with the Governor's office. He began to agitate for the presidential nomination.

Fearing a Roosevelt 'on the loose', the Party gave him the position of McKinley's Vice President. His term passed in a lackluster fashion until the assassin's gun. Catapulted into the office he had targeted, Roosevelt's felt that unless a nation kept its value system intact, (wherein the family as he knew it was sound - without divorce or homosexuality or other activities signaling moral decline), the nation was in peril. Thus, these values formed the fulcrum of Roosevelt's presidential actions: active mind, healthy body; corporations must do the "right" thing by society or government could compel them to do "good"; immigrants must be assimilated into American society with inter-marriage by the third generation; an only English spoken policy was necessary to promote assimilation. He had a natural ability to communicate with the American people. Roosevelt integrated the physicality and roughness of the frontiersmen with the values of a reformer.

Roosevelt believed that politicians could make life better for the average citizen. Roosevelt created and implemented a reformist agenda: the Panama Canal despite Colombia's protests, "dollar diplomacy" became a substitute for inter-countries' debt, reserved thousands of acres of federal lands for the people and further, established an activism in the presidential office which has influenced its occupants for years to come. Although Roosevelt wished to serve again in 1912, he failed to halt Woodrow Wilson with his newly formed "Bull Moose Party" and lived the remainder of his life as a hunter and informal ambassador.