Book Review 

The Bully Pulpit – Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism

By Doris Kearns Goodwin

These days’ political debates tend to be rather dull affairs. The candidate wearing a blue tie says more or less the same thing as the candidate with the red tie seated across the table. There are very seldom any fistfights or chanting throngs of die-hard supporters and the chances of a riot breaking out among the crowds are slim, unless the moderator has just announced that the debate will last an hour longer than scheduled. Larger than life characters are in short supply and no one running for office will have been a decorated war hero, a cowboy or a big game hunter. Theodore Roosevelt were all three of those at some point in his life. He also served as a State Assemblyman, New York City Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice President and President of the United States. Since spare time is for the faint hearted, Roosevelt also published a wide body of text and novels covering many different topics and edited the Outlook Magazine.

Just like he did in real life, the towering and almost comically charismatic and masculine presence of “Teddy”, crowds out everything else. That´s why I have to hurry and tell you about Mrs. Kearns Goodwin’s magnificently splendid new book before I lose the plot and start to talk about Theodore Roosevelt again.

Charting the lives and fortunes of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, two fascinating men who would both serve as commander in chief and play a major role during the so called “Progressive Era” in the United states, The Bully Pulpit also tells the rags to riches story of one visionary publicist and his equally visionary magazine, McClure´s, which played a major role in influencing public opinion at the time.

Taft and Roosevelt both came from privileged backgrounds and they were both staunch Republicans of a sort that you wouldn´t find in today’s political landscape. Despite these similarities they were as different as two human beings can possibly be. The young Teedy was the runt of the litter, a weak and asthmatic little boy whose odds of surviving infancy looked slim. Yet the future Rough Rider refused to give in, and embarked on a strenuous regime of exercise to hone and strengthen what little nature had seemed fit to give him, in time becoming the epitome of masculinity and indeed of the American outdoorsman. Taft, on the other hand, was born in the pink but squandered his health and struggled with obesity for most of his life, a condition which sapped his energy and stamina. Roosevelt was known for being indefatigable, and once delivered nine campaign speeches on a single day, without showing the slightest sign of tiring. Roosevelt loved to get physical with his opponents and never shied away from a tough debate, while the introverted and analytical Taft despised politics. He only became president thanks to an ambitious wife and was much happier serving on the Supreme Court after he had left office. Where Roosevelt pummeled his opponents mercilessly and used the bully pulpit of the presidential office (as the name of the book implies) to rally public opinion, Taft frowned on such displays and preferred to in the same subdued and diligent way as he did when working as a prosecutor in Hamilton County, Ohio. His friendly and genial nature made him friends with everyone he met whereas Roosevelt’s larger than life character tended to divide people in two camps, those who revered him and those who despised him.

Sam McClure was born to abject poverty in Ireland but immigrated to the United States with his family at an early age. Like Roosevelt he was a larger than life character and had a highly gifted mind, but his mercurial tempers and volatile psyche meant that he was just as likely to act like a raving madman as he was to come up with an idea that was pure genius. With these flawed gifts McClure stated McClure’s Magazine, which became the leading progressive voice in the United States and published such a wide body of investigative journalism of such quality that it makes you wonder what The New York Times have been doing all these years. Mr. McClure´s magazine employed several of the most gifted journalist of the time, who became known as “Muckraking Men” due to their ceaseless habit of uncovering corruption and injustice.

Regrettably, corruption and injustice were not exactly rare occurrences in the early days of the twentieth century. Most of the country´s wealth was tied up in the business empires of a handful of powerful men, John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil being the foremost of these and a major antagonist throughout the book. The progressive era saw a downtrodden American populace revolt against the conservative business interests and Roosevelt, Taft and McClure’s all championed the popular cause. Roosevelt, aided by his vigorous constitution and the bully pulpit of the presidential office, managed to pass several pieces of landmark progressive legislation. Bitterly regretting his decision to resign after his second term even before it had been made, he anointed Taft, his secretary of war, as his successor. Even though Taft was a progressive, albeit a more moderate one than Roosevelt, their close friendship soon withered. Returning from a yearlong African safari, Roosevelt shortly threw down the gauntlet for the republican presidential nomination of 1912. Far from being a high minded debate about the issues, the struggle quickly became a brutal, blood and guts affair where no quarter was asked and none given. When Roosevelt lost the nomination, largely because of cronyism and a conservative Old Guard in the GOP, he proceeded to start his own party rather than throw in the towel. In the ensuing showdown, the former friends tore each other apart, shattered the progressive wing of the Republican Party and secured a victory for the Democratic challenger, Woodrow Wilson.

That the film rights have already been sold to Stephen Spielberg is no surprise, the 1912 presidential election is only the final thrilling chapters of an eight hundred plus page epic that will have you laughing and crying as the pages disappear in a blur of love, friendship, war, drama and intrigue. Occasionally Mrs. Kearns Goodwin delves a little deeper than necessary in the minutiae of parliamentary procedures from the early 1900s, but her autobiography is both skillfully written and staggering in scope and ambition.