Anyone else watching "Theodore Roosevelt" on the history channel?

[dflprincess]

TR had his faults & I really haven't learned anything new about him, but it is clearer than ever why today's Republicans never mention him.

[Hugin]

1. In many ways he was what they hate...

Every time I learn anything about him I have to chuckle and shake my head.

One thing I have never run across is a discussion of his influence on FDR. I believe Eleanor was TR’s niece but more remotely related to FDR himself. Was it a family zeitgeist or were there active threads somewhere? TR himself died in 1919.

The man was relentless and literally the secretary of everything at one point or another.

One thing is for certain, the current political landscape in the US was his doing.

[dflprincess]

2. Eleanor was TR's niece

Franklin was his 5th cousin (Eleanor's 5th cousin once removed.

From other biographies I've read I gather that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Oyster Bay Roosevelts (starting with Teddy's father) were more progressive than the Hyde Park Roosevelts.

The program just gave a list of what TR began pushing after Taft had been in office a couple years and it would have today's Republicans screaming "Socialiist" and causing Manchin to swoon in horror.

[Hugin]

6. It would blow their socks off...

I’ve toyed with the thought that many of the unspoken guardrails in American politics are there to keep someone like him from ever doing what he did again.

He was a real progressive populist. Even TFG tried to sell himself as a populist, but, that progressive part makes them tremble.

[JHB]

9. Their conservative counterparts at the time DID call him "socialist"

[hedda_foil]

13. FDR actually patterned himself after TR.

He held all the offices TR did, including running for Vice President at the age of 37. Of course he ran as a Democrat and the ticket lost. Then polio struck In '21and he spent most of the 20s rehabilitating before running for NY governor in 1928, winning that office and then the presidency in '32.

[Hugin]

14. Now that you mentioned it...

I think I heard something along those lines.

I didn’t remember he had polio so late. Those dimes really marched.

[BradAllison]

3. Most Libertarians despise him, but keep that mum.

They think Calvin Coolidge, father of the depression, was great.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. TR was a complicated man who came from a complicated family.

His beloved wife died two days after giving birth and his mother died on another floor of his home the same day as his wife. He never allowed the name of his first wife to be mentioned again, and his daughter was treated as an outsider. He then abandoned the baby to the "Badlands" out West to straighten himself out.

[dflprincess]

5. The odd thing being that the baby was named Alice after her mother

And he did use her name. Most famously when he said he could run the country or control Alice but not both at the same time.

[Hugin]

7. Yep pure TR.

“not both at the same time.”

[zipplewrath]

8. Lincoln, TR, Ike, and Nixon

4 GQP presidents that they currently like to forget.

[In It to Win It]

10. Lincoln is good for branding when it's convenient for them

[First Speaker]

12. Hah. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for Nixon...

...given that he was a bigoted, paranoid traitor and all. (See the Chennault Affair, 1968.) But by God, he looks like Pericles compared to today's GOP...

[Bayard]

11. I watched the first one last night

Enjoyed it, and have the second recorded.

Today, he would be a Dem.