Why theodore roosevelt was a bad president

Unlike earlier immigrants, the majority of the newcomers after came from non-English speaking European countries. The so-called "new immigrants" had difficulty adjusting to life here. At the same time, the United States had difficulty absorbing the immigrants. Most of the immigrants chose to settle in American cities, where jobs were located. As a result, the cities became ever more crowded. In addition, city services often failed to keep up with the flow of newcomers.

Most of the immigrants did find jobs, although they often worked in jobs that most native-born Americans would not take. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language He did little to preserve black suffrage in the South as those states increasingly disenfranchised blacks.

He believed that African Americans as a race were inferior to whites, but he thought many black individuals were superior to white individuals and should be able to prove their merit.

He caused a major controversy early in his presidency when he invited Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House in October Roosevelt wanted to talk to Washington about patronage appointments in the South, and he was surprised by the vilification he received in the Southern press; he did not apologize for his actions.

When management refused to negotiate, he hatched a plan to force the two sides to talk: instead of sending federal troops to break the strike and force the miners back to work, TR threatened to use troops to seize the mines and run them as a federal operation.

Faced with Roosevelt's plan, the owners and labor unions agreed to submit their cases to a commission and abide by its recommendations. Roosevelt called the settlement of the coal strike a "square deal," inferring that everyone gained fairly from the agreement.

That term soon became synonymous with Roosevelt's domestic program. The Square Deal worked to balance competing interests to create a fair deal for all sides: labor and management, consumer and business, developer and conservationist. TR recognized that his program was not perfectly neutral because the government needed to intervene more actively on behalf of the general public to ensure economic opportunity for all.

Roosevelt was the first President to name his domestic program and the practice soon became commonplace, with Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and Harry S.

Truman's Fair Deal. Roosevelt was the nation's first conservationist President. Everywhere he went, he preached the need to preserve woodlands and mountain ranges as places of refuge and retreat. He identified the American character with the nation's wilderness regions, believing that our western and frontier heritage had shaped American values, behavior, and culture.

The President wanted the United States to change from exploiting natural resources to carefully managing them. In , Roosevelt signed the Newlands Reclamation Bill, which used money from federal land sales to build reservoirs and irrigation works to promote agriculture in the arid West.

After he won reelection in his own right in , Roosevelt felt more empowered to make significant changes in this domain. This gave the Forest Service, and Pinchot as head of it, more power to achieve its goals.

Together, Roosevelt and Pinchot reduced the role of state and local government in the management of natural resources, a policy that met with considerable resistance. Only the federal government, they argued, had the resources to oversee these efforts. Roosevelt used his presidential authority to issue executive orders to create new national forests, increasing the amount of protected land from 42 million acres to million acres.

The President also created five national parks, eighteen national monuments, and 51 wildlife refuges. The emergence of a mass-circulation independent press at around the turn of the century changed the nature of print media in the United States. Instead of partisan publications that touted a party line, the national media was becoming more independent and more likely to expose scandals and abuses.

This era marked the beginning of investigative journalism, and the reporters who led the effort were known as "muckrakers," a term first used by Roosevelt in a speech. One of the best examples of Roosevelt's relationship with the muckrakers came after he read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which described in lurid detail the filthy conditions in the meat packing industry—where rats, putrid meat, and poisoned rat bait were routinely ground up into sausages.

Both pieces of legislation endeared him to the public and to those corporations that favored government regulation as a means of achieving national consumer standards. Roosevelt was the first President to use the power of the media to appeal directly to the American people. He understood that his forceful personality, his rambunctious family, and his many opinions made good copy for the press.

He also knew that the media was a good way for him to reach out to the people, bypassing political parties and political machines.

He used the media as a "bully pulpit" to influence public opinion. Theodore Roosevelt reflected the racial attitudes of his time, and his domestic record on race and civil rights was a mixed bag. He did little to preserve black suffrage in the South as those states increasingly disenfranchised blacks.

He believed that African Americans as a race were inferior to whites, but he thought many black individuals were superior to white individuals and should be able to prove their merit. He caused a major controversy early in his presidency when he invited Booker T.

Washington to dine with him at the White House in October Roosevelt wanted to talk to Washington about patronage appointments in the South, and he was surprised by the vilification he received in the Southern press; he did not apologize for his actions.

Since the rise of industrial capitalism, however, the greatest fortunes generally have been made by serving millions of ordinary people. One thinks of the Wrigley chewing gum fortune, the Heinz pickle fortune, the Havemeyer sugar fortune, the Shields shaving cream fortune, the Colgate toothpaste fortune, the Ford automobile fortune and, more recently, the Jobs Apple fortune. Like Obama, TR was a passionate believer in big government — actually the first president to promote it since the Civil War.

He seemed to be concerned about an economic issue only when it became a big problem, particularly if it was big enough to affect the next election.

Certainly there was no evident awareness of unintended consequences. Much more here. Live Now. Cato at Liberty. Blog Home RSS. Email Signup Sign up to have blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!