The Post-Presidential Years

I. Choosing a Successor

A. William Howard Taft--during Roosevelt's presidency, Taft was the go-to guy to troubleshoot problems that Roosevelt wanted to solve, foreign or domestic. Roosevelt mistook Taft's willingness to carry out Roosevelt's directives as like-mindedness on these issues; when this proved not to be the case, Roosevelt became increasingly disenchanted with his hand-picked successor.

1. Taft and the Trusts--where Roosevelt simply called those trusts that he considered "bad" (a determination that was wholly idiosycratic) to the White House for a dressing down;  Taft, on the other hand, because of his training in the law, relied more upon the Justice Department to bring lawsuits against those trusts in violation of the law. Although Roosevelt saw this as a failure, in retrospect Taft was more effective in breaking up trusts. Roosevelt saw trusts as endemic to capitalism; his major concern was making sure that they knew (or acted as if) they were subservient to the US government.


2. Taft and the (non)Vigorous Life--Taft, as a man who much of his adult life weighed more than 300 pounds, was a much more sedentary figure. His major form of exercise was the occassional game of golf; even more so than today, golf was a game for financial and social elites, since there were few public courses available to play the game. Taft's weight gain seems to have been tied to his own personal happiness (or depression)--therefore, he was at his heaviest during the 1912 campaign, with his personal friendship with Roosevelt in tatters, and the campaign itself floundering.

II. Roosevelt's Post-Presidential Depression

A. The African Safari--although Scribner Publishing gave Roosevelt a $50,000 advance for the book he agreed to right and the articles he was to produce while on the journey (an advance that would more than pay for the journey, even at its lavish scale), the safari was more about taking on another adventure than its was about supplementing his income

1. Media adulation--as during his presidency, the press treated his safari as a singular event, as if Roosevelt were the first white man to hunt "the dark continent." Part of this is again Roosevelt's genius of self-promotion; Baron Rothschild, during his safari earlier, had failed to bring along a movie camera and an operator. Part of Roosevelt's genius lay, however, in his ability to undertake tasks that did capture the imagination of large numbers of Americans. Although there were large numbers of Americans who were disgusted by Roosevelt's propensity "to shoot often" (if not particularly well--and this was before PETA), his enthusiastic embrace of this vigorous life made him admirable in the eyes of large numbers of supporters.

a. Good copy--Roosevelt's accessibility to members of the press--and his volubility--made it easy for members of the press to obtain a story, which made their jobs easier. The fact that he would sometimes say something a bit controversial was all the better.

B. The  European Tour--Roosevelt's even grander than grand tour of Europe--where the crowned heads of Europe vied to have him visit them, in the hope that some of his aura would rub off on them--played into his vision of himself as statesman; it should be noted that as these various kings confided to him their expectation to go to war in the next few years (which, of course, proved to be prescient), he really did nothing with the information.

1. Roosevelt and War--Roosevelt's view of war as a way to prove one's manhood undoubtedly shaped his response (or lack thereof); he undoubtedly saw a huge continental war through the lens that had been ground from his experience in the Spanish-American War, and from the tales of gallantry relayed to him by his mother of the chivalrous Bulloch clan--not the destruction visited the countryside of huge continental wars that had kept the bloodlust in Europe largely in check between 1814 and 1914.

2. Welfare programs--Roosevelt came away duly impresses with the social welfare programs some European states were implementing to soften the effects of  industrialization--particularly old age pensions and disability payments for workers injured on  the job.

C. Roosevelt's Return Home--TR returned to a hero's welcome, riding the popularity and adulation that had characterized much of his presidency. But he was no longer president--Taft was. And Taft was not governing as TR thought he should, and TR severely criticized him among friends for this shortcoming.

1. The Return to Campaigning--although not a candidate himself in the 1910 elections, Roosevelt did campaign for a number of Republican candidates that fall. While he continued to draw huge crowds, he had little success in persuading those crowds to vote for Republican candidates; many of the candidates he supported lost in the fall elections.

III. Conclusion.