As with the case of Abe Lincoln, the rightwing loves to claim Teddy Roosevelt as one of their own.
Teddy Roosevelt was no laissez faire corporate shill, though. He saw himself as the "steward of the people" and left behind a bold, progressive legacy: the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act (before 1906, it was perfectly legal to poison your customer with tainted meat and snake oil. Just read The Jungle and that's all you need to know), he negotiated with laborers, he gave us the "Square Deal" including the Hepurn Act, which began getting big businesses under control in an attempt to make them serve the people. He foreshadowed today's concerned enviornmentalist movement by starting the forest service. Every time you go to the Grand Canyon and feel thankful it hasn't been filled up with diapers and fast food wrappers, to say nothing of car parts, you have one person to thank: Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt also started America's interest around the world as a humanitarian force, not an isolationist nation that fed off the wealth of poor peoples without giving a helping hand. He helped free the Filipinos from colonialism, too.
The Roosevelt Corollary was also important in establishing the United States as an internationally interested nation.
How far we've come, where we now have a Republican doing all he can do shrink down the public sector, and with a "Bush Doctrine" that puts unilitaral muscle-flexing above the thoughtful internationalism of Teddy Roosevelt!
Let us reclaim Teddy's legacy. We could use more another "Progressive Party" like the one he started in 1912, the Bull Moose Party, when he saw that William Howard Taft had sold the country and Progressives out for the purposes of giving big businesses favors through "laissez faire."
Now that both parties have becoem like President Taft, it's time for a new Bull Moose Party!
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