The Progressive Presidents Part 2 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Pursuit of Greatness

This American President

Society & Culture, Education, History

4.6 • 698 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Theodore Roosevelt began his second term in 1905 looking to secure his country's status as a great power, and his own place in history as a great president. To do so, he implemented progressive policies to expand the power of the federal government...

Transcript

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0:00.0	In our previous episode, we covered Theodore Roosevelt's rise to power, his obsession with greatness, his progressive beliefs, and his spectacular successes in the first three years of his presidency.
0:14.0	In 1905, he began his second term and looked forward to securing his place as one of America's greatest leaders.
0:22.6	How his grand ambitions played out on the global stage is the subject of this episode of this
0:29.4	American president.
1:13.6	Music The On March 4, 1905, Theodore Roosevelt stood on the east portico of the U.S. Capitol and took the oath of office as president of the United States. In truly Roosevelt-like fashion, the inaugural celebration featured a diverse set of guests, including cowboys, Native Americans, like legendary Apache
1:20.7	chief Geronimo, coal miners, and soldiers. His inaugural address was one of the shortest in history, and included many of the
1:29.8	familiar themes he had discussed and personified throughout his career. He spoke of, quote,
1:36.0	manlier and hardier virtues. He once again talked about national greatness, saying, quote,
1:42.2	we have become a great nation, forced by the act of
1:46.5	its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as
1:52.2	beseems a people with such responsibilities. He also emphasized the progressive principle
1:59.1	that new times require new policies, saying, quote,
2:02.9	Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils,
2:10.2	the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee. Modern life is both
2:16.6	complex and intense, and the tremendous changes
2:20.2	wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half-century are felt in every
2:26.0	fiber of our social and political being. As I mentioned earlier, Roosevelt sought to make
2:33.2	the Monroe Doctrine a reality. But just as
2:36.5	New Times required new policies, Roosevelt believed that the Monroe Doctrine, too, needed a new twist.
2:43.7	In the previous episode, we covered the Venezuela crisis, and we saw how European powers had
2:49.2	just claims against Latin American countries that had defaulted on their loans.
2:54.5	While these claims were legitimate, Roosevelt worried that they would provide Europeans with a pretext to meddle in the Americas.
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