September 30, 1990

GEORGE BUSH AS TEDDY ROOSEVELT

So far, it's a poor imitation

By Robert S. McElvaine

Special to The Atlanta Constitution

Dr. McElvaine, who teaches history at Millsaps College, is completing a book on "Traditional Values."

JACKSON, Miss. -- President Bush's assertion that the Persian Gulf crisis makes this the time "to put country before self" is most interesting. This is not the sort of talk we are accustomed to hearing from Republicans. The placing of self-interest above the common good was the essence of the Reagan years.

It is now clearer than ever that George Bush was not, as Dan Quayle might put it, a "happy camper" in the previous administration. Ronald Reagan was never his kind of Republican. Mr. Bush has always taken another GOP president as his model.

Shortly after his election, Mr. Bush said that the Republican predecessor to whom he would be most similar was Theodore Roosevelt. This image was carried forward when he had the portrait of Calvin Coolidge that Mr. Reagan had ordered hung in the White House replaced by a painting of the Republican Roosevelt.

This past summer presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said that Mr. Bush has been reading a biography of the Rough Rider.

But how does George Bush stack up against the man he has taken as his model?

Many of the notes Mr. Bush sounded in his Sept. 11 address were clear echoes of Mr. Roosevelt. Late in his first term, Mr. Roosevelt asked Congress for greater military might so that the United States would be in a position to stand up in the world for both justice and American interests. Contending that nations and individuals should be held to "the same mortal law," Mr. Roosevelt declared that "a great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil."

If Mr. Bush employed a ghostwriter for his speech, it must have been the ghost of TR.

Theodore Roosevelt believed, as he wrote to his eldest son in France during World War I, that war is a "great chance" that must be "seized." It was his largest disappointment that his own years as president did not provide the "ghost events" that he thought necessary to give a leader a chance to achieve historical greatness.

Could it be that Mr. Bush had this concern of his favorite predecessor in mind when he seized the opportunity presented by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait?

A chance for greatness was not all that Mr. Roosevelt sought from adventures abroad. He also looked for opportunities to put the world on notice that the United States was and intended to remain a great power. The most notable example was Roosevelt's sending of the "Great White Fleet" of 16 battleships on a cruise around the world in 1908 to demonstrate American power.

Operation Desert Shield in the great white sand dunes of Saudi Arabia can be seen as Mr. Bush's Great White Fleet. Surely it has informed the world of American power and willingness to exercise it as effectively as did Mr. Roosevelt's ships.

But it is in regard to the theme of military crisis as a time for people to subordinate the self to the common good that the most instructive comparisons of the two presidents can be made.

Mr. Roosevelt was deeply concerned about the tendency of people to become absorbed in self-indulgence. He believed that the most serious threat to American civilization was that people would become materialistic self-seekers.

Leaving aside Mr. Roosevelt's questionable motives for wanting to engage in warfare (at various times he referred to those who opposed military actions as 'shrill eunuchs" and "sexless creatures"), one of war's greatest attractions for him was that it provided a cause for which people could be persuaded to set aside their individual desires, work together and make sacrifices for an ideal.

It was Mr. Roosevelt's view that people should always be willing to "put country before self." He feared, however, that only war could get them to do so.

Mr. Bush never before has called upon anyone to sacrifice anything. Even now, under threat of war, he has made no call for the sort of sacrifice that Mr. Roosevelt commonly used his "bully pulpit" to advocate.

Mr. Roosevelt frequently urged Americans to practice conservation for the benefit of future generations. Mr. Bush can barely bring himself to ask for conservation in the face of possible war. In his address to Congress, he paid the merest one-sentence lip service to the need of conservation. It was plain that he considered this mention obligatory, but did not intend that anyone take it seriously.

Theodore Roosevelt insisted that sacrifices should be shared by all segments of the society. In a system of universal military service, Mr. Roosevelt wrote in 1915, "no man could hire a substitute, no man would be excepted because of his wealth; all would serve in the ranks on precisely the same terms side by side."

Mr. Bush pledged again in his address to the nation to oppose any return to fairness and progressivity in tax rates. The rich will not be asked to sacrifice. In fact, the only people Mr. Bush is asking to put country before self and make sacrifices are the mostly poor young men and women in our all-volunteer military.

Mr. Bush wants to link himself with Mr. Roosevelt, but he is still acting more like Mr. Reagan in his refusal to ask most people to take any sacrifice and in his unwillingness to ask the wealthy to accept a fair share of the national burden. He apparently fears that such requests might cause him to lose popularity.

As long as he places polls before principle, George Bush will remain a poor imitation of Theodore Roosevelt.