In his second term, Trump should look to Teddy Roosevelt

Many pundits also have compared Trump to President Andrew Jackson. Jackson was the original populist, mocked as uncouth and the leader of a rabble but deeply successful both electorally and in his policy objectives. Trump himself thought the comparison appropriate, placing a picture of Jackson in the Oval Office.

However, as Trump sets up his second term, he would be well served by considering another past presidential example: Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt also was a populist, representing the wing of the progressive movement that rose in the late 19th century and reached its high point in the early 20th century. He had Trump’s flair for the dramatic (now even sharing being shot while speaking). 

Roosevelt’s theme of giving all persons a “Square Deal” seems especially appropriate for Trump the man and this political moment. Roosevelt argued against a certain kind of identity politics. At that point, the identity politics he saw did not involve all of today’s distinctions, mostly posited by the political Left, regarding race or sex or sexuality. Instead, he worried that special interests were pushing to divide the country according to social and economic class. 

The dangers of fostering and deepening these class divisions were dire. Roosevelt said republics in the past had faltered when riven asunder by class conflict, stoked by the jealousy of the many and selfish arrogance by the financial or social elites. America must reject such conflict in the pursuit of a more just and lasting political order. 

To describe that order, Roosevelt called for a patriotic view of America’s citizenry. On one hand, we should view men and women as individual people and judge them based on their own virtues and vices. 

Roosevelt spent some time elaborating on the virtues needed for self-government and the vices that undermined the American way of life. The virtues included knowing one’s own rights, considering the good of others, and having the courage to act according to both principles. Vices included the opposite, an unmanly fear and an inhuman selfishness that he thought defined too much of the corporate interests of the era. 

On the other hand, we also should view men and women as citizens linked together as part of the political community that was and is the United States. Here, Roosevelt noted that rich and poor, country and city, all could be good citizens or bad ones. 

At the same time, Roosevelt did say that the country’s policies should take special note of the good of farmers and “wage-laborers.” Why this focus? Roosevelt noted that these two lines of work comprised the solid majority of the country. Numerically, they dominated the rural and the urban parts of the nation. Knowing the good for these men and their families was a practical approach to pursuing a common good above class conflict. In fact, Roosevelt was careful to note that what was in their social and economic benefit usually meant prosperity for all. 

Finally, Roosevelt specified that these policies must be pursued “by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it and no man below it.” Equality before the law must emulate the social principles Roosevelt described and thereby reinforce them. 

In these ways, we can see in Roosevelt a populism that carries in a positive fashion many of the themes argued by Trump. The president-elect would do well to focus on a vision like this, one that downplays distinctions based on class and other identities, encouraging a common citizenship of equality under the law and virtue exercised in accordance with it. That would be more than a “Square Deal.” It would be a great one.

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Adam Carrington is an associate professor at Ashland University.