Bully Boy
The Truth About Theodore Roosevelt's Legacy
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What Hath TR Wrought?
“I don’t think that any harm comes from the concentration of power in one man’s hands.” —Theodore Roosevelt
The notion that Theodore Roosevelt was one of America’s greatest presidents is literally carved in stone—right up there on Mount Rushmore. But as historian Jim Powell shows in the refreshingly original Bully Boy, Roosevelt’s toothy grin, outsized personality, colossal energy, and fascinating life story have obscured what he actually did as president.
And what Roosevelt did severely damaged the United States.
Until now, no historian has thoroughly rebutted the adulation so widely accorded to TR. Powell digs beneath the surface to expose the harm Roosevelt did to the country in his own era. More important, he examines the lasting consequences of Roosevelt’s actions—the legacies of big government, expanded presidential power, and foreign interventionism that plague us today.
Bully Boy reveals:
• How Roosevelt, the celebrated “trust-buster,” actually promoted monopolies
• How this self-proclaimed champion of conservation caused untold environmental destruction
• How TR expanded presidential power and brought us big government
• How he heralded in the era of government regulation, handicapping employers, destroying jobs, and harming consumers
• How he established the dangerous precedent of pushing America into other people’s wars even when our own national interests aren’t at stake
• How this crusader for “pure food” launched loony campaigns against margarine, corn syrup, and Coca-Cola
• How Roosevelt inspired the campaign to enact a federal income tax that was supposedly a tax on the rich but became a people’s tax
Bully Boy is both a groundbreaking look at a pivotal time in America’s history and a powerful explanation of how so many of our modern troubles began.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Powell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has made a name for himself writing provocative studies of presidents (FDR's Folly and Wilson's War). In this biased, unpersuasive account, Powell argues that virtually every plank of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive agenda including trust-busting, regulation of food and drugs, and the income tax (which Powell describes as "blood money") was a disaster. He sees Roosevelt as a dangerous tyrant who sought to expand the power of the executive office in order to promote his own interests. Powell's libertarian politics color almost every page of this study. To wit, his critique of Roosevelt's conservationism: "By establishing federal control over so much U.S. land, he defied the prevailing American view that land use decisions were best made by private individuals who had a stake in improving the value of their property." Powell also turns his guns on muckraking reporter Jacob Riis, remembered for his journalistic expos s of urban poverty. Powell says that instead of unmasking poverty, Riis should have asked "whether the poor were better off" in his day than they had been in the past, then approvingly quotes Thomas Hobbes's description of life as "poor, nasty, brutish, and short." This is irresponsible revisionism at its worst.
