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Stories tagged with “Theodore Roosevelt”

Justice

Romney Touts Constitutional Amendment Disqualifying Eisenhower, Roosevelt and McCain From Being President

By Ian Millhiser on May 30, 2012 at 11:13 am

Too inexperienced to be president

At a campaign rally in Las Vegas yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney touted the idea of making anyone who does not have a business background as ineligible for the White House as if they had been born in Kenya:

“I was speaking with one of these business owners who owns a couple of restaurants in town,” Romney said. “And he said ‘You know I’d like to change the Constitution, I’m not sure I can do it,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birthplace of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.‘”

Romney continued: “You see then he or she would understand that the policies they’re putting in place have to encourage small business, make it easier for business to grow.

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Romney’s amendment would come as quite a shock to the last person to earn the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958 and served more than two decades in the United States Navy, including more than five years as an prisoner of war. After retiring from the Navy at the rank of captain, McCain turned to politics and was elected to the House in 1983 and to the Senate in 1987. Because McCain devoted his life to serving his country, rather than to working in business, the Romney amendment would disqualify him from the White House.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower would likely suffer a similar fate. Like McCain, Eisenhower was a career officer before entering politics, graduating from West Point in 1915 and eventually commanding the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. It’s not clear whether Romney’s amendment would count the time Eisenhower spent as President of Columbia University as “working in business,” and Eisenhower did work two years supervising the night shift at a creamery before entering college. Unless Romney would allow Eisenhower to count his time in academia as business experience, however, Eisenhower lacked the three years required to become president under the Romney amendment. Saving human civilization from Adolf Hitler is not a sufficient qualification.
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Climate Progress

What Obama Would Say If He Were the Teddy Roosevelt of Climate Change

By Joe Romm on Feb 7, 2012 at 5:35 pm

Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part….

President Obama is no Teddy Roosevelt, even though he’d like people to think he is.  Needless to say, the GOP front-runner is no Roosevelt either (see Romney: I Don’t Know ‘What The Purpose is’ of Public Lands — a line that would set the Lion spinning.)

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/gty_teddy_roosevelt_barack_obama_thg_111205_wblog.jpg

Roosevelt was a true progressive.  In his famous, “New Nationalism” speech of 1910, he uttered the remarks that open this post along with these timeless statements:

I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the games, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service….

Now, this means that our government, national and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests….

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done….

The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.

Obama has turned out to be “the most moderate Democratic president since World War II.”  Nonetheless, back in December, Obama delivered a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, because it was where Roosevelt gave his 1910 speech.  Obama gave a good speech, as far as it went, focused on “the best way to restore growth and prosperity, restore balance, restore fairness”:

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Economy

Stop Smearing Teddy Roosevelt!

By ThinkProgress on Sep 16, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Interviewed today on NBC, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) discussed this week’s downturn in the financial sector, claiming he called attention the problem “a couple of years ago. Just as he did in March, McCain compared his views on regulating the economy to Teddy Roosevelt:

The fact, is warned about this problem a couple of years ago. I am a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. Teddy Roosevelt believed that we needed a government to function — an economy that can function without government interference. But, he also said, unfettered capitalism can breed corruption. We are seeing Teddy Roosevelt’s words come true. I know how to fix it.

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As John Podesta and John Halpin wrote recently, Roosevelt pushed for a wave of progressive economic reforms, unlike McCain’s radical conservative agenda. Roosevelt pushed for “the graduated income and inheritance taxes, a living wage, the 8-hour workday, worker’s compensation, women’s suffrage, lobbyist reform, public infrastructure investments, conservation and fair treatment of immigrants.”

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