There's a danger to having a taste for histories and biographies. It's inevitable: you get attached to a person, or a particular story; you have a romantic idea of how things were, and then Wham! There always comes a book that knocks out your paradigm from beneath your feet. Case in point (and not to pick on my co-blogger), Joe was a huge Lance Armstrong fan. He read Lance's book, and then made me read it. He immersed himself in the Tour de France, and dragged me along for the ride. (Full disclosure: I can be talked into watching most any non-golf related sport, so, yeah, it wasn't that big a fight) He also defended Armstrong, loudly and repeatedly. Anytime anybody would bring up doping, they would be met with "MOST TESTED ATHLETE IN THE WORLD!" End of discussion.
Sometime after Lance's Seventh title, I lent Joe "Game Of Shadows", the book about the investigation of Balco and illegal performance drugs in sports. This was not technically related to any Armstrong-love, Lance isn't even the focus of the book. But, after reading the lengths and trials an athlete will go to in order to be the best, and how easy it was to stay ahead of the testing....The seed of doubt was planted. And when many of Lance's competitors were found to be doping, it damned, in Joe's mind, the American cyclist even more. For if all your rivals are using performance enhancers, and you're still beating them like drums, you're either doping yourself, or your a superhero. Armstrong is no superhero. Although that might explain Sheryl Crow.....
Now, in the numerous amount of books I've read on historical Americans, one man has been focused on more than all others: Theodore Roosevelt. Something about the Bull Moose fascinates me. Maybe it's the way he transformed himself from a aristocratic dandy to the Rough Rider. Maybe it's the fact he was a staunch conservative all the way up to his presidency, and then showed a surprising liberal bent once he got into power. (Dig those RINO's, eh, Glenn?) Whatever the facts, I believe he was a great president, and worthy of inclusion on that Dakotan mountainside. And most of the Teddy-related books I've read have ranged from positive to outright fawning.
Having read James Bradley's "The Imperical Cruise", in other words, was a bit of a shock, because the book was a shot directly across the bow of Roosevelt's legacy. The book tells of a cruise that William Taft (Teddy's secretary of war at the time), a number of congressman, and Alice Roosevelt (Teddy's daughter, and the closest thing America had to Paris Hilton in the early 20th century) were passengers of, one that went on a tour of Asia. Interspersed with events on the trip are reviews of American foriegn policy in Southeast Asia and, to put it bluntly, the failures and shames of the Roosevelt administration over there. Those include:
-The taking of the Philippines from Spain. Spain had fought with the locals for decades, and when The Spanish-American war broke out in the 1890's, the Philippines thought that the US would come to save them, especially when the Americans surrounded the Spanish in Manilla. Unbeknownst to the Filipinos, though, the Spanish were given 20 million dollars for the island, and allowed to leave under the cover of darkness, and the locals woke up to American rule, which was, at best, no different than Spanish rule. At worst, according to some numbers, it cost up to 1.4 million Filipino lives.
-Relations with China, which were marked by the double standard of demanding an open matket in China for the Americans, while Roosevelt turned a blind eye to the Chinese anger at the Chinese Exclusion Act, an anti-immigration law in America that would not be overturned for another 4 decades. All while Roosevelt fought for Japanese rights in America (more on that in a sec)
- Korea, who was the one SE Asian country that the US had good relations with when Roosevelt became president, was basically used as a barganing chip with Japan for access to Japenese goods. When the Russian-Japanese war made its way over to Korea, the Koreans sent a cable to their allies in Washington, pleading for help. The Americans response: "You need to go through the proper channels, i.e. the Tokyo Embassy". Translation= In our eyes, you are now Japanese Territory.
If it seems like Roosevelt favored the Japanese, that would be correct, but even that ended poorly for Teddy, and would have the longest reach of all his failures in that region. One acheivement that I looked up to with Teddy, was his Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to the Russian-Japanese war. It was a response to all who dismissed him as an imperial war-monger. Unfortunately, that's not exactly the truth.
Japan, unlike most of the other Asian countries, viewed western influence with a sort of pragmatism. They started to emulate the Western nations, much to the disgrace of their counterparts. (Especially China) This lead Roosevelt to take a shine to the Japanese; in some of his papers, he refers to them as "Honorary Aryans". When Russia started to encroach on SE Asia, and threaten Japan, Roosevelt told the Japanese he could not officially take sides, but if they fought, he would give them all the behind the scenes support he could, would help keep the French from joining their Russian allies. He even impressed on the Japanese that a surprise attack on the Russian fleet would give the Japs a head start on the war. (If that sounds familar, it should. Japan would repeat that tactic at Pearl Harbor.) Japan would get the better of Russia, and Roosevelt offered to help negotiate the peace, with most people unaware that he had been on the Oriental side all along.
Unfortunately, Roosevelt's love for the "Honorary Aryans" only went so far. The Japanese wanted a sizeable money reparation from Russia, which the Czar said he would never give. Roosevelt persuaded Japan to give up the money, which infurated most Japanese citizens. (On the imperial cruise, Alice Roosevelt visited Japan twice. The first time, she was treated like royalty and given parades in town. The second time, three weeks later, and after news of the negotiations leaked out, Taft told her that, if she insisted on going ashore, she was to disguise herself, and if anybody asked, she was British, not American.) Japan held bitter feelings toward America for a long time after that.
But the longest reaching effect Roosevelt had was this; In some of his secret meetings with Japanese officials, Roosevelt bragged about the Monroe Doctrine, and impressed on his Honorary Aryans that they should have a similar sphere of influence over SE Asia. Even after the fallling out, Japanese officials were intrigued by this idea. Years later, they would try to force the sphere of influence on Korea and China. As Bradley deadpans, "Historians would call this World War II".
Now, because of this, have I fallen out of love for Mr. Bull Moose? Not really. I still think he was one of the most important Presidents, especially when his domestic policies are examined. Despite his failures abroad, and not all of his foreign policy were failures, he remains an accomplished man. And despite his less than favorable views on non-caucasian races, for his time, he was not as backwards as his compatriots. He remains the first American President to invite an African-American (Booker T. Washington) to dinner at the White House, a feat he never lived down or repeated. His failures were made under the name of advancing the American cause. As I said before, if you admire a person, sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is try to find out more about them. Men are just men, and everybody has faults. Greater men tend to have greater faults, and honestly, while you shouldn't ignore the faults, if you can't reconcile the good and the bad, your heroes will always, without exception,disappoint you.
Except John Elway. He was the man.
elway is a schmuck.
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