Posted Tuesday night, April 21, 2020.
Theodore Roosevelt on the stump circa 1900-1904.
There were some, to bee sure, and particularly within his own party, who were considerably less than enthusiastic over the prospect of such a person in power….”We need not tell our readers that up to this time we have discovered in Mr. Roosevelt very little cause for serious rejoicing,” declared the conservative Washington Post. “He has at all times been far too theatrical for our taste.” Even the venerable Henry Adams, who had found Roosevelt the Vice President “breezy and a tonic,” returned home gravely unsettled by his first social evening with Roosevelt the Chief of State. Everything at the White House had been too informal for Adams, the mean indifferent and badly served. Worse, Roosevelt had lectured him, the former Harvard Professor. “As usual Theodore absorbed the conversation,” wrote a disgruntled Adams to a friend. “It it tired me ten years ago, it crushes me now...Really, Theodore is exasperating…”
---from “The Path Between the Seas” by David McCullough .
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