The Making of America — Theodore Roosevelt

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Another of Roosevelt's legacies was an unambiguous gift to the future. Teddy was never more himself than when he was outdoors. He loved nature, knew the songs of dozens of birds, loved to ride, climb, hike and shoot. As a boy he wanted to be a naturalist, and as a President he became the first to make environmentalism a political issue. Under the tutelage of his friends--naturalist and Sierra Club founder John Muir, who convinced Teddy that the Federal Government would be a better protector of parkland than the states, and U.S. Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot, who wanted strict controls over commercial use of woodlands--Roosevelt learned to shape his love of nature into a policy to defend it. The year after leaving the White House, he explained his philosophy to an audience in Kansas. He recognized the right, he said, even the "duty" of his generation to use the nation's natural resources. "But I do not recognize the right to waste them," he added. "Or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us."

We are those generations, and we have him to thank not only for the 150 national forests he created, the 51 national wildlife refuges, the five national parks, but also for the very idea that air, water, forests and animal life were somehow in our collective safekeeping. If he were alive today, he would be deeply interested in such matters as global warming and the preservation of species.

Roosevelt was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud's, but a less self-analytical man would be hard to imagine. He was outer directed in every way and keenly receptive to the possibilities of the moment. Henry Adams, the most nuanced mind of Roosevelt's day, was exactly right when he called him "pure act." Roosevelt entered the White House after three decades during which Congress had consistently had the upper hand over the President. He lost no time in making it plain that he was a different breed. The "imperial presidencies" that followed his, from those of Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush, all owe something to his example. When Congress did nothing to curb the power of the trusts--huge monopolistic corporations--Roosevelt simply directed his Justice Department to start bringing suits. When Congress balked at embarking on the Panama Canal, Teddy found a way to go forward. "I took the Isthmus," he later explained, "started the canal and then left Congress--not to debate the canal, but to debate me." He added dryly, "But while the debate goes on, the canal does too." No one would ever have to wonder what he meant when he said, "While President, I have been President--emphatically."

He did everything emphatically. Above all, he had a supreme sense of the great future in store for the U.S. No one was ever more certain of the nation's destiny. Few Presidents were more formidable in shaping it. More than that, he gave the nation a picture of itself as a place that could not fail to succeed, because it produced people who were vigorous and commanding--people like Teddy Roosevelt. It's not just that he was excited to be an American. He made it more exciting to be one.