"Oh, Mr. President," his Attorney General Philander Knox sighed, "do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality." Dubious or not as a triumph of foreign policy, the canal has functioned perfectly for most of the century, and still does so to the honor of our technological reputation, although its control has reverted to the country T.R. allowed to sprout alongside, like a glorified right of way.

But T.R. deserves to be remembered, I think, for some acts more visionary than land grabbing south of the border. He fathered the modern American Navy, for example, while his peacemaking between Russia and Japan in 1905 elevated him to the front rank of presidential diplomats. He pushed through the Pure Food and Meat Inspection laws of 1906, forcing Congress to acknowledge its responsibility as consumer protector.

Many other Rooseveltian acts loom larger in historical retrospect than they did at the time, when they passed unnoticed or unappreciated. For example, T.R. was the first President to perceive, through his own pince-nez, that this nation's future trade posture must be toward Asia and away from the Old World entanglements of its past. Crossing the Sierra Nevada on May 7, 1903, he boggled at the beauty and otherworldliness of California. New York — his birthplace — seemed impossibly far away, Europe antipodean. "I felt as if I was seeing Provence in the making." There was no doubt at all in T.R.'s leaping mind which would be the world's next superpower. Less than five years before, he had stormed San Juan Heights in Cuba and felt what he described as the "wolf rising in the heart" — that primal lust for victory and power that drives all conquerors. "Our place ... is and must be with the nations that have left indelibly their impress on the centuries!" he shouted in San Francisco.

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Mar. 03, 1958

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