Theodore Roosevelt - Gilder Lehrmann history podcast

The Gilder Lehrmann Institute for American History gave me an opportunity to learn something about a great American president, I did not know anything about. At the Gilder Lehrmann Podcast there was a lecture by Patrica O'Toole about him.

The lecture is about Theodore Roosevelt, but not so much about the 'TR' presidency, but rather about TR after his presidency. Had it been up to TR, it would have been about his life between his first and second presidency. In 1912 he still wanted to run, but the Republican candidacy went to President Taft. Taft was ill and had his doctor's advice not to run been relayed to him, Taft might have stepped down and Roosevelt would have had a good chance to win as a Republican. Eventually he ran on a new party of his own and lost to Taft and the new President Wilson. But that is besides the point.

TR rises from the lecture as a kind of aristocrat and in addition, a man of great intellectual and physical prowess. He wrote widely and traveled similarly, with a preference to the wild of regions like the Amazon and Africa. Moreover, TR remained politically active and even if he did not make it back into the Oval Office, O'Toole claims TR remained influential until his death in 1919.

More Gilder Lehrmann:
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