WEBVTT - TR Vs. The World 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:05.800 History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:14.320 Mental Flaws. Bucyrus steam shovel chugging away in the Caliber 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:19.120 cut is huge and complicated. It requires an engineer, a crane, 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:22.079 man of firemen, and several pitmen to keep it operating. 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:25.360 The machines five cubic yard bucket is capable of moving 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:27.680 eight tons of rock or nearly seven tons of earth 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:30.360 in a single scoop. And here in the massive gash 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:32.559 in the earth that will become the Panama Canal, the 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.760 machine goes about its job, scooping and dumping, scooping and 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:39.560 dumping elephant sized mounds of earth into waiting railway cars, 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:45.440 and currently President Theodore Roosevelt is behind the controls. It's 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.360 November six and with this trip to Panama Tierra has 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.280 become the first sitting president to leave the United States. 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.040 He's inspecting the progress on the canal that will one 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:58.600 day connect to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. When he 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.240 sees the steam shovel from his train, the President, who 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:03.240 is a kid at heart and can't resist a little 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.880 adventure or a photo op, instructs the train to stop, 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:09.920 hops down and strides in his crisp white suit into 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:12.639 the muddy cut. He hops on board the steam shovel 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.920 and begins a discussion with the engineer. Later, he'll tell 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.400 some assembled workers, you are doing the biggest thing of 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:22.319 the kind that has ever been done, and I wanted 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.160 to see how you are doing it. He reports that 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:27.200 he'll be able to tell people back in the States 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.320 that he can guarantee the success of the mighty work 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.200 the men are doing in Panama, adding it is not 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:36.800 an easy work. Mighty few things that are worth doing 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:40.800 are easy. The Panama Canal won't open until Feen, but 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:42.720 tears visit allows him to see a dream he had 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.640 spoken of since coming to life, and the fact that 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:48.920 he had supported a revolution with the American Navy to 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:51.560 make it happen didn't bother him in the least. The 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:54.120 canal was being built, and it would allow the U. S. 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:56.280 Navy to move easily from ocean to ocean, and to 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.720 get to America's specific territories more quickly and bully to that, 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.680 Roosevelt famously said, speak softly and carry a big stick, 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:07.360 you will go far. To some tr was an American visionary, 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.680 to others a warmonger, but he was a man just 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:12.760 as notable for the battles he fought, as he was 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:15.960 for the piece he secured. So just how did tr 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:18.400 use this big stick energy at home and around the world, 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:20.799 and how far did it get him? We're about to 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:27.320 find out. From Mental Floss and I Heart Radio. This 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.560 is History Versus, a podcast about how your favorite historical 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:33.720 figures faced off against their greatest foes. I'm your host, 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:36.680 Aaron McCarthy, and this episode is t r Versus the World. 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.320 It's not so surprising that Theodore Roosevelt had a lot 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.320 of opinions about America's place in the world. After all, 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:46.720 by the time he entered politics, Roosevelt had seen a 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.679 lot of the world. As a kid. He traveled extensively 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.800 with his family, touring Europe between eighteen sixty nine and 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.080 eighteen seventy and visiting Egypt and Jerusalem in eighteen seventy 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.920 two and eighteen seventy three. After both his first and 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:02.799 second marriages, he honeymooned in Europe. Roosevelt came into the 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:04.560 White House on the heels of a number of Civil 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.280 War veterans occupying the office. For them, worldliness was not 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:11.799 a prerequisite for the job. President McKinley famously couldn't even 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.280 find the Philippines on a map when the Spanish American 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.800 War began. Here's Jeffrey Warrow, professor and director of the 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:21.480 Military History Center at the University of North Texas, speaking 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.360 at the twenty nineteen Theodore Roosevelt's Imposium put up by 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:27.800 the Theatre Roosevelt Center at Dickenson State University in North Dakota. 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.880 Roosevelt arrived in the White House with a better knowledge 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.680 and feel for the world than arguably any of his predecessors, 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:37.240 with a possible exception of James Monroe or John Adams. 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.200 What he did was travel and read, travel and read 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.360 and reflect. That's Clay Jenkinson, founder of the Theater Roosevelt Center. 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.080 He's been to Germany, he lived there, his family has 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:50.480 been to the Vatican. He's met the Pope. He's gone 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:53.160 to Egypt. He's hunted along the Nile. He's you know, 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:55.280 he's met heads of state. He's had one of the 0:03:55.320 --> 0:04:01.880 most privileged travel lives of any American president. And he's read. 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:05.120 He reads five languages. He reads maybe not a book 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:09.040 a day, but close to it. He's voracious. He loves history, 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:12.720 he loves geopolitics. He knows the Roman Empire, he knows Napoleon, 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.280 you know, rise of the British Empire. And it's the 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:18.040 guy who knows things. From the moment Roosevelt entered the 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:22.200 political arena, his mind was on expansion. After President Grover Cleveland, 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:26.760 and anti imperialist, refused to annex Hawaii, Roosevelt bemoaned his 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.360 decision not to exert his power for tr Taking Hawaii 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:32.960 was a necessity for the US. He would help the 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:35.520 country build up a military that could compete with Japan's 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.360 might out in the Pacific and expand American influence on 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.479 the other side of the globe. In eighteen writing and 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:44.800 Century magazine, Roosevelt said, it was a crime against the 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:48.960 United States. It was a crime against white civilization. Not 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.520 to annexit two and a half years ago. The delay 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:56.720 did damage that was perhaps irreparable. Or it meant that 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.680 at the critical period of the island's growth, the in 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:03.760 blocks of population consisted not of white Americans, but of 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:08.719 low cast laborers drawn from the Yellow races. So I 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.120 just want to pause right here because of those phrases 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:16.640 white civilization and yellow races. Roosevelt stance on imperialism is 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:20.440 tied to and informed by his views of race. We'll 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:22.840 discuss how he developed his views in a later episode, 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:26.359 but the cliffs Notes version is that Tier's elite upbringing, reading, habits, 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:29.960 Ivy League, education, and travels, along with eighteenth and nineteenth 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.440 century ideas about cultural and racial development, all informed his 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:37.119 racial theories. Ideas that we know today are totally wrong 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:41.799 and also totally repugnant, according to historian Thomas G. Dyer, 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.200 author of Theodore Roosevelt in the Idea of Race, Roosevelt 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.560 believed that the white English speaking American race was superior 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.239 to other races, and he thought it was America's duty 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.159 to export its white civilization to other areas of the globe. 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:58.080 Tr believed that all races and nationalities evolved through the 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:03.360 same stages of development, from chaotic savages to barbarism, where 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:07.440 races organized military virtues are formed, to the next stage, 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:11.160 where those military virtues blend with order and racial proliferation, 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.479 to the final two stages, which see a society lose 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.560 its fighting edge and eventually fall into decadence and death. 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:20.400 He thought that for a race to be successful and 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:22.880 stay there, it was necessary to keep what he called 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:26.600 its barbarian virtues basically, you've got to keep fighting to 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:30.160 stay on top tier. Knew that conflict would be inevitable 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.800 in expanding America's interests around the world, and due to 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.600 his belief in the importance of keeping those barbarian virtues, 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:40.760 he wanted it. He wrote that I should welcome almost 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.960 any war where I think this country needs one, and 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.640 in an address given not long after, he said, all 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.680 the great masterful races have been fighting races. And the 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.760 minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, then 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:58.000 no matter what else it may retain, no matter how 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:02.320 skilled in commerce and finance, in science or art, it 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:05.599 has lost its proud right to stand as the equal 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:10.080 of the best. Do you feel kind of uncomfortable right 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.680 now listening to this? So did I when I read it. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:17.840 There's so much it's problematic here. But before we dig 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.800 into it a little more history. Cleveland wasn't alone in 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:26.160 disliking America's imperialistic tendencies. This was a period when many 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:29.320 elected officials had a general distaste for growing a military 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.960 and expanding American influence around the globe. William Jennings Bryan, 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.640 President McKinley's opponent in the presidential election, and a man 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.760 who was pretty much the complete opposite of Roosevelt, laid 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:44.040 out the anti imperialist viewpoint perfectly, saying, we cannot set 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.200 a high and honorable example for the emulation of mankind 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:50.000 while we roam the world like beasts of prey, seeking 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:54.120 whom we may devour. Worldwide, though the tides of returning 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.440 Japan and Russia were expanding in the Pacific, in Britain, 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.640 France and Germany continued to colonize around the globe. All 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:05.320 these other nations are um building colonial empires and seeking 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:09.520 out new markets and acquiring territory. He thought Grover Cleveland 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.200 should be impeached for not taking Hawaii when he had 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.120 the chance. Uh, he's an imperialist and a jingoist. He 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:19.280 believes that war can be healthy. A war can be 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:22.800 healthy for a country. It can kind of reinvigorate you 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:28.240 and and and concentrate your manhood and remove some frivolity 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:30.920 and some complacency from the country. And that a good 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:33.839 war now. And then it's out of a tune out. Um, 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:35.840 we don't, we don't. Most of us don't see the 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:40.439 world that way anymore. And he believes he's an ardent 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:44.120 believer in the Monroe Doctrine, and that America is going 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:46.120 to become a world power, and that we need a 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:50.000 big navy because he's been reading um Mayn's book The 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:54.080 Influence of Sea Power on History. Roosevelt's vision for a mightier, 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:56.920 more expansive America would get closer to reality when he 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:00.800 was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy in He was 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:03.240 a vocal proponent for war against Spain at the time, 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:07.440 in defiance of President McKinley's more methodical approach. Tr would 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:09.240 also be a key figure in growing the U. S. 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:11.080 Navy and preparing them to go to war at a 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.040 moment's notice. And when the Spanish American War came in 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:17.640 it was Roosevelt's who personally helped lead the charge on 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:20.880 the ground in Cuba. Do you believe two things? One is, 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.000 we need we need to do this, We need these wars. 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.120 We need to assert ourselves as a nation and become 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.439 second only to Britain. But maybe first um and secondly, 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.200 if you want to lead this country, you need to 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:36.720 know something about these things. You can't just be standing 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:39.640 out on the prefect You have to get in the arena. 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:42.360 You can see these getting the arena themes often in 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.760 Roosevelt's speeches, including in The Strenuous Life, in which he 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:50.000 explicitly linked empire making with the idea of American masculinity. 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.040 The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:58.520 his country, the over civilized man who has lost the 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:03.320 great fighting master full virtues, the ignorant man, and the 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:07.160 man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:11.160 the mighty lift that thrills stern men with empires in 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:15.440 their brains. All these, of course, shrink from seeing the 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:19.720 nation undertake its new duties, Shrink from seeing us build 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:23.560 a navy in an army adequate to our needs. Shrink 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:26.319 from seeing us do our share of the world's work 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:30.559 by bringing order out of chaos. These are the men 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:34.960 who fear these strenuous life, who fear the only national 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:39.080 life which is really worth leading. Roosevelt also argued that 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:41.960 in places like Cuba and the Philippines, Americans had a 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.880 duty to oversee their populations until they reached a stage 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:48.040 where they could govern themselves. In the Strenuous Life, he 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:53.080 said that the Philippines offer a yet graver problem. Their 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:57.880 population includes half caste and Native Christians warlike Moslems and 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:02.240 wild Pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit for 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.480 self government and show no signs of becoming fit. Others 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.720 may in time become fit, but at present can only 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:13.600 take part in self government under a wise supervision, at 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:18.400 once firm and beneficent. We have driven Spanish tyranny from 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.720 the islands. If we now let it be replaced by 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.960 savage anarchy, our work has been for harm and not 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.480 for good. In his nineteen o one Annual Message to Congress, 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.679 Roosevelt wrote that Americans could successfully govern themselves because they 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.240 have been working at it for generations, and said that 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.160 we couldn't expect to have another race accomplished out of 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:41.520 hand what had taken Americans so long to achieve, especially 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:44.040 when large portions of that race start very far behind 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:47.240 the point which our ancestors had reached even thirty generations ago. 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:51.920 He continued, In dealing with the Philippine people, we must 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:57.680 show both patience and strength, forbearance and steadfast resolution. Our 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:01.320 aim is high. We do not desire to do for 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:04.800 the islanders merely what has elsewhere been done for Tropic 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:08.120 people to buy even the best foreign governments, we hope 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:10.440 to do for them what has never before been done 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:13.360 for any people of the tropics, to make them fit 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:17.520 for self government after the fashion of the really free nations. 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:20.360 In the book of People's History of the United States, 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.920 Howard's Inn writes that Roosevelt was contemptuous of races and 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:28.280 nations he considered inferior, and according to Waro, Roosevelt never 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:30.640 thought about how weird it was that Americans should be 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:34.240 a democratic nation and yet imposed their decidedly not democratic 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:37.800 will on other nations. He never, for example, contemplated the 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:44.040 contradiction between American democracy and American imperialism, that is, having 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.200 one system of government for Americans in the United States 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:52.240 and another system of government for America's overseas columns. Of course, 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.960 everything Roosevelt is positing completely disregards that those countries would 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:58.240 have retained their right to self determination and been just 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.720 fine if not for the intervention of foreign powers. Later, 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:05.760 while campaigning as the vice presidential candidate for President McKinley, 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:09.559 Roosevelt pushed for American control of the Philippines before he 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:12.080 signed up to be VP. In fact, he'd written to 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:14.600 his friend and mentor, Henry Cabot Lodge that the thing 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:16.600 I should really like to do would be to be 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:20.840 the first civil governor general of the Philippines. Still, there 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:24.000 were opponents at home, including William Howard Taft, who would 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.440 go on to serve as governor there. One of the 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:29.960 most visible opponents and one of Roosevelt's most outspoken critics, 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.640 was writer Mark Twain. In a interview that appeared in 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:36.720 The New York World, Twain lamented America's insistence on intervening 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:39.720 in the Filipino government. I have tried hard, and yet 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:41.480 I cannot, for the life of me comprehend how we 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.319 got into that mess, he proclaimed. I thought we should 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:46.920 act as our protector, not try to get them under 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:49.640 our heel. It was not to be a government according 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:51.920 to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.040 of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:58.280 Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.680 the United States. But now why we have got into 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.480 a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:09.360 a difficulty of extrication immensely greater. The long and shockingly 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.760 brutal war would be officially declared over in July two, 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:16.080 and Tira was the President who made the announcement. Here's 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:19.120 Michael Collin and author of Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost, when he's 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:21.800 struggling with the war in the Philippines, the war that 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.040 he inherits from McKinley, of course, and he's struggling with 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:29.960 explaining how the US is going to get itself out 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:33.520 of the Philippines with its hands unbloodied. And so what 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:35.680 he does is he just declares the war over. And 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:37.680 it's not over. I mean, the war goes on really 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.760 until nineteen fifteen, but officially the war has ended in 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:45.120 en two. In the end, an estimated forty undred American 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:47.960 troops and twenty thousand Filipino troops have been killed in 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.840 the conflict, but those numbers are a drop in the 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:53.920 bucket compared to the two hundred thousand Filipino civilians that 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:56.880 are thought to have died from famine, disease and military 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:00.280 actions throughout the campaign. The years of war were and 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.600 bloodshed give America a stronger foothold in the Pacific, which 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:07.720 Tier believed was incredibly important for strategic reasons. But for 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:10.680 many this was a potentially horrifying glimpse of a nation 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.600 that was seemingly looking to plunge itself into war after war, 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.800 all for the sake of devouring more territories. Here's Jenkinson. 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.360 There's a constancy to his his foreign policy, and it 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:24.120 really offended people like Mark Twain. And Mark Twain looked 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:26.640 on this. This guy is actually crazy. This is a 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.160 very dangerous match. This is the last thing the United 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.600 States needs. It's gonna make us do all sorts are 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.800 really awful and dark things. And it did you get 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.200 involved in this sort of thing and become a world empire. 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:40.160 You're going to start doing things that are not really 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:45.960 harmonizing with the basic ideals of American life. UM ros 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:49.000 do as well. If we don't do it, somebody else will. 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:51.480 So we're going to do it. This seems like a 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:53.880 good place to take a quick break. We'll be right back. 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:58.600 Roosevelt viewed his role as a steward of the people, 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.560 and as he would later in his autobiography, I did 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.240 not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:08.080 of executive power. Roosevelt believed his position should be one 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:11.280 of action. He wanted to influence policy and enact as 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.760 much positive change as possible, and he used power aggressively 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:18.720 and oftentimes unilaterally. Often, his weapon of choice was an 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.320 executive order. Since the president cannot create new laws without 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:25.280 Congress getting involved, executive orders exist as a way for 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.080 a president to instruct employees in the executive branch to 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:31.800 interpret existing laws a certain way. So tr wasn't creating 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.560 new laws, but was instead manipulating them how he wanted. 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.280 He passed staggering one thousand eighty one executive orders during 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.280 his tenure in office to get things done. Roosevelt far 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:44.320 outpaced his predecessor, William McKinley, who tellied just a hundred 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:48.760 and eighty five executive orders. Here's culinen Congress can act. 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:50.480 I mean it is that it is the most powerful 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:55.920 branch if it could operate effectively. Um, and sometimes it does. 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:59.520 But that's what Roosevelt I think understood was that Congress 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.120 wasn't able to organize itself. That there's too many factions 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:07.280 within the two major parties that effectively their coalitions, and 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:09.840 those coalitions don't always agree on policy, and it takes 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.240 a long time for Congress to work through to reach 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:17.359 a consensus, and so the president can do something in 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:21.040 a moment, and the converse then well, as he said, 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:24.240 has to debate it. Roosevelt's use of executive orders helped 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:26.800 quadruple the amount of protective land in the United States 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:29.600 and lowered the age of eligibility for pension for veterans 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:33.879 to sixty two. For example, Roosevelt also acted unilaterally when 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:37.720 it came to international affairs. Historian Kathleen Dalton writes that 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.160 in foreign policy, Tier operated as a law unto himself. 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:44.879 He sometimes dealt with other heads of state or intervened 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.200 in international matters without consulting Congress or even his own 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.719 cabinet first. These kinds of power moves did not go 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:55.200 over well, and whenever someone criticized the president for making 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.520 those moves well, that didn't go over well either. Take 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.119 for example, when Roosevelt said the Great White Fleet sixteen 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.640 naval battleships on a forty three thousand mile, fourteen month 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.440 journey around the globe in n seven. This huge showcase 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:12.040 of American power was sent off without giving Congress or 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.760 the State Department a chance to approve the mission, which 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.080 was an enormous expense and risk to the country. When 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:20.280 one senator threatened to withhold the money for the trip, 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:22.720 Roosevelt is said to have replied that he already had 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.840 the money and dared the Senator to try and get 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:28.800 it back. That brings us back to the Panama Canal, 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:31.879 something tr would take heap for long after he left office. 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:35.040 The idea of a man made canal across the Isthmus 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:37.560 of Panama, a narrow strip of land between the Pacific 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.920 and Atlantic Oceans, had been a far off dream for politicians, 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:45.080 royalty and engineers from the sixteenth century. Holy Roman Emperor 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:47.600 Charles the fifth is credited as the first world leader 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:50.520 to seriously consider the idea and ordered a survey of 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.040 the area in fifteen thirty four. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:57.000 Franklin would later support it, while Presidents Andrew Jackson and 0:18:57.119 --> 0:18:59.399 Ulysses S. Grant would go a step further by sending 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.399 surveyors out to see about its feasibility. But the canal 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:04.840 always seemed just out of reach of engineers at the 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:09.000 time until eighteen sixty nine that's c of a Siouez 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.920 Canal opened, which connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Red 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.160 Sea through the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt. It provided 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:17.320 the shortest route between Europe and the lands around the 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.359 Indian and Western Pacific Oceans. Engineers now had a blueprint 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.199 for tackling Panama, and France stepped up to try to 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.200 make it happen. The Suez Canal Company had been comprised 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:29.840 mainly of French investors and a team of engineers led 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.720 by Ferdinando Lecepps. For the Panama project, France again brought 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:36.000 in de Lacepps, who claimed that the project would take 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.680 twelve years and two hundred and forty million dollars to finish. 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.280 Work began in eighteen eighty one, but Panama could not 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:46.119 be tamed like Suez. Heavy rains made work sites unnavigable 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:50.240 and boiling heat. Snake bites, malaria, yellow fever, and smallpox 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.040 killed off many of the men. Others were buried in 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:56.800 mud slides along with their expensive equipment. The dangerous work 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:01.719 environment was responsible for an estimated twenty thousand as the 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.119 project's costs ballooned to two hundred and eighty seven million, 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.080 and the canal was nowhere near done. By eighteen eighty nine, 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.040 the French had given up. Dreams of a Panama Canal 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:18.760 would seemingly go unfulfilled. Enter Theodore Roosevelts. When tierre ascended 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.679 to the presidency, in nineteen o one. He almost immediately 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:23.879 began talks of making his long held dreams of the 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:26.920 canal a reality. He was determined to pick up where 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:30.040 the French left off, telling Congress, no single great material 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:32.879 work which remains to be undertaken on this continent is 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.199 of such consequence to the American people. That might not 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.840 be as overblown a statement as you'd think. A man 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.280 made canal would cut thousands of miles off of trips 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:43.720 that had previously required ships to go around the southern 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:46.960 point of the America's It would speed up commerce, further 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:49.440 connect to the globe, and in the hands of America, 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:53.879 helped create an empire. Still, there was debate over the 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:57.320 exact location of the canal. One school of thought believed 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:01.399 in a canal in Nicaragua, while in increasing minority preferred Panama. 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:04.920 Though Panama was losing in Congress, a man named Philippe 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.159 Bruno Varia, a civil engineer and an investor who had 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:11.600 financial ties to the old French project, successfully helped to 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.919 lobby politicians to choose the more politically volatile Panama. To 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:18.480 get to Panama, though you had to go through Colombia, 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:21.280 which had control of the area, at the time, so 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:24.200 Roosevelt had his Secretary of State John Hay, offered the 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:28.040 government ten million dollars upfront and after nine years two 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:30.520 and fifty thousand dollars annually for the right to build 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:34.080 the canal and lease the area, but the Colombian government 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.000 didn't go for it. One rumored reason for the rejection, 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.280 according to Kathleen Dalton, is that Germany may have sabotaged 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.400 the U. S s relationship with Colombia. They allegedly did 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:46.280 so by spreading stories that Americans back home were prejudiced 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.360 towards Colombians and routinely referred to them by a particular 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:52.000 racial slur, which some claim may have been enough to 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:55.240 sour the country on dealing with the United States. Dalton 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:57.879 also says rumors abounded that Germany was willing to fund 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.400 the canal behind the scenes, which would have fed into 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:05.320 increasing paranoia about German immigration, especially to Brazil. Roosevelt couldn't 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:08.120 let another European power have so much say in Latin America, 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:12.159 but Columbia still wasn't budging. He later told author William 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:14.480 Roscoe Fair that trying to make an agreement with the 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:18.439 rulers of Colombia was like trying to nail current jelly 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:21.720 to the wall. There's a certain number of millions of 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.119 dollars we can give to them, and then they'll cooperate 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:27.240 because it's obviously going to be in their interest. But 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:30.959 when they begin to to balk a little bit and 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:34.800