How to go
What: “From Bully Pulpit to Civic Life,” a forum with Bob Taft and Mark Roosevelt moderated by Ron Rollins of the Dayton Daily News
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 14
Where: Bellbrook Middle School, 3600 Feedwire Road
You can’t help but wonder what Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft would make of what’s going on in Dayton this week.
They are, after all, a famous example of a political alliance – and close friendship – gone horribly wrong. Taft was Roosevelt’s former Secretary of War and handpicked successor for the presidency in 1908. But four years later Roosevelt formed the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party to run against Taft in the bitterly contested 1912 campaign, ultimately splitting the Republican vote and landing Woodrow Wilson in the White House.
And now, more than 100 years later, two of their great-grandsons are friends and Dayton-area educators taking part in a forum – “From Bully Pulpit to Civic Life” — at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Bellbrook Middle School.
The forum promises to be a fascinating new chapter in the rich history between the two families, according to Todd Kleismit, a Dayton native and director of community and government relations for Ohio History Connection: “So many times Ohio ends up the center of political universe. How interesting both Mark and Bob ended up here in another time of sharp divisions and public strife. What we need is more civil dialogues such as this.”
It’s the brainchild of the Rev. Darryl Fairchild, pastor of Bellbrook United Methodist Church, which is co-sponsoring the forum along with WYSO radio. Fairchild was inspired by the publication of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.”
Noted Fairchild, “There was this serendipitous fluctuation of the universe that created a unique, timely opportunity. We have these two accomplished great-grandsons of the two presidents living in our community.”
It is extraordinary that Mark Roosevelt, president of Antioch College, and former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft are both living and working in our community. Even more extraordinary is the way that the scions of these once bitter opponents are coming together to promote civil discourse.
“It is a testament to the character of Bob Taft and Mark Roosevelt; and to an ideal of public service that needs to be recovered,” Fairchild said. “I hope that we can demonstrate that people in our community can have mature, sober conversations about serious topics. I hope people come away believing we can transcend the nasty, partisan arguments that seem to have our community and nation incapable of addressing difficult issues.”
The timing couldn’t be better, given the intense interest in the Roosevelt and Taft presidencies since the publication of “The Bully Pulpit” as well as the Ken Burns’ seven-part series “The Roosevelts” on PBS.
Taft’s anguish over the rift with Roosevelt provides one of the documentary’s most poignant moments. “He took the loss of the friendship worse than the loss of the presidency,” Kearns Goodwin noted.
“It was a deep disappointment,” Bob Taft said. “My great-grandfather felt very close and very loyal to Teddy Roosevelt.”
Yet it’s worth keeping in mind that the two ex-presidents reconciled publicly toward the end of Roosevelt’s life, and that Taft was an honored guest at his mentor’s funeral. “Yes they had this major falling out the whole world knows about, but they did reconcile toward the end,” Kleismit said. “And the two of them have more in common than not. They both came from similar backgrounds, and they were both progressives.”
Until now, Mark Roosevelt — the Democratic nominee for Massachusetts governor in 1994 — has shied away from associating himself with his very famous and colorful great-grandfather. His office on the historic Antioch campus is decorated with posters and memorabilia of Abraham Lincoln, not TR.
It’s not that he isn’t proud of his great-grandfather and much of the family legacy, particularly the national parks. “I don’t do Roosevelt stuff,” he said. “It is a funny last name. It reeks of privilege. People think well of you and you know it is unearned. It has been my lifelong ambition my obituary will not be headlined, ‘Mark Roosevelt, great-grandson of the president.’ Now I know that will be the first sentence no matter what I do. For my own personal development and self-definition, I am better off not living in that space.”
In spite of that discomfort, he agreed to take part in the forum because of his respect for Bob Taft: “He has been nothing but friendly and good-willed toward Antioch. He is past a certain partisanship.”
And the two families are way past their old animosity. “We don’t get all growly when we see each other,” Roosevelt joked. “I don’t have any skin in the game on that old grievance. I just feel bad because two human beings were in a painful situation.”
Roosevelt, 58, never met his grandfather, Teddy Roosevelt’s son Kermit, who committed suicide in 1943 while serving in World War II. “I found out how he died by reading it in a book,” he said. “It’s not the kind of thing my own father would talk about.”
The Bull Moose campaign — or any serious reading of history, for that matter — proves that overheated rhetoric is nothing new in politics. Yet Roosevelt does see a significant difference between politics then and now: “The difference now is not that the vitriol level has gone up, but that people are unable to set aside partisanship to get things done. In Teddy Roosevelt’s time, even if you didn’t like the other side, things got done… My hero, Abraham Lincoln, was horrendously vilified, yet as a nation we were able to get big things accomplished.”
Today, in contrast, “the number of bills that get passed through Congress is tiny, and that includes bills like renaming a bill after somebody. Something is broken, so I think it’s a mistake to focus on just the vitriol.”
Roosevelt hopes the forum will be a step toward moving toward a broader focus. “It’s a small example of people who come from different political parties — who happen to have famous last names — addressing significant problems including excessive partisanship.”
Concurred Taft, “I hope we can get some insight into why political life is so polarized and identify steps to improve the conversation about serious issues.”
That’s what Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft achieved, despite their differences, Taft said: “Teddy Roosevelt had the ability to mobilize support for the reform agenda, and Taft had the ability to work with people as a good diplomat and conciliator.”
Taft, now a distinguished research associate at the University of Dayton, accepted the Ohioana Library Book Award Friday on behalf of Kearns Goodwin. He’s an admirer of “The Bully Pulpit,” calling it “an interesting idea to focus on their relationship to the extent that she did.”
Tuesday night’s forum, Kleismit observed, is a continuation of that history.
And he thinks he knows what the two former presidents would think about the event:
“To quote a favorite phrase of Teddy’s, they would be dee-lighted.”
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