For an increasingly uphill re-election battle in which he’ll have to “go negative,” I’d figured President Obama would imitate Harry Truman in ’48, railing against a “do-nothing Congress.” But it turns out he’ll be running as Teddy Roosevelt instead. Obama wrapped himself in T.R.’s mantle in a much-hyped speech last Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kansas. There, in 1910, ex-president Roosevelt proclaimed a “New Nationalism” that would involve “far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had.” He’d go on to challenge President Taft for the Republican nomination, and then run as a Progressive when that failed.
Modeling your re-election strategy on an obnoxious authoritarian’s failed third-party run for the presidency a hundred years ago is an interesting choice, but not necessarily a wise one. It’s a move of desperation, unlikely to work.
