Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin - Gerard Helferich

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt decided to run for President again, as he wasn't satisfied with the job Taft was doing. Roosevelt was denied the Republican nomination, and decided to form his own political party, with blackjack, and hookers*. A man by the name of John Schrank, upon learning that Roosevelt was determined to be elected for a then-unprecedented third term, felt he had no choice but to prevent the rise of a would-be monarch, by killing him. He packs a suitcase, buys a gun, and sets out to try and ambush T.R. somewhere along his campaign trail.

Helferich includes a lot about the campaign itself, Roosevelt's platform, his speeches, his hopes, and contrasts those with the other candidates (Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Eugene Debs as the Socialist candidate), and it gave me a different perspective on Roosevelt. I had always chalked up the Bull Moose party as an ego thing, him being aggravated the Republicans didn't welcome him back, and I'm sure there was some of that. But Roosevelt also seems very committed to trying to build a long-lasting political party, that will change things across the country. He takes his campaign into the South, against his advisers' suggestions (as the South is firmly Democrat territory), because he hopes he can at least get something started there future Progressives will be able to build on. He's not a perfect candidate; his track record on race is spotty, as Helferich notes with regard to Roosevelt and the African-American portion of the electorate, and I remember some pretty condescending remarks from him in regards to Filipinos when they were demanding the U.S. grant them independence and self-governance, but he's at least ahead of Taft or Wilson.

Helferich writes from a 3rd-person omniscient narrative, which I was not entirely sure about during the sections concerning Schrank's state of mind. I'm sure he's going off things Schrank either told others or wrote down (he was apparently a prolific writer and a bit of a poet), but I do wonder how accurate a representation of his mindset this was. Schrank's words and deeds don't always line up, or how he describes feeling about his actions shifts. Helferich acknowledges some of the sources disagree, probably embellishments or mistakes by witnesses, and the question of the state of Schrank's own mind would make his own recollections and explanations possibly unreliable. Still, Helferich set out to write a narrative history of this particular stretch of time, and it's an engaging one.

'Roosevelt's and Wilson's programs were rooted in fundamentally different assumptions about human nature and the proper role of government, and as the campaign unfolded, the nation witnessed a substantive philosophical debate the likes of which hadn't been seen since the days of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.'

* Fine, there was probably no blackjack, or hookers.