Letter to the Editor
World Magazine
Apr 11 2008, sent Oct 6 2008
Response to Marvin Olasky's editorial "Roosevelt v. Wilson" in WORLD 4/11 Oct 2008 (sent to molasky@worldmag.com). His subtitle is "McCain and Obama have a lot in common w/2 former presidents. Obama recalls Wilson, McCain TR. Hmmm, David Brooks said just last Friday (3 Oct 08) that McCain's problem is that he can't decide which of his 2 heroes he most admires; TR or Goldwater! Anyway, Olasky says Wilson was b1856, TR 27 Oct 1858. "Wilson, who grew up in a traditional Southern Presbyterian setting but abandoned those beliefs to embrace theological modernism (i.e. liberalism), spoke [like Obama], referring to himself as the 'ambassador of salvation' and 'the personal instrument of God' ... European crowds this summer showed Obama love as they did for Wilson in 1919, but experienced European leaders back then guffawed [e.g. Lloyd George, as they should now] ... Wilson often talked around subjects with torrents of words, as Obama and ... Biden do now. Once in office Wilson raised taxes ... pushing through the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission [i.e. massively increasing regulation], and campaigning in 1916 on a 'He kept us out of war' slogan, only to propel the US into WWI early the following year [i.e. he lied to gain office, then revealed his true intentions, just as Obama/Biden are trying to do]. As Americans learned then and British appeasers belated realized 2 decades later, war is more likely to come when great powers give ambiguous signals than when they are forthright. McCain is forthright ... Like TR, he's assertive on foreign policy and opposed to what TR called 'mere sentimentality' in helping the needy ... The decade in which Wilson and TR were born, the 1850s, was next to the 1960s the weirdest one in American history ... hundreds of books from the 1850s that purport to be messages spoken during seances by Geo Washington, Ben Franklin, and other long-dead notables purportedly channeled by 'spiritualists.'"
Thanks for your interesting comparison of Obama to Wilson and McCain to TR in the 4/11 Oct issue. Just last Friday, David Brooks observed (on PBS' Newshour) that McCain's problem is he can't decide which of his 2 heroes he admires more; TR or Barry Goldwater (as for me, I'd pick the latter)! Anyway, I wanted to send along a cartoon that appeared on the cover of the Winter 2002 "Claremont Review of Books." As you can see, it depicts presidents TR, Wilson and FDR in a small wooden tub floating on choppy seas away from a pillared and solid classical building labelled "Constitution" (on a rocky cliff in the distance). The issue had several articles about these Presidents and the critical election of 1912, in which [Democrat] Wilson was enabled to win only by [republican turned independent] TR's 3rd [Progressive] party campaign vs. [incumbent republican] William Howard Taft, and Socialist Eugene Debs. TR managed to split the Republican vote (like Perot did in 1992, defeating Bush 41 and enabling Clinton's victory). Oy Vey! The author H. W. Brands called TR America's first progressive president. He laid the foundation for later forms of massive federal interventionism in foreign (Wilson) and domestic (FDR) affairs.
I agree that McCain recalls TR, as Obama does Wilson (and Jimmy Carter). Although I prefer McCain to Obama, both actually represent dangerous departures from American Founding values. Here's hoping we Christians can eventually help elect a true conservative, one who respects those founding values and wouldn't be found paddling away from the Constitution in a barrel!
Thanks, Steve Sawyer
