The 21st Century Theodore Roosevelt?

How a Senator from Missouri speaks softly while carrying a big stick

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R - MO) has established himself as a major force in the New Right, both in his political advocacy for Donald Trump and his recent books, The Tyranny of Big Tech and Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. From his appearances on the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, Hawley seems to touch on the familiar New Right talking points: exaggerated American nationalism, the lack of masculine virtues in a supposedly feminized society, the suffocating tyranny of “the Left” and “the elites” (the terms are used interchangeably), and the greatness of the American Founding generation. These are not ideas borne out of a sophisticated political mind, but postures adopted by a grandstanding national figure. It is no coincidence that before his Senate career, he authored a book titled Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness. The 26th President of the United States - who exudes American exceptionalism in all its larger-than-life glory - remains a model to conservatives, progressives and populists alike. In the age where politics seem dominated by technocracy, Teddy Roosevelt is enjoying a resurgence in influence in both the MAGA Republicans and progressive Democrats. And no one embodies his spirits and ideas better than the current Republican Senator from Missouri.

Ironically, Roosevelt’s populism resulted in the same technocratic approach to government that both Hawley and the progressive Left are simultaneously decrying. Nevertheless, Hawley sees Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party as analogous to Teddy launching a third party to challenge William Howard Taft in the Presidential Election of 1912. Despite having been President for two terms, Roosevelt was determined to retake the White House from the incumbent Taft, who he saw as the conservative establishment figure antagonistic to his progressive populist ideals. Likewise, Hawley sees the establishment’s footprint everywhere he looks, from the cultural Left’s alleged hostility to American values to the political Right’s perceived inability to fight back. In his 1912 address at the Progressive National Convention, Teddy famously concluded his speech with: “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.” For Hawley, Trump embodies Teddy’s fighting spirit for the 21st century. The 45th President’s relentless attacks on Constitutional rules and Presidential norms are perceived differently by his core supporters, Hawley included: although flawed, Trump is God’s instrument against an increasingly corrupt and aloof establishment, blinded by ideals of globalization and progress while leaving the hard-working men and women of America in the dust. The violence and chaos perpetrated by Trump’s hardcore followers in January 6th, 2021, egged on by the Donald himself, calls to mind the overwhelming threats of violence from Roosevelt’s most loyal supporters against Taft and the Republicans. In his book Every Man A King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists, former Fox News anchor Chris Stirewalt wrote of this episode in great detail:

[I]f you are ever tempted to believe that violence is a new addition to our political scene, remember that officials were so worried about violence from Roosevelt’s fanatical delegates in 1912 that they hid barbed wire in the bunting at the GOP’s convention in Chicago in case they rushed the platform when President William Taft was speaking.

In defending Donald Trump’s constitutional misconduct during the January 6th attacks, Josh Hawley is drawing his swords not only against ‘the Left’, but also against the systems of checks and balance that compels Trump to concede defeat in the 2020 election. Drawing from his larger-than-life personality, Theodore Roosevelt ushered in the Progressive era, which sees the state as an instrument of scientific and moral progress, rather than as the guardian of man’s inalienable rights. Today’s Left Progressives still cite Teddy’s efforts at breaking up trusts as an example to emulate against the perceived oligarchy of giant technological firms such as Amazon and Meta (formerly Facebook Inc.) Despite his antipathy for the Progressives’ view on culture, Hawley shares with them the disdain towards what he seems “The Tyranny of Big Tech”. In the preface to his 2021 book of the same name, Hawley makes clear his commitment to this common cause:

This is a book the corporate monopolies did not want you to read. Corporate America tried to cancel it, just as they have tried to cancel me and to cancel or control the speech, the communication, even the ideas of millions of Americans—all Americans, in a sense, because what the woke capitalists want, along with their allies in government, is to preserve their power over American politics and society. They have been working to entrench that power for the better part of a century, since the age of the last robber barons, and they are not about to see it challenged now.

While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize the power and influence of big tech firms in our political discourse, in addition to their inordinate share of the market, Hawley takes this position much further than is accorded:

The titans of woke capital, and of Big Tech above all, lead the most powerful corporations in history. They have amassed that power with the active aid of government, and now together Big Tech and Big Government seek to extend their influence over every area of American life.

A new phenomenon unfamiliar to Roosevelt and his contemporaries is the claim to involuntary marginalization as a form of power. Whereas the Right routinely condemns positions of victimhood coming from blacks and members of the LGBTQ+, they practice a similar form of victim mentality when it comes to alleged Big Tech “censorship”:

One of the largest publishers in the nation cancelled this book, citing my “role” in the events of January 6… [L]ike many others attacked by the corporations and the Left, my real crime was to have challenged the reign of the woke capitalists.

Populists such as Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have frequently resorted to this tactic, and Hawley is no exception. But what is familiar in Roosevelt’s days is the claim to outsider status despite having a position in the establishment. Trump is part of the 45 Americans (reminder not to count Cleveland twice) out of hundreds of millions who became President. Kennedy is heir to America’s royal family, one that counts another President among its ranks. And Hawley is currently occupying a seat in the Senate, the most patrician institution in American government. But all three claim to be speaking on the behalf of “the American people” against the “elites”. Likewise, Teddy Roosevelt, who possessed far more power than any President that came before him, could refashion himself as a populist tribune fighting against the perceived corruption of William Howard Taft. Despite Roosevelt’s Prussian-style, top down approach to government, he is hailed by “constitutionalists” like Josh Hawley as an exemplary preserver of the American Republic:

[A]ll I could think, as I sat across that long table from Mark Zuckerberg, modern-day robber baron, was that America had again entered the age of the monopolists. They were back, as powerful and menacing to our republic as they had been a century before, as detrimental to the rule of decent, ordinary people as they had been when Theodore Roosevelt and his trust-busting compatriots famously confronted them. Now we needed Roosevelt’s example again.

In an address at the 2021 National Conservative Convention, the Senator drew a quote from the 26th President: “I am for business, but I am for manhood first, and business as an adjunct to manhood.” He later gave his remarks: “He was right then, and that sentiment should be our watchword today.” That speech would form the basis for Hawley’s book Manhood, where he alleges that “today’s left is determined to remake American men.” In his book Manliness, Harvey Mansfield describes Theodore Roosevelt as the embodiment of manhood: “Who ever was more manly than TR? Who ever spoke more emphatically than he in praise of ‘manly virtues’?” However, Teddy did not promote his manliness in service of conservatism - his manly ideals found an audience in the likes of Progressives such as Herbert Croly and William James, and imperialists such as Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard. “These promoters of manliness,” says Mansfield. “were not conservatives defending family values, like those in our day, but progressives rescuing the human race from degeneration and securing the conditions of further advance.” Hawley, despite incorporating the familiar conservative defense of family values, employs the same fear-mongering tactics of degeneration while pointing his finger at a familiar suspect:

No menace to this nation is greater than the collapse of American manhood, the collapse of masculine strength… [S]ome welcome that collapse: namely, those on the American left. In fact, they have helped drive it. In the power centers they control, places like the press, the academy, and politics, they blame masculinity for America’s woes. The tribunes of elite opinion long ago decided that male strength is dangerous—toxic, leading inevitably to oppression and a hateful patriarchy…that masculinity is an arbitrary social construct that has made the world a much more terrible place.

While it is true that American boys and men, especially amongst the working class, are facing unique challenges - often ignored and derided by the feminist narrative - Hawley portrays the boy crisis in the US in the most simplistic of terms: American masculinity has only one obstacle, and it is the all-consuming Left. Furthermore, manly virtues are not an unadulterated good, nor are they an unadulterated evil. Harvey Mansfield refers to the rescuers and the hijackers during the September 11th attacks as two opposite manifestations of manhood - one used for good, and one for evil: “Manliness… seems to be about fifty-fifty good and had. If it is good, maybe that's because it's the only remedy for the trouble it causes.” Teddy Roosevelt, for example, employed his manly virtues to secure America’s national parks, as well as drawing America into an imperial war with Spain.

Unfortunately for TR, his manliness was adulterated with unceasing petulance in 1912. According to Chris Stirewalt: “The standards of restraint and decorum that governed others of his class simply did not apply to someone who felt the weight of destiny as Roosevelt did. He was ‘the man in the arena’ and didn’t give a whit about norms and critics, since he was the one willing to stick his neck out.” One is reminded of the Twilight Zone episode “It’s A Good Life”, where a six-year-old boy in a small town is endowed with God-like powers, and the whole town lives in fear of his wrath. Similarly, today’s Republican Party is acting like the timid townsfolk trying to appease its former President, Donald Trump. And despite railing against the crisis befalling masculinity, Hawley was not “man” enough to stand up to Trump’s repeated transgressions of constitutional norms. Resorting to the tiresome moral relativism of comparing what happened in January 6th to what happened during the summer of 2020, Hawley is more than willing to trade principles for posturing.