Is Bernie Sanders channeling Teddy Roosevelt? Having recently re-watched Ken Burns’ in-depth biography, The Roosevelts, I am struck by the similarities—both in substance and in style.

I started thinking about this comparison as I watched Burns’ old-time film snippets of Teddy Roosevelt—particularly those documenting him on the campaign stump. Roosevelt, known affectionately as TR, was a fighter. In the film clips, his body language shows a man leaning into his arguments, gesticulating for emphasis, speaking forcefully and intently—all of this in a less-than-Adonis-like body.

The similarity to Bernie Sanders’ outspoken, forceful, vigorous and passionate campaign persona is uncanny.

But, of course, there’s more to this comparison than style. Teddy—the leader of the Republican party of his day, became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the US in the early 20th century—and Sanders has adopted that mantle 100 years later.

I’m not a historian [although I do occasionally binge-watch Drunk History]. So here are some of the similarities noted by people who know much more than I do:

In a 2016 article, The Observer observed:

Both [Sanders and Roosevelt] are strongly skeptical of corporate power, and live in periods in which the power, influence, and abusiveness of these institutions (in the view of the general public) is considerable and growing. Teddy’s major domestic agendas (trust busting, environmental stewardship and national parks, consumer protection) are at odds with significant corporate powers of their respective times, insofar as these interests collided with those of everyone else.

… both intended to save capitalism from self-inflicted injuries driven by greed. Teddy Roosevelt did it by busting up the big trusts of his day. Bernie is focused on the banks that are too big to fail. He wants to break them up before their reckless gambling collapses the economy again as it did in the Great Recession of 2007-2010.

…In 1912, when Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency as the leader of the Progressive [Bull Moose] Party, he laid out one of the most progressive platforms in American history. The party backed, among other policies:

• Limits on campaign contributions
• An eight-hour work day
• A commission to regulate securities markets
• A workers compensation program
• A “national health service”
• Passage of the 16th Amendment to allow for a federal income tax
• Infrastructure through “the early construction of National highways;”
• An estate tax

Roosevelt explicitly expressed his desire to increase the share the wealthy paid in taxes in his “New Nationalism” speech:

I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

Sanders’ 2020 platform–like that of 2016– is, of course focused on issues more modern than creating a national highway system–although Teddy would undoubtedly support the modern call for a vast upgrade to our crumbling infrastructure. Clearly, Sanders is continuing the Roosevelt legacy of progressive populism, and, like Teddy, he, willing to stump—tirelessly—for what he believes in, and is focused on matters of corruption and the abuse of power. You can take the Roosevelt platform and, almost point-by-point, correlate it with what Bernie Sanders is proposing 100 years later.

I see that as good news.

The bad news that, more than a century later, we are still not there on these issues. We’re still fighting for the basic tenets of a progressive, equitable society. And it’s just sad that a presidential candidate who is fighting back against democracy-killing corporate greed is regarded as out of the mainstream.

What would Teddy think?

[Note: Voice recordings of Teddy Roosevelt are rare, but here’s one that gives you a flavor of his speaking style, and of the substantive nature of his speeches.]

[Editor’s note: This post first appeared here on Occasional Planet in 2016, when Bernie Sanders emerged  as a presidential hopeful. We are republishing it because of its new relevance in the 2020 election.]

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Biographer and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has written biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. As she looked to a new project, she realized that she had tremendous interest in the progressive movement at the turn of the 19^th century. She thereupon wrote her widely-acclaimed book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.

For contemporary progressives, the book is a remarkable refresher course on what the original progressives in our country were like. Unlike those of a century ago, many current progressives are very tentative in stepping forward. With individuals like Barack Obama, this is certainly understandable; the political climate is rather forbidding for anyone who wants to advance a real progressive agenda. There are obvious exceptions, most particularly Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. But in the early 1900s, American citizens elected Theodore Roosevelt as president, a charismatic long-time practitioner of progressive politics and the William Howard Taft, a more subdued man, but still progressive in his beliefs. Mind you, America did this just prior to women’s suffrage (1920), which certainly would have provided far more votes in favor of a liberal agenda.

One of the key pieces of legislation in the progressive era was the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The ICC was actually passed in 1887 during the first term of President Glover Cleveland. The Commission’s mandate and its rulings have been key to a number of progressive laws including civil rights, transportation, safe food, and licensing for safe pharmaceuticals.

The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was a regulatory agency in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency’s original purpose was to regulate railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including interstate bus lines and telephone companies. The Commission was the first independent regulatory body (or so-called Fourth Branch), as well as the first agency to regulate big business in the U.S.

The ICC served as a model for later regulatory efforts. Unlike, for example, state medical boards, the Interstate Commerce Commissioners and their staffs were full-time regulators who could have no economic ties to the industries they regulated. At the federal level, agencies patterned after the ICC included the Federal Trade Commission (1914), the Federal Communications Commission (1934), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (1934), the National Labor Relations Board (1935), the Civil Aeronautics Board (1940), Postal Regulatory Commission (1970) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (1975). In recent decades

Unfortunately, Congress dissolved the Interstate Commerce Commission, effective the first day of 1996, but its legacy includes a number of other regulatory authorities. Most importantly, it clarified the meaning of Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the United States Congress shall have power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States.” The “among the several states” is the key wording that permits the federal government to implement and enforce civil rights laws such as banning discrimination in hotels and restaurants (because they engage in interstate commerce in getting their supplies, etc.). It is one of the key clauses in allowing the federal government to monitor and adjust state voting laws that discriminate against individual or classes of individuals.

There are so many things that we can learn from the Interstate Commerce Commission of 1887 and the progressive movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Perhaps the most important lesson is that progressive ideas can become the norm. If there had not been a break between Teddy Roosevelt and W.H. Taft in 1912, it’s quite possible that (a) the Great Depression might have not have been so severe in the U.S., and (b) more needed progressive legislation could have been passed. We in the present can work to keep what President Obama has started and follow it with more bold progressive ideas. Perhaps the key point is to minimize internal disagreements. Unfortunately that’s difficult for the more cerebral of the two parties. But we can try.

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