Cross Examining History with Michael Cullinane

0:00This is the Dallas Morning News. I'm Tellmage Boston and welcome to this edition of cross-examining history where we explore America's fascinating past with our country's leading historians and thought leaders. For this podcast, I interviewed Michael Cullinane Historian for the Theodore Roosevelt Association and for the new Theodore Roosevelt presidential library in the badlands of North Dakota. We talked about his new book Theodore Roosevelt and the tennis cabinet that came out on May 1st, 2026. We did the program in front of a live audience in Dallas on September 3rd, 2026. For the record, this podcast with Michael Cullinane is my 100th podcast episode of cross-examining history. I've been doing it for quite some time, gotten lots of great feedback. We've had so many great historians and public figures I hope you'll enjoy this episode and keep listening in the future. Thanks so much for your support.

1:05Enjoy But Michael, this is his third book on Theodore Roosevelt. He is a specialist one of the leading historians on this important subject. Rated always is one of our four greatest presidents, a mount rush more president. So please welcome Michael Cullinane. Thanks, Tom. That's a lovely introduction. I think I need to write a book about my wife now. Theodore Roosevelt. Maybe this is the first time Michael has ever been to Dallas. So maybe if your wife is lucky, she'll come to Dallas. But anyway, in the opening to your book or not to end the acknowledgments, I say you said that the idea to write this book, Theodore Roosevelt and his tennis cabinet came in 2015 and the book came out this year.

2:06So that's 11 years in the making. What was the spark that gave you the idea? This is a subject that needs to be covered. First of all, thanks for having me. Thanks for all the sponsors as well. This is such a beautiful place to have a talk about history. I feel spoiled today. So thank you very much. The photo on the book, so you have the book in front of you. The cover of it is a photo that Roosevelt allowed to be taken on the penultimate day of his presidency. And he didn't allow a lot of photographs, especially with political operatives. He certainly didn't allow any photographs of him playing tennis, which is why we have no photographs of him playing tennis. Wasn't masculine enough, of course. That photo, the curator at the Library of Congress came to me and said, who are these people? And I said, I don't know. And that started a journey into the lives of the 30 men that are pictured there. And actually, there's five or six men that are not pictured there that couldn't make that photo that are also part of this inner circle of theodore Roosevelt.

3:08And so the book began in 2015 while I was writing a book about theodore Roosevelt's legacy. And COVID kind of got in the way. So you couldn't go to archives for about two years. And the book would have been finished probably a lot sooner. Had it not been for COVID. But it did let me sit on things for a little bit. And that always lets the creative juices percolate. And I think the book was better for it actually. So it was about 11 years in the making. Now, it was in 1902, Edith Roosevelt is the first lady. And she's the one who decides what this White House really needs is a tennis court outside my husband's office. So why did she think that her husband needed a tennis court? Yeah, Edith Roosevelt is such a genius in her own right. I mean, we talk a lot about TR. But Edith is the mastermind behind making the White House what it is. So we created TR with the term the White House. It was just a nickname before that. He actually calls it the White House on the stationery. Edith, she's a builder, really. And for builders in the room, you know, it's a special gift to be able to see how to erect a building like this or any other building. And Edith had that vision.

4:17She hired Charles McKim who was one of the foremost architects of the time to come and renovate the White House in a complete overhaul, which is obviously got contemporary relevance today, right. We talk about this all the time. Every president does something. But some do things to the White House that are so monumental that they just can't be forgotten. And she was one of those people. So she separates the residents from the business end of the White House. And for the very first time in history, we have the West Wing. The West Wing is Edith Roosevelt's West Wing. The machine is very grateful. Right. Yeah. The office wasn't oval until Taft came along and made the oval office. But the office was there. The tennis court was put outside because she knew her husband would burn out. And so this was a means of relieving his, you know, stressful days. He would start work at eight in the morning. And he would work until about three p.m. in which time he would go outside to the tennis court, which is just outside of his office. And he would play these monster six set matches with usually doubles with these men.

5:21And Joe Gavitch can only play five sets. He played six. That's right. Yeah. And he didn't play well. He was terrible. He was a terrible tennis player. He was a terrible shot. I mean, you know, but he hunted with enthusiasm. He played tennis with enthusiasm. And that was the purpose of it being there. It was about exercise and relief. It wasn't about winning. And it wasn't about it was about sportsmanship and your friends. I read somewhere that when he would make an occasional good shot, he would start jumping up and down. He was very enthusiastic. I think I created it in the book too. He's like a rhino charging through the savannah. He crashes into partners and into the net. There was a great story of a young kid who played tennis with him in Saigon, More Hill, where they also had a tennis court. And he was so scared that he beat the ball off theodore Roosevelt and serve. And Roosevelt just erupted in laughter. He thought this was the best thing ever. So this wasn't about being a jocke of it or a federer. This was about having fun. Now, there are no photos or films of theodore Roosevelt playing tennis or even wearing tennis clothes. So we know for a fact that it was just all about the exercise and the fun. Nothing more than that.

6:33Yeah. And it wasn't just tennis. So the book has got tennis in the title because that's what he called the officers in his inner circle. But it was also about really dangerous tracks through Rock Creek Park in DC. The secret service would never allow a president nowadays to do. I understand that George W. Bush was a big mountain biker. And that was pretty treacherous. And that's sort of the threshold of how far you can go nowadays. But Roosevelt would go on these dangerous hikes. People would get injured. Bob Bacon, the secretary of state, opened a massive gash on his leg on one of these trips. And crazy horseback rides through the capital all the way into Virginia as well. Skinny dipping in the Potomac, which again seems completely unlikely to happen nowadays. But this is greatfully possibly. We don't want any pictures of that. But one of my favorite stories about TR is when he does go skinny dipping with the French ambassador. And they begin taking off their clothes and getting ready to enter the Potomac. And Roosevelt recognizes that is you saran the French ambassador has left his kid gloves on. And he says Mr. Ambassador, you've left your gloves on.

7:44And quick and as sharp as could be, you saran said, what if we meet any ladies. All right. So you say to the title to the theme of the book that the tennis court was Roosevelt's star chamber of informal advisors, his tennis cabinet. And as the book points out, the tennis playing partners held a wide variety of positions all over his administration. So what was his process? What was the president Roosevelt's process for selecting who got to be in the tennis cabinet? Well, fitness was certainly part of that. If you couldn't keep up, you weren't in the club. If you didn't like tennis, you weren't in the club. In fact, one diplomat made the mistake of saying he preferred golf and he never got an invitation again. And one one chap who was the comptroller of the currency, which is a job I didn't even know existed until recently, he hired a personal trainer so that he could be physically fit to take on the president at these matches.

8:52So that was part of it. But I think trust and admiration had a lot to do with it as well. So if he didn't trust you, he wasn't going to let you handle the levers of state. If he didn't like you generally, it was unusual for you to be left in. Although there are a couple tennis cabinet members that were there because they were great friends with other members that Roosevelt held in high regard. The big takeaway is that this was a very advisable man. He was not a dictator. He was not as Edmund Mars called him Theodore Rex. He was really amenable to the ideas of others. In fact, I argue in this book that these are the men that created the square deal that did the trust busting that were responsible for conservation. Roosevelt's there, of course. He's the chief executive. But without these people, nothing would have happened in the administration. Well, you mentioned Edmund Morris. So when you cite Theodore Roosevelt, you're talking about history. Edmund Morris is the first name that comes to mind. He won the Pulitzer for his book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. He did the trilogy, Theodore Rex about his presidency and Colonel Roosevelt, the 10 years post-presidency.

9:57And here's this leading Theodore Roosevelt historian. And he basically missed the story of the tennis cabinet. So what's your explanation for that? Yeah, I think Miss is probably the wrong word because every writer makes a decision about what they're going to write. He chose not to include it in his Theodore Rex presidency. And I would never speak ill about Edmund Morris because I think he's absolutely brilliant. I think his three books have a really important place in the canon. I would call the Great Man biography. This is not the Great Man biography. I was joking with Tellmage before saying that I wanted to call the book Not Just Theodore Roosevelt. So that we'd get away from this idea that any one person can do anything on their own. There's a great editorial in the New York Times. I do not tell the press that. He knows. I mean, every president knows. They might not say that publicly because they want all the glory. But ultimately, every great leader knows that without great support, you can't build anything.

10:59And Roosevelt knew that very well. He joked with the press and said that they'll never know how important the tennis cabinet was. And it's not until 2026 that people know how important the tennis cabinet was. Well, in terms of the make up Roosevelt has always described as a progressive Republican, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. So in the tennis cabinet, did he have representatives of both parties? He did Democrats and Republicans and independence people that had no party affiliation as well. I always say about Roosevelt that he was a conservative progressive and a progressive conservative. And when he was president, he was a conservative progressive. When he was running for president in 1912, he was a progressive conservative. So, you know, he kind of straddles the political spectrum, which is why I think he's probably so revered by both parties today and independence as well. He has the Maverick brand as well as the party faithful and the renegade, right? In 1912. Revered by his cousin Franklin Roosevelt, who was a liberal Democrat.

12:01I mean, Franklin Roosevelt wears Ponce-Neglasses because his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, wore them. I mean, if anyone walked in the footsteps of TR, FDR did. I mean, he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he was Governor of New York. He ran for Vice President and didn't win, but his son, Ted Jr., tried to emulate TR, was nearly successful, but nowhere near as successful as FDR and following that sort of trajectory. Now, there's no minutes of any tennis cabinet meetings because they really weren't quote meetings that were just out there exercising, but they were bonding. They were building trust, et cetera, et cetera. They never met as a group except in the photograph, as you mentioned. So, give us your assessment of the interplay between Roosevelt and the tennis cabinet on and off the court. Okay. Yeah, that's a good question. Just to say, Henry Stimson, when he shows up, the famous Henry Stimson of, you know, 60 years of service, Henry Stimson, was got his start in Theodore Roosevelt's tennis cabinet.

13:05He was the US Attorney for the District, Southern District of New York, he's TR's fixer in New York. And when he shows up on that last day, he has no idea who's going to be in the room because TR didn't invite everyone to play tennis. He invited two or three people at a time, people that were going to work on a specific portfolio for him, and then he released them and then invited other people the following day to work on something else. So, the interplay is that, you know, a bit of play for sure, but also when the tennis stopped, they would have a mint julep or a tea, and then they would talk about the matters of the day, and they would build the agenda towards whatever policies TR wanted, but also a lot of those ideas began with those members. So, ideas about conservation, forest preservation, bird reserves, that was the remit of a guy called Gifford Pinchot, who you may have heard of, he was a chief forester for many years in the United States, Governor of Pennsylvania. He was a lieutenant. James Garfield, not the assassin president, but his son, was one of his chief lieutenant.

14:10He was the head of the Department of Interior and did so much work for TR. So, there's people that are coming regularly, like those guys, and then there's people that are coming on a sort of less regular basis that have, you know, smaller portfolios. I read ones where when Peyton Manning was an NFL quarterback, when a new player would join the team, he would take him out to play around a golf. Just to see what kind of person they were, how they acted. I suspect that's kind of the way theodore Roosevelt was, and observing how people conducted themselves on the tennis court. It's a good tell, isn't it? I mean, you know, how someone behaves in a sort of recreational environment. I think with TR, he, that was part of his trust as well. He kind of learned to trust people through that process of playing. Yeah, yeah. Now, you say that the sway of the tennis cabinet infuriated officials who complained that the group had unwarranted influence over decisions that were traditionally made by disinterested government agencies.

15:11So, in your opinion, did the tennis cabinet have unwarranted influence over President Roosevelt? Well, I mean, in a strict sense, this is an extra constitutional organization of political operatives. These are unelected. Some agency, wonks, some bureaucrats, some politicians, but none of them had any sort of constitutional remit. There's nothing. And so, if you're in Congress, you're looking at what these guys are doing and saying, hey, wait a minute, that's our job. You know, take, for example, pure food and drug regulation. It's two operatives within TR's tennis cabinet that build on Upton Sinclair's report about tainted meat, and that gets the legislation passed. I mean, these guys are influencing public opinion. Congress is reacting to that. So, if you're a Congress person in Iowa or the Midwest dealing with the fallout of the meat scandal, you're sort of your head is spinning because these guys are dictating the sort of news cycle every day.

16:12And if you're the head of the Department of Interior, and TR doesn't like you, which you didn't like the head of the Department of Interior before Garfield took over, you're sort of, you're wondering why these guys have taken over your job. And they did. So, I mean, I think if you didn't like Roosevelt, you would say this is extra constitutional. If you like Roosevelt, you say, good on you. Well done. This is getting stuff done. Now, you say that Roosevelt was, quote, a genius chief executive, then you get into this wonderful metaphor who orchestrated the tennis cabinet like a conductor keeps rhythm and pace. The metronome, while a cast of musicians played independently watching for his cues, that's a very vivid picture of him as president. What's the best evidence that supports your conclusion that he was, in fact, this maestro and getting people on cue to do what he wanted? I mean, there's obviously this crowd that he works with, but I think TR, well, when he passed away, one of the closest friends said, ultimately, TR was the world's greatest publicist.

17:22Yeah, what he meant was that his message, and this is so important because this is the modern presidency, this is its beginning. The message is so effectively distributed throughout the country during TR's presidency. And that is what the job of a president has become in many ways, is to be a great publicist. TR was the start of that, not only is he a celebrity, but he manages to orchestrate government agencies and public opinion to his ends. The bully pulpit. I mean, he's got the bully pulpit, which is the term that he creates for the presidency, and he's masterful at it. I mean, I think that whether you love or dislike TR, you cannot argue that he was a successful publicist. And I think that's what people said after he passed, is that, you know, there's a lot of things that TR could be credited with, but he was an amazing publicist as president. Well, he was also an amazing president, as you point out. I mean, during his seven and a half year presidency at the dawn of the 20th century, in those seven and a half years, he led America during the rise of the industrialization, our entry onto the world stage as a major power through the major labor dispute in the coal industry, and he produced major environmental protection reform.

18:36So to deal with all these brand new areas of development, you say that his administration is a study in, here's a word you've never heard before. Prosopography. Is anybody in this room ever heard of that word before? Prosopography. Mike, tell us what that word means and why it applies to the Roosevelt presidency. Yes, Belly, yeah, yeah. It's a Greek term. It means the study of networks. I just put that in there and make sure you were listening and reading. I caught it. I felt I had to say something academic and use a big word. These PhDs, I got to stick words in there like that. But I mean, I do believe firmly, and this room is a great tell of this. I mean, you're all here because you're part of a network. You wouldn't be here if you didn't know somebody who invited you here probably or brought you into this network or you, you know, you have some, office space here. This is, this is a perfect example of how networks operate. And we're all beneficiaries of having greater connections with each other.

19:37TR understood that and built an amazing network. If you don't do that, I don't think you're successful. I think that's the underlying basis of success. And just to say your point, someone had mentioned that there's a memorial to capitalism on the grounds, which I really would love to see. I think TR is responsible for making capitalism after industrialization happens possible. And it's not just by regulation. It's by understanding that growth, American growth relies on order and systems. And without rules based order, it will disintegrate. And people figuring out how to work within those systems. Well, as soon, I mean, this is the great thing about any business is that it's like a river. It's going to flow into a natural, a place where it can work more easily flow. And if you set up a rule, business will figure out how to, you know, adapt to that rule. They always do. And so TR knew that. And, you know, much of what he does in his administration is business minded. So he brings inefficiency measures into government based on the best practices in business of the day. So people that wanted to pick TR as a foe of capitalism are, I think, they're wrong.

20:48TR is one of the greatest architects of American industrial capitalism, just by making it work better. Now, back to your point a few minutes ago about his capacity to take advice. When most people think of Theodore Roosevelt, you think of the line his daughter, Alice said that he was, he was so in need of being the center of attention that he thought of himself as the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral and the baby at every christening. So that presumably he thought, if you're of that mindset, you think you're the smartest guy in the room. And yet you say the people who ran him said, no, he listened, he took advice. So did Alice not have an appreciation, I guess, for the way her father operated? I know, I think she was right. I think he did want both. He was on Sanders. He was both. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he wanted all the attention for sure. I mean, I think Theodore Roosevelt is a celebrity president. Now, with that said, he's one of the more you read about him, the more you realize how modest he is.

21:55I mean, this is a guy who had no eulogy at his funeral. He didn't have a state funeral. He didn't even have any singing at his funeral. He didn't want any monuments of him, including he specifically said no likenesses of him. Of course, we've erected plenty of likenesses. But so he was at once modest and attention seeking. And I think that is what also makes him a great leader is that, you know, he knows when to turn it on and he knows when to be humble. And I think that's a great, that's a great trait. Now, one of the points you make is that these members of the tennis cabinet, quote, expanded Roosevelt's capacity to accomplish his agenda. So give one or two examples of somebody who's in the cabinet, who allow him to see a bigger picture and go beyond what he originally thought he planned to do. Yeah, great. One of the great characters in the book is so at the end of both of the sides of the photo are his two sort of chief stewards.

22:55One of them is a guy called Billy Loeb, who's his secretary. He's kind of the only guy who can keep up with Roosevelt when it comes to dictation and stenography. That's how he gets into the inner circle. He's during the governor years, he becomes his chief stenographer. And then Roosevelt brings him to Washington. Eventually, he becomes the presidential secretary. He's better known as Billy the goat because he was the scapegoat for TR. So whenever you had to blame someone, you blamed Billy Loeb. And Loeb had this knack for gossip. I mean, he's the only one who knows every one of the tennis cabinet because he invites them all in. But he also has his ear to the ground in New York politics, the TR relies on. He has his ear to the ground and everything that's happening in the city around business and commerce. So he uncovers a scandal where the domino sugar company, back then known as the American sugar refining company, is trying to evade tariffs by... It's such a simple ruse, but they would lift the scales when the sugar would come onto the docks and they would lighten the load.

23:55By just a little bit, it was millions that they were skimming off the top. And Billy Loeb finds this out. And the biggest corporate fine in history is prosecuted because of Billy Loeb's research into it. So Roosevelt never expected to look into the Havre Meyer sugar company, but they do because of Billy Loeb. And all of these guys have their own ideas that lead Roosevelt in different directions. Now you say that the members of the tennis cabinet were, quote, not generalists. They had specific areas of expertise and responsibility. And they gave their ad hoc advice on isolated issues. Now in theodore Roosevelt's presidency, there was no such position as a White House chief of staff. So how did he keep all of these essentially silos of people doing different things straight without somebody in charge of bringing it all together like a White House chief of staff?

24:55Well, I think he probably doubled as a chief of staff in men. He was his own chief of staff. Yeah, and Billy Loeb was a great help. But Billy Loeb didn't understand these people the way Roosevelt did. So in many ways he was his own chief of staff. I mean, he trusted these men too. That's going back to this network idea of leadership, is that to have that trust. And one of the tennis court guys did say the greatest gift that Roosevelt ever gave me was faith in me. And he went off and led many of the corporate antitrust suits during TRS time. But yeah, I mean, he was kind of his own chief of staff. Well, I've said many times, see if you agree with me, that he's our highest IQ president. That he had a photographic memory, he had a phonographic memory. He remembered everything that he read, everything he'd heard. And thus could keep track of all this information come from all directions. Is that something you agree with? Do. I do, yeah. Talk about that. I mean, here he is president of the United States and he's reading more than a book a day.

25:57He's not just reading though. I mean, he's got to remember everything. Yeah, he's a voracious reader, so he's got a schedule that he writes up for himself. I remember reading one when he's vice president. He's like, you know, give us speech, read a book. Give us speech, read a book. But he's also writing books. I mean, TR is our most prolific writer in chief. So he wrote 56 books in his lifetime. He wrote 450 articles. I'm talking about, you know, Atlantic Monthly, North American Review, Scribner's. You know, these are not, you know, small... It's in the Park City's people. These are big and poor-yeah. Yeah. But also the letters. I mean, not only is he writing 56 books and he writes hundreds of articles, but talk about his correspondence. The nearest comparison is Jefferson who wrote about 20,000 letters in his lifetime. Our best guess on Roosevelt is about 150,000 letters in his lifetime. So one of my jobs is to digitize all of that and to get it online so people can read it or to put it into AIs so that we have exhibits that can emulate TR's thinking and speaking.

27:01But it's an incredible corpus of work. And I don't think there is many people in history, thinking like Marcus Aurelius. I mean, you know, every president has written a memoir or a book, but not every president, not an ever written 56. I mean, during his presidency, he writes four books. I mean, this is an inesparatime. Inesparatime, he speaks many languages. He keeps up with natural history debates. Philosophical debates. He writes to the world's most famous philosopher, a French guy called Henri Berkson, and takes on his ideas about creative evolution. I mean, this is not a lightweight. And yet these guys are coming to him with their ideas. And maybe that's why he can digest them is because he has this powerful intellect. Now, the first part of your book is on the men in the tennis cabinet who were involved in his foreign policy and diplomacy. The most important diplomatic achievements of his presidency was mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

28:06So how did the tennis cabinet members assist him in that process of bringing it into that war? This is probably a great example of that orchestration because TR doesn't really do much for the negotiations with the Russo-Japanese War negotiations. He's not even in Portsmouth where the negotiations are happening. He's orchestrating from Oyster Bay. He meets the delegates, but even to get them to the table, TR relied on these men to do that. So, Jusseran, the French diplomat, the French were extremely close with the Russians during this time. The Kidorah say doesn't want the Russians to negotiate. In fact, they're supporting Tsar Nicholas from getting into these negotiations. Jusseran changes their mind because of conversations with Roosevelt. Russia comes to the table because Ambassador Meyer is doing the grunt work on the ground with Russian aristocracy, with the Zarina even. So all of that's happening outside of Roosevelt's war. He's in Washington. I mean, these are the people that he trusts to get this work done.

29:06Then, when it comes to the negotiations, he has his closest journalist friend, a guy called Callo Locklin. He gives him a cipher and tells him he wants regular intel updates on what's going on. And he tells Callo, get me the best Russian guy in the delegation to negotiate, the most sensible one. Callo identifies Sergei Vitt, who is a sensible finance minister, and they work out the deal together, and then relay it back to Roosevelt, who signs off on it. So this is how the diplomacy worked. It was back channel. It was quiet. I mean, you know, the whole speaks awfully and carry a big stick. You know, TR's threat was always there. He would always never refrain from using the military. But always diplomacy was by experts quietly conducted behind closed doors. Now, you've mentioned several times the French ambassador to the US, Jean-Jusseran. Somebody I had never heard of before I read your book. And you say he was, in essence, the vice president and consiglary of the tennis cabinet.

30:10So what made him so influential? He loved him. I mean, Jusseran has got a great wit. In fact, if you ever get a chance to read his autobiography, it's the best title. It's called What Me Befell. What? Me Befell? Right. I mean, it's just, it's his literary term with something that TR just soaked up. So he wrote a number of books about history. When they meet for the first time, TR is overwhelmed by, well, first of all, they have this really, you know, ceremonial thing where the ambassador needs to present their credentials to the president and the secretary of state. Roosevelt couldn't wait for that to be over, so he could just talk to him about his books and his writing. And Jusseran and him, you know, they spend a lot of time together talking about more than just the rest of the story. He's talking about more than just diplomacy. He probably saw him as essentially the closest to being intellectual at equal. Yeah. And I think also he came in at a time when Roosevelt was really struggling with his actual cabinet. So John Hay has this sort of anusheriobless in 1904 when Jusseran is coming online and, and Hay is not around. He's a new hampsure.

31:13And so he doesn't really have a secretary of state. In fact, Roosevelt says at one stage to members of the state department, he goes, you can say whatever you want in front of Jusseran, he is our secretary of state. I've sworn him in. A Frenchman. A Frenchman. I mean, that's, you know, that's really strange, right? But this is again, this level of trust that he has and what he feels he can extract from his, his team. And with Jusseran, he thinks he can say anything to Jusseran and well, for the most part, but, you know, mostly anything. In fact, he allows Jusseran to dictate some diplomatic telegrams. I mean, that's unheard of to have a foreign ambassador be involved in that. Now another area for which Roosevelt is very famous is environmental protection and wildlife refuge. Ken Burns, of course, made the great documentary on the national parks. So talk about what members of the tennis cabinet did in that arena to enhance our whole national policy and favor of environmental protection and wildlife refuge. Yeah, I mean, that story has been so well told, I think, about TR's reputation and what he did, you know, 51 bird sanctuaries, the very first wildlife, Refugees in America, or TR by the sign of a pen.

32:23Everything is executive order when it comes to conservation. 151 national forests. We're talking about preservation of 230 million acres of land, which is unheard of in, you know, today, everything that in the wildlife reserve system is down to TR's executive actions. So that story had been told, but there's a bunch of other stories that weren't told. Giford Pinchow is the brains behind this. He is the chief forester. He brings in a guy called George Washington Woodruff, who's a big football legend in Pennsylvania. He led the only ever U-Pen team to win uncontested. I mean, no team scored a point on U-Pen in 1892, I think it is. He brings this guy Woodruff in. He's the lawyer who basically takes all the cases to the Supreme Court. But there's other people that are in this orbit around conservation as well. And for a Dallas crowd, I got to talk about a guy called Jack Abernathy, who is from Texas originally settled in Oklahoma. He was a wolf wrangler.

33:24And he was a wolf wrangler. Yeah, this guy figured out that if you punch your fist into a wolf's mouth hard enough, which is counterintuitive, right? Don't do that. But he was like, well, let's see what happens. Punch is fist into the guy, the wolf's mouth and immobilize the wolf. Basically the jaw locks. So he became this like overnight sensation. T.R. here is about him. And he comes down to Texas in 1905. He's the first president to visit Dallas. I'll try to hear that. The U.S. was the first American president to visit Dallas while he was in office. April 1905. So after the inauguration, he's exhausted. He comes down to Texas to do some wolf wrangling with this guy Jack Abernathy. And he's blown away. I mean, he sees Abernathy immobilizes a wolf like within minutes. And T.R. is just gobsmacked. He just says, I didn't think it was real. And this guy comes back as part of the tennis cabinet and becomes an important part of his conservation policies. Because at the time T.R. was struggling with nature writers who wrote about wolves and other sort of beasts as cute and cuddly.

34:32Think about Richard Kipling in the jungle book, right? And there's a bunch of other writers that are writing about wildlife as being cute and cuddly. He called them nature fakers. You want the public to understand that wolves are dangerous. Even if Abernathy's punching his fist into his mouth, this is dangerous. So they make videos of wrangling wolves. They work with the Bronx Zoo to show how dangerous wildlife can be. And that's a big part of his conservation policies too that most people don't talk about or know about. So when you go back to your office after this program and somebody says, well, did you learn anything? Yeah, I learned how to deal with a wolf. Yeah. You give Roosevelt appropriately credit for making the government's executive branch as well as the entire federal government more efficient. We'll talk about what certain tennis cabinet members did in that respect, to streamline and make it work better. So we've seen, I mean, doge is probably the most recent example of an efficiency crusade within government.

35:39Doge owes everything to TR. TR was the first president to bring in an efficiency movement. It was called the Department of Methods, Scientific Methods. And it was meant to be a system to just get rid of waste in government, which I think, you know, regardless of your politics, we can all agree is a bad thing. So this is a good example of him seizing on an issue that everyone agreed on and making it work. So I mean, this is everything from changing procurement methods, rooting out corruption in the printing area and government was particularly bad, saved millions by stopping printing. I mean, this is not sexy stuff, but it had huge implications for how government worked. I mean, brought in pensions for government employees, which actually eased out older employees that weren't going to leave. Brought in efficiency metrics so that people that were not performing were pushed out as well. Also promoted on meritocracy, which was a big change in government. So seniority was done away with and merit was brought in.

36:41There's one guy, this is the guy who is the personal trainer to keep up. His name is Lawrence O. Oh, Christ was his name. Lawrence O. Murray. Murray was a remarkable man, an efficiency dynamo, and he was a banker. He was an auditor and he just went in and cut positions and made government more efficient. So much so that every president after TR has done pretty much the same. That brings in a big efficiency movement after that. I mean, even the 9-11 report refers to TR as the one who started efficiency and waste management within government bureaucracy. Well, before your book came out, we all thought of TR as quote, the great man without enough credit being given to his supporting cast. Your book's been out for a few months now. Are you sensing any awareness that there was more to it than just the great man?

37:41Well, I guess when the president called me and said he read it and thought it was brilliant, I was just blown away. But no, that didn't happen. Yeah, I don't know how quick this trickles down. I mean, historians aren't always at the coal face of politics. But there's a major insight. There's probably thousands of books on TR. I think Darius Kerns Goodwin, when she wrote team of rivals, that spoke to the Obama administration so much so that Barack Obama talked about Darius' book. I would love for the president to think about leadership in this way. I'd love any leader to think about leadership as networks and about trust in others. I mean, trust builds networks. So if that's your takeaway, that in the wolf wrangling, obviously. Then I think that's a win for me. I mean, I believe firmly that that's TR's greatest gift to American government, is building trust and building networks. Before we open it for questions, Michael, I want to give you two minute commercial for the Theodore Roosevelt presidential library, which just opened on the 4th of July.

38:49And you've seen the write-ups, but give us your perspective as somebody who's been in the middle of it, and still in the middle of it, as to why you think it's important that people should travel in North Dakota and go see it. Yeah. I mean, North Dakota is kind of a pilgrimage. So if you don't know the story about TR going to North Dakota, he went hunting bison in 1883 out there. And then when his wife and his mother die on the same day in 1884, he tries to outrun his demons by working hard, and that doesn't get him anywhere. So he leaves New York, goes to North Dakota to remake himself. That's how he sees that journey. And he does. I mean, it takes about three years, but he moves on past that trauma, eventually remarries, gets back into politics. But he always credited North Dakota with making him president. And he famously said, I, you know, born from a northerner and a southerner, I grew up in the east, and I made myself in the west. And so his identity and very much wrapped up in the American spirit, the American experience on the frontier. And I think if you haven't been to North Dakota, you haven't seen the Badlands, which is where the library is.

39:55You can't know that story as intimately. I mean, in fact, when he goes to Madora, I mean, it's a small town still. It's like 150 people nowadays. Back then, it was probably around 50. It was still too busy for him. He leaves Madora and goes to the Little Missouri River, 50 miles north of there, where he can just be alone. So take the pilgrimage, go and do a TR did. Go out there. Go to Madora. I see Madora. But then go 50 miles north to the Elkorn Ranch. There's nothing there, but solitude, quietude, peace. I think for those reasons, it's well worth a visit. It's not easy to get there. So talk about the high points of the presidential library in the museum. Oh, there's a lot. I mean, is it the push library yesterday? I hadn't been there and visited. I was impressed with much of it. But also museums have moved on quite a bit in the last 15 years. And what we've done at the library is, I think beyond measure of what you've ever seen before in the museum. I think I was part of it. I think I would say that as just a regular guest as well. We've got AI interactives. You can talk to an AITR, which has got those documents backing it up that we've been working on digitizing.

41:07You get to be in the training when TR gets the news that his wife is dying. And she had just given childbirth. You get to be on the foothills of San Juan Hill when he makes his charge. So you're sort of embodied in the moment when he crashes out on the Amazon tributary, the River of Doubt. All of these are highly interactive embodied experiences. You're not reading text. I mean, there's text there too. Especially if you're into artifacts, you've got some brilliant artifacts, which have been gathered from all over the country. And there's that stuff too, including the diary that TR wrote the big X in, which has been loaned from the Library of Congress for the first time in its history to the presidential library. So there's the artifacts that you think are, you know, that are part of a traditional library, but there's so much more that you get to experience firsthand. We have time for questions. I got a question from Michael.

42:07Yes, sir. Again, thank you for being here. Excited to read the book. I couldn't agree more with how you highlight the importance of how he optimize these networks, the trust he built in these people. What do you think gave him that character trait to allow those people to go execute? I would argue one of the great pillars of leadership is being smart enough to get all those great people connected and let them go do. There's a lot of people that collect, collect great people, but still then try to micromanage or control. He let them run. But what, as you've studied and collected all this, what do you have a perspective of what gave him that edge to do that? I have a modern day leadership that was emerging at that time. And I'll note North Dakota is awesome. I can't wait to go because not only the structure I've read and seen is just exceptional for what's ever been built. Big fan.

43:07Thank you. And that's a great question, too, because yeah, I can spout off as much as I want about, you know, trust. But how do you build that? How do you get there? Is a great question. I've probably heard that famous TR speech that he gave at the Sorbonne in 1910. Most people refer to it as the Man in the Arena. It was actually called Citizenship in a Republic. And you probably know the line. It's not the critic who counts. It's the man who's actually in the arena, right? Don't read that. Those 50 words. Read the rest of the speech. It's, you know, it's his philosophy in a sort of nutshell. And that's where he talks about developing those ideas. And I think it starts with his family because his conception of citizenship and leadership is very much built on, first of all sorting yourself out, the individual. And then working to make your family strong and resilient, and then working to make your neighborhood strong and resilient, and the nation. And at some stage, when states work together, that's the highest achievement that he's talking about, you know, sort of global citizenship.

44:09You know, things think about, I've always equated this to like the rotary, right? Rotary is that sort of global conception of business citizenship, right? Well, TR, that's how we thought it was these sort of concentric circles starting with the individual and then working your way out. And that's, I think how he was able to understand trust. He had a brilliant family. I mean, what a great upbringing. Even with all the demons in his family, his brother was an alcoholic who died by suicide. I mean, there's definitely demons there for sure. But the trust with his sisters and his parents and his cousins and the wider Roosevelt family was always there. I mean, if you ever hear the Roosevelt's talk about their family, they always talk about their affection and resolve for one another. And I think that that percolated into his ideas about friendship with political operatives and other people that he admired and liked as well. So for me, that's how his philosophy works in those sort of outward concentric circles. Okay. Yes. How did you get a story about how you picked this part of American history and how you focused on theodore Roosevelt in particular, because it's very specific.

45:19It could be interested in how you got to this place. How did you pick your niche in theodore Roosevelt? So I think like so many American high school students, my history teacher just told me to go and videotape my grandfather. And so the book is dedicated to Buzz, who is my grandfather and into my boys, who I hope will imbibe some of this themselves. But when I interviewed my grandfather, you know, his admiration for theodore Roosevelt was intense. And that got me thinking, well, what's this, you know, what's this admiration all about? He also really loved FDR and Ronald Reagan. And so I saw no issue why you couldn't admire presidents on either side of the aisle, which I thought was great too. When I came to write about TR, he was not the protagonist of the story. So I was writing my PhD in 2006, the Iraq War was on, and the surge was just being sort of initiated by President Bush.

46:21I was interested in anti-war movements that were happening in TR's time. And what was amazing is that TR continued to be friends with all of the people that he disagreed with on foreign policy. And that seemed so far removed from where we were in the contemporary that I wanted to learn more about that. And I still find that, you know, one of the most abiding things about his legacy is that he is above politics. And to get back to that would be a really great place for the US, I think. Thank you. The other. Yes. There we go. Thank you, Michael, you know, for the wonderful talk regarding your, you know, your book. You know, one of the questions that you know, I had as, you know, recently I've visited, you know, Yellowstone National Park being the first National Park. You know, theodore Roosevelt on the tennis cabinet, you know, you mentioned that being, you know, instrumental in setting up, you know, the National Parks. But, you know, I don't know if you know you have any insight, but, you know, why Yellowstone, you know, why, you know, where did that lead to?

47:27And where do you think, you know, theodore Roosevelt will think, you know, about, you know, all the National Parks that, you know, have been established, you know, now. Yeah. It's interesting about National Parks. He's often revered as like the architect of National Parks. He wasn't actually. Yellowstone was set up by Grant in the 1860s and expanded by Roosevelt. And Roosevelt did expand the National Parks. He didn't add as many as you'd think. He only added four. What he's most responsible for though is National Monuments, which have become part of the National Park System. So, Devil's Tower is the first National Monument in Wyoming. I think what Roosevelt did was he identified the cathedrals of National Beauty and decided by stroke of a pen that he was going to protect them. Which was highly controversial. And it remains controversial because presidents can still add and delete parts of the National Parks. Roosevelt, in fact, did that in Yosemite. He actually shrunk, shrunk Yosemite a little bit, which people don't know or necessarily.

48:27But executive power in Roosevelt's hands was responsible for a huge amount of conservation of public land, Jewelcave, Windcave. Oh, the Montezuma monuments down in the Southwest. I mean, all over the country. And I can't stress enough how bird reserves really transformed the United States. So, he created 51... What's going back to his childhood? I mean, he was a bird lover. In fact, spoiler alert. The next book on Roosevelt is called, Birding with Theodore Roosevelt. Which I have only just realized the birding community are just incredible book buyers. That's a good thing. Why didn't I think of that? That worked out well. And also, I feel like I've hit midlife in my stride now that I'm a birder, right? Like, that's kind of perfect. But yeah, the birds' sanctuaries were very much... They were one of the biggest deals, I think. And that's not because I have a book coming out about birds. All right. Will we appreciate you all coming? Are we having another question?

49:30Oh, Kyle, one of our great sponsors. Yes, I am. Some of my natural group. Thank you, tell me. There you go. You've kind of made some auxiliary comments around this with the Speaks Off-Link, Carrie Big Stick. And then, you know, his championing of what citizenship really means for Americans. But I forget the name of the actual speech, but there was a speech he made in regards to the Spanish-American War and the Philippines. He spent a lot of time talking about the position of America in the role of... and their role in protecting democracy in that speech and did a very good job elaborating that. Did that ethos originate out of the tennis cabinet or was it influenced by that or was it just core to his natural philosophy? No, that was 100% TR. So he surrounded himself with people that believed in democracy as the bullwork for... He talks about citizenship in democracy a lot and a lot of his speeches. And the difference that he would always say between a monarchy or an authoritarian government is that you can have a strong and successful monarch or dictator.

50:32But what you need for a democracy is a really strong polity. You need really strong citizens that are active and responsible for that polity. Otherwise, it just doesn't work. And that's probably also the weakness of democracy, too. If the polity loses that sort of commitment and responsibility to democracy, then it will inevitably collapse. That was TR through and through. Huge lover of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln's ideas of American democracy. He believes very much in reconstruction and he believes very much in the idea of constitutional order. In fact, he writes a book I was telling Tom and Jirley, he writes a book about Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell actually wrote a constitution for England despite the fact that they don't have one nowadays. And Roosevelt admired that immensely. I mean, democracy was built on laws, but it was extended and preserved by its people. And that's something that he believed from early days into his death.

51:32Robert has a question. A lot about his faith. Well, I do have to get someone wrote a good book about it. But Ben Wetzel wrote a great book called Preacher of Righteousness. And Roosevelt was a voracious reader of the Bible from youth. I mean, I don't think he was a strict, he didn't belong to one faith. Ben Wetzel says he was a pan-Christian, which I think is right. I mean, he is born into a Dutch-reformed faith. His wife is a Piscopalian. He probably went to more Episcopal masses than he did Dutch reform masses. But he very much believes in the idea of Christian morality. That's the underpinning of many of his ideas about democracy too, that ethics derive from Christianity and the basic tenets of the Ten Commandments. But he rarely pushes tracks from the Bible in speeches.

52:36So probably his most famous speech where he does make a major Bible reference is in 1912 when he's leaving the Republican Party and starting the progressive party. He says, we stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord. And so when he needed to galvanize people with the rhetoric of the Bible, he was more than able to do it. And the private he would quote from the James Bible all the time. But it was a private faith too, that was not, he didn't share publicly very often. All right, if you have not gotten a signed book yet, Mike's going to be around and we appreciate all of you coming. And hope to see you next month. Michael Cullen named his new book about the presidential administration of Theodore Roosevelt certainly sheds new light on how TR operated during his White House years. Make sure you catch all my podcasts on Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud, the Washington Independent Review Books website.

53:40And now the Dallas Morning News is publishing and promoting my podcasts. Until next time, remember the words of my late great friend Bobby Bragan, you can't hit the ball with the bat on your shoulder. This is Talmadge Boston. Thanks for listening.