Theodore and Barack in Osawatomie
12-12-11
Walter Nugent is Tackes Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Notre Dame and a member of HNN's advisory board. He is the author of numerous books, including "The Tolerant Populists: Kansas Populism and Nativism," "Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction," and most recently "Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansionism."
On August 31, 1910, Republican ex-president Theodore Roosevelt gave a rousing speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, against inequity of wealth. On December 6, 2011, Democratic President Barack Obama did the same. What was similar and what was different about what they said? (Osawatomie, by the way, is pronounced “Ah-so-WAH-to-me.” Network newscasters who mispronounced it should have checked with a historian who has lived in Kansas, like me.)
Roosevelt and Obama both said that inequality of wealth and income is unfair. It’s against the American spirit and dream. So it must be reversed. In TR’s day, as the first Gilded Age ended, moguls named Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie and others had amassed wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. One man, John D. Rockefeller, owned more than 1 percent of the entire national wealth. In Obama’s and our day, the new Gilded Age, the wealthiest 1 percent (and especially the top one-tenth of 1 percent) have steadily increased their share of wealth and income since the late 1970s, while most Americans’ income has flat-lined or declined. In TR’s day, this seemed patently unfair. It does today too, except to Republicans who cry “class warfare”—as they have ever since William Jennings Bryan ran against William McKinley in 1896.
More: http://hnn.us/articles/theodore-and-barack-osawatomie
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