ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have been blessed during my life with a wide assortments of interests. Many were conceived early, and some have become virtual obsessions—happily manifested in collecting; research-for-the-sake-of-research; outreaches to compatriots as I would locate them; interviews with principals when possible (sometimes scarcely possible at all). For this aspect of my personality I acknowledge with thanks, as I am glad I did uncountable times while he was alive, my father, who was himself an omnivorous cognoscente: collector, polymath, role model. I believe and recognize that I have been able to bequeath a joyful, ferocious curiosity about life to my own children Heather, Theodore, and Emily. Beyond spiritual values, I can imagine nothing of which a father can be prouder.

Two of my early interests coincided in their historical time and my avidity: cartoons and Theodore Roosevelt. With the cartoon arts, my interests ranged from collecting cartoons from the Civil War to World War I, principally; although my vision has spread earlier and later. Comic strips, too, from their prototypes, first incarnations, and golden years. When my interest advanced to illustration and other popular arts, I eventually was able to assemble virtually complete runs of the major New York newspapers from these years; of the popular news weeklies and important monthly magazines of the day; of the political and humor magazines whose work you see in these pages, Puck, Judge, Life, and others; and a great number of pamphlets, ads, brochures, posters, and campaign memorabilia. Professionally, I worked for a time as a political cartoonist (including for newspapers published by William Loeb, son of TR's presidential secretary).

My interest in Colonel Roosevelt began I know not when or where, but it was early. Living around New York City, and thanks once again to parents who indulged and encouraged my interests, I became an habitué of TR's birthplace museum, Sagamore Hill, the American Museum of Natural History, and other shrines. Joining my father on weekly forays to Manhattan's Book Store Row area (now vanished), I thereby began my collection of Roosevelt books and publications about the era.

…all of which, I might say, brings us to this book. Toward the end, rather now than at the beginning, of a career that combined these interests on behalf of books, articles, lectures, and exhibitions, I have published many compilations of vintage cartoons and written many histories and biographies. My interests have never waned (readers will notice that I named my only son after Theodore Roosevelt), but the time had to be just right, and the publisher Regnery History has provided the catalyst.

At the top of my list of gratefully acknowledged people are two without whom this book could have been produced as you hold it. More than fifteen years ago, when I was president of the National Foundation of Caricature and Cartoon Art in Washington, D.C., I briefly met John Olsen at a reception. He was filed thereafter in the back of my mind as an expert, and collector, in the field of political memorabilia, specifically get-out-the-vote campaigns. And I remembered that he was dedicated to TR and cartoons also. So when I located him in Iowa, and found him more interested than ever in his fields of interest, I was grateful that he signed on as Assistant Editor of this book. The only historians who do not admit to having at least one indispensible assistant, researcher, facts-checker, pulse-taker, sounding-board, devil's advocate, “reader,” and matchmaker for other sources and archives…are not telling the truth, and not to be trusted as a historians. I am grateful that John has been all those things, and more—not for my sake, but for TR's, and for your sake as readers.

His counterpart on the art side is Jon Barli, my partner in Rosebud Archives. Jon has the historian's discipline, the critic's eye, and a mad man's dedication to quality. As a craftsman he is indefatigable. He almost channels the great cartoonists in this book, so devoted is he to achieving facsimiles of vintage cartoons—often, as you see, preserving occasional ragged borders and tanned stock, the better to give readers a sense of these cartoons as artifacts. His attention to detail, quality, and integrity underlies every cartoon in this book, which might otherwise look like a grimy scrapbook.

I am grateful for the “readers” along the way, Roosevelt enthusiasts, editors, or cartoon historians—or in some cases all three. Dr. Maury Forman read every line and between every line; as always, he challenged me when I needed challenging. Jo Lauter, writing friend and prayer partner, likewise reviewed the manuscript with her husband Jim, honoring me (and the man whose October 27 birthday she shares) with diligence. Richard Samuel West, historian of cartoons and politics, reviewed the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions. Sharon Kilzer, Project Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson (ND) State University, reviewed Chapter Four (about TR's Bad Lands period) and offered vital suggestions about facts and interpretations. I am constrained to note that she emphasizes that TR could apply the term “cowboy” to himself, but often drew the distinction that he was a rancher, and his men were cowboys whose duties he often shared. Gary Gervitz, who maintains the splendid website The Almanac of Theodore Roosevelt, read the first chapters and likewise offered helpful suggestions.

In the course of writing a book like this, and compiling the illustrations, there have been others through the years whom I must acknowledge. At Regnery History—for whose parent imprint I have had lifelong admiration and from whose writers I have received instruction in my ways through the years—my editor Mary Beth Baker and Art Director Amanda Larsen have been creative, supportive, and patient. Harry Crocker, who first evinced interest in this project, is obviously a wise man, and has lent support to BULLY! in many ways. This book would have been shorter, smaller, and paler in the hands of other publishers; Harry has had the vision. And Alex Novak, not least of all, has overseen this book in his first wave of Regnery History as a new imprint, and has been responsive and supportive. This has been a team effort.

My literary representative, Greg Johnson of WordServe Literary Agency, has believed, and encouraged, and in fact badgered with magnificent persistence. A fan of American history, Greg now has a new brother, TR, in his band of heroes. I am grateful to him beyond measure. Other people have supported with facts, advice, and prayers, equally welcomed by this writer, some of them through the years: Heather and Pat Shaw; Theodore Christian Marschall; Emily and Norman McCorkell; Betty and Barbara Marschall; Bill Loeb; Diane Obbema; Norm and Penny Carlevato; Marlene Bagnull; Becky Spencer; Hope Flinchbaugh; Tom Heintjes; Ed Norton of Oyster Bay; Jeff Dunn; Bill Sharpless; Mark Rhodes; Veronica Ronyets; Bob Paulson; William Newman; Ed van Kloberg; Alan Neigher; Lynne McTaggart. My mentors at the American University, where I received my degree in American History, were Dr. Albro Martin and Dr. Charles McLaughlin. Their commitment to excellence and their fierce integrity matched the unselfish personal interest they displayed toward an aspiring protégé. My gratitude is reflected—I trust—on every one of these pages.

For the many suggestions I have received and corrections I have made, I again offer thanks; but any mistakes of fact, and all opinions, are my own.

When I was young, there was a nitwit notion abroad in the land that “Teddy” Roosevelt was a buffoon who played cowboy and soldier, imposed his ego on other people in any given environment, and was, generally, a Bull Moose in a china shop. In part he had been eclipsed by cousin Franklin in an America that might have elected FDR to seventeen more terms if health and calendar had not intervened; and by popular-culture caricatures like “Crazy Cousin Teddy” who buried bodies in the basement he believed to be the Panama Canal (in the Frank Capra/ Cary Grant movie Arsenic and Old Lace). A Pulitzer-Prize biography of the 1930s carped and was back-handed in its treatment of TR. The final nail in the coffin lid that would not stay shut was the sudden anti-Americanism that engulfed America, including campuses like my own, in the 1960s. TR fought in a war, and successfully; he used guns and shot animals; he believed in expansion and manifest destiny; he was a patriot who advanced “Americanism” and waved the flag; he elbowed America around the Caribbean. Hence, he became a virtual devil in much of academia, especially contrasted to Woodrow Wilson, who was painted as a dreamy internationalist and idealist who, if he had not been thwarted by Neanderthals at home and abroad, would have delivered heaven on earth.

Admiration for Theodore Roosevelt actually took some effort, sometimes bravery, in those days. By and by, however, people remembered that TR was one of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore. Liberals began to realize that expanded powers of the presidency, occasionally a good thing, largely commenced with TR. Conservatives remembered that Roosevelt was a thoroughgoing patriot—and that his muscular foreign policy actually advanced American interests. Liberals and conservatives both, in times of environmental concerns, learned that TR's nurture of the wild spaces, of flora and fauna, was an unimaginable blessing to the nation. The debates surrounding the Vietnam War and the Panama Canal Treaty started to remind people of foreign policies not built on bluff and weakness; people grew nostalgic for a president like Theodore Roosevelt. The respect of the historical community, begun around the time of Roosevelt's centennial, increased as biographers like Carleton Putnam, David McCullough, and Edmund Morris—no disparagement is meant to others I cannot start listing—produced first-rate works about a first-rate figure. Ronald Reagan called TR his favorite president. So did Bill Clinton. So did George W. Bush. Eventually, those “historians’ polls” conducted by Siena College and others, where Theodore Roosevelt once placed barely in the top third…now see him in the Top Five; recently, Number Two, ahead of Lincoln and Washington. (Historians gave him top honors in areas of imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck, background, and being willing to take risks, in the latest Siena poll.) TR is the subject of more biographical treatments than any American other than Lincoln.

Welcome home, Colonel Roosevelt. In fact it might be America that has returned—to a place where TR's standards and inspirations are considered worthy of study. Whether they are matters of curiosity or conviction remains to be seen. I have been the recipient of grand, if passive, assistance in order to do this book: cartoonists I have admired; family members (Princess Alice) and friends (Bill Loeb) who could tell me about the man TR; historians whose standards I emulate and biographers who have written splendid accounts of TR. Recent biographers have been a bumper crop of admirable historians, but I must list the inspirations of my formative years: Butterfield, Lorant, Hagedorn, Wagenknecht, and Putnam.

I have listed friends and assistants and inspirations. Yet there is one acknowledgment whose presence in this part of a biography would seem to be redundant, and, at least, self-evident; yet biographers seldom speak the obvious. To Theodore Roosevelt himself I acknowledge an impact on my life that transcends another assignment to write another book. TR has affected my life and attitudes. He is a guide whose directions still seem clear to me. In my larger political philosophy and my more personal, family-circle civic discussions, he is a model. WWTRD? is a question that I pray more and more Americans will be asking as we pull away from the American Century. Yes, I can thank him in this unorthodox manner, but it is not only his impact on me that I acknowledge here. May this book provide for new readers what earlier works did for me—a window that opens to a greater knowledge of the Most Interesting American.