Echoes of T.R.?

Even before his reelection last week, some Republicans were hailing Gov. Christie as the new Theodore Roosevelt, a savior who appeals to Democrats, independents, and members of his own party. In the wake of Christie’s 22-point victory in a Northern blue state, expect more comparisons to the Rough Rider, whose 1904 presidential election enabled the GOP to sweep every state in the North and the West, a first in three decades.

After losing the popular vote in five of the last six presidential contests, Republicans desperately need a candidate who can win the White House. A down-to-earth, straight-talking two-term governor known for standing up to political machines and delivering commonsense solutions will look promising come 2016.

But it’s tricky drawing parallels between Christie and TR, whose rise more than a century ago extended the Republican hegemony of American politics ushered in by the Civil War.

Like the 26th president, Christie is difficult to pigeonhole. He is pragmatic and independent, willing to challenge party thinking in ways that irritate fellow Republicans.

Christie, after all, warmly received President Obama at the Jersey Shore a week before the 2012 election, chastised House GOP intransigence regarding Hurricane Sandy disaster relief, and tangled with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky over National Security Agency surveillance. Also like Roosevelt, Christie’s candor resonates with the public unlike any GOP figure since Ronald Reagan.

Meanwhile, those who suggest that TR’s Bull Moose candidacy in 1912 offers the governor a model – not in terms of bolting from the GOP to form a third party but in moving to the political left – misread both men. Roosevelt remained a conservative his entire life. Indeed, his brand of progressivism – what he called “the highest and wisest form of conservatism” – prevented the United States from turning socialist, a real possibility in the early 20th century.

Nor was the first American Nobel Peace Prize winner a multiculturalist. Rather, Roosevelt believed in American exceptionalism and was bullish on his country, its child-rich families, and its ideals; he defended “Americanism” as the hope of the world. The hero of San Juan Hill was a first-order patriot.

Similarly, Christie is a pro-American conservative at heart. While his record will come under scrutiny as he considers his presidential prospects, he has held the line on taxes and spending, delivered public-pension and teacher-tenure reforms, and freed his state from the cap-and-trade scheme of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Moreover, he has been reasonably successful in working with a Democratic legislature – something TR never faced. Christie surely understands that his future is not one of adopting liberal causes, as some Democrats hope.

Where the Teddy connection breaks down is Christie’s favorable standing with Wall Street and the Republican donor class. Christie is not at odds with the GOP power brokers whom TR the Trust Buster fought his entire career. Nor does Christie need fear the kind of political bosses who, behind closed doors, denied TR the nomination in 1912, a tactic that ended poorly not just for Roosevelt but for the party and nation.

That clash started when, as governor of New York, Roosevelt deplored “the wealthy criminal class” for ignoring the interests of farmers, tradesmen, and small-business owners. The youthful governor consequently fought for legislation that improved working conditions and protected industrial workers, while pushing through the legislature a groundbreaking corporate franchise tax.

His disposition toward ordinary Americans prepared TR for his first crisis as president: the five-month anthracite-coal miners strike in eastern Pennsylvania. Rather than siding with the interests of capital, TR brought both parties together and resolved the strike, laying the foundation of his “Square Deal.”

The issues differ today, but Christie has yet to translate his common-man persona into an appealing economic vision. He is not known for venting angst over the hemorrhaging of family-wage jobs among the working and middle classes, nor for addressing the 20-year pattern in his own state, where unemployment (8.5 percent) is 1.2 percentage points above the national average.

To make the TR analogy work – or, more important, to broaden his appeal nationally – Christie needs an agenda larger than tax cuts, one that overshadows the demands of the privileged FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate) and rebuilds our neglected foundation of domestic manufacturing, defense-related industries, transportation infrastructure, and energy production.

Christie will also have to step up to the plate on cultural flash points. TR would roll over in his grave in learning of the governor’s acquiescence last month to a Superior Court judge who single-handedly imposed same-sex marriage on New Jersey. TR, a model social conservative who delivered a 1912 speech on “the right of the people to rule,” would have refused to execute a local magistrate’s decree until legislators and the governor – or the voters – had their say.

Roosevelt, the father of six, would have been “dee-lighted,” as he often enunciated, to clarify why marriage law cannot dispose of either husbands or wives, fathers or mothers. Instead of fighting back, Christie looks as if he’s bowing to judicial supremacy and favoring elite lifestyles over the concerns of Middle America. TR never carried water for the plutocrats of his day.

Nonetheless, Christie is beginning to resemble a 21st-century Bull Moose, and may win his party’s 2016 nod.

But whether Jersey’s other “Boss” can truly follow in the footsteps of the beloved Mount Rushmore fixture depends on whether Christie heeds the lessons of TR, and continues his post-Sandy drive to identify with the people over the powerful.

Robert first published this piece at Philly.com

Tagged as: chris christie, GOP, Robert Patterson

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