How could you not like a book with that as one of its Chapter headings. I just downed twenty pages of Goodwin’s Bully Pulpit to reinvigorate myself after a couple hours of fretting over getting the Chainsaws off my chest. I’m pretty sure there will be some blowback in the form of my scaring the bejesus out of some of the ISD 709 folks I’ve been courting with all my good behavior.
The nice thing about a biography of a natural wonder like a Roosevelt or a Lincoln is that you can put yourself in their place and they set such high standards. It gives you not only something to shoot for but the confidence to try. For me fixing our schools is as big a task as I’ve ever undertaken.
Its been a month since I poked my nose in Bully Pulpit. I’ve been so busy I only made time to read the Bryson book out loud to Claudia. The two buddies Teddy and Taft had to wait. I hoped when I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down by a fire that I could glean something to give me strength. I got twenty pages worth and poor Teddy’s plaint in his single year as Vice President provided it. If you remember the political boss Mark Hanna was very nervous about TR being elected VP as he was “one heartbeat away from the Presidency.” In fact Teddy was given the unwanted do nothing job in large part by Big Business pols who wanted to neuter the activist and interfering NY Governor. Teddy wrote that because they didn’t understand him Mark Hanna and President McKinley “think me indiscreet and overimpulsive.” After my chainsaw series I expect a lot of folks who were lulled to sleep by my long quiescence on the blog will think the same of me.
That twenty pages has steeled me to the task of printing out and pouring over a ton of Budget information most of it from outside our Business Office. I should mention that the much milder member of the duo William Taft got the job that Teddy wanted when Teddy got stuck with the warm bucket of Vice Presidential “spit.” Taft became the Governor General of the newly acquired Philippines that was won in Teddy’s Spanish American War.
Its hard not to like and admire both men. I’m also pleased to read more about our early involvement in the Philippines because my parents had good friends from the Philippines. In fact, just a month ago they sent my Mother a nice card and flowers that, sadly, my Mother was oblivious to.
Norgic, a lawyer, told me what he did when he found an Encyclopedia entry on the Philippines back in his college days. It showed a man with a spear wearing a loincloth which it described as a typical Filipino. Norgic tore the page out of the Encyclopedia in disgust. That’s sort of how Wikipedia works.
Oh yeah, and the end of the last Chapter frees up Teddy with the assassination of William McKinley. Ride’m Cowboy!
