312: Presidential Biographies

Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox: Vol. 1, 1882-1940
Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom: Vol. 2, 1940-1945
Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

The life of politics and the ideas of politics can be two wildly different things. I recommend reading some presidential biographies to get a better sense of how progressive ideas sometimes won out and were sometimes defeated. Nobody has time to read 40+ biographies of all the presidents, and I recommend reading biographies rather than self-serving autobiographies. If you're already familiar with the Roosevelts, check out Caro's magisterial biography of LBJ (here's the link to the first volume).

Why this is liberal/progressive: Traditionally, conservatives are more likely to celebrate their ideological heroes while liberals/progressives are more likely to criticize their ideological heroes. The Enlightenment era shaped the early concepts of liberalism. This Age of Reason (to use Thomas Paine's phrase) relied on facts, rationality, and experiment. The Romantic backlash at the beginning of the 19th century argued that this failed to take into account important human qualities that can't be quantified - like courage, valor, love, poetry, whimsy, etc. Included in this constellation of human qualities that conservatives embraced as anti-liberal was hero worship.

We're all a mix of liberal and conservative beliefs, but I bet conservatives are more likely able to name personal heroes than progressives.

I don't expect progressives to ever hero worship the Roosevelts the way conservatives worship Reagan, but progressives can learn a lot from reading their biographies.

While Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican he was also an important early progressive. He fought against corporate monopolies and in 1912 was instrumental in creating the Progressive Party (nicknamed the Bull Moose Party). His cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the most important liberal president of the 20th century. Both of these men fought their own parties and fought against huge special interests. They didn't always win, and neither was perfect, but their stories are fascinating.