BRAIN TEASER? NOT!

September 24th, 2008 at 02:52pm Hugh520 701

^{Brain teaser:}

Who am I?

I'm under 45 years old,

I love the outdoors,

I hunt,

I am a Republican reformer, having taken on the Republican Party establishment,

I have many children,

I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor's office.

Who am I?

Teddy Roosevelt in 1900. (sic)
Hi All,

Someone I don't know all that well, actually took the time to forward this little "brain-teaser" to me while Conniff and I were having lunch at Doc's the other day in mid-town Manhattan. Yeah, The Con Man's in town with his ultra cool other half; so we decided to lunch and catch up -- when you've known each other since 6th grade, "catching up" is a relative term.

The email above shocks and frightens me for several reasons: there's no effort in it; it's intellectual sloth is only exceeded by its author's evident self-satisfaction as evidenced by the volume of recipients he "batched" it to. It took my breath away, and just plain pissed me off. I spared the original author my response, but not its forwarder. Herewith my brain in its "teased" state that AM. I suppose the point was that TR has "nothin" on SP.
TR's "thin" resume included among other things: Asst. secretary of the Navy, Police Commissioner of NYC, Governor of NY, Vice-President under McKinley, historian, naturalist, explorer and author of no less than 35 books. When William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, TR was vacationing (camping) with his large brood in the in the Adirondacks (a park I believe he designated).
He was a decorated soldier, and led the 1st Cavalry regiment in our war with Spain; he negotiated the contract and won the rights to build the Panama Canal; he negotiated the end of the Russian-Japanese War for which he received the Nobel Prize; his visage appears on MT. Rushmore alongside that of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. He is considered by many historians to be one of greatest American presidents.
Oh, I forgot to mention that TR was the first president to call for a National Health Insurance for all Americans and as a "trust buster" his "Fair Deal" extended to the breakup of 40+ monopolies and the regulation of rail-road pricing. He was, as he said, not against capitalism, just corruption and illegality and greed -- any of this sounding relevant?

Read Edmund Morris' (Pulitzer '79) The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, one of the best biography's I've ever read. There was so much to tell about the young TR in this 500+ page bio that Morris concludes volume 1 having only reached McKinley's assassination. He ends the book with an out of breath runner. Yes, a runner, who had to get up to the vacationing VP's Adirondack camp in a hurry and breathlessly deliver the somber news to  Mr. Roosevelt that he is (at present) the president of the United states. No Ms. "heartbeat away" has nothing on TR, and plenty of it.

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