The Warrior and the Priest
Jonah Goldberg
The Corner
I love all the TR commentary around here. I should say that in response to Jay, before I read his examples of "unfair attacks" on Wilson I was going to say that no defenses of Wilson are forgivable, but I think Jay's right on those. More broadly, as men, I think the key difference between TR and Wilson is that TR was a fighter while Wilson was a hater. Colonel House's advice to those seeking a favor from Wilson was: "Discover a common hate, exploit it, get the president warmed up, and then start on your business." Flattery wouldn't do it. Reason wouldn't do it. Begging wouldn't do it. Only hate fired up Wilson (David Pietrusza's fantastic book, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents begins with this insight). Wilson was a categorical thinker and detested categories of people. Roosevelt was a man who disliked categories of people, too, but his categories weren't abstractions. He detested slackers and the like, but he could admire men of any race or station if they weren't slackers. They were both moralists, but TR's moralism wasn't an abstraction; Wilson's was. Disagreement with TR was invitation to a battle for victory. Disagreement with Wilson was proof that that the dissenter was evil. The difference explains why TR had an authoritarian bent, but Wilson a totalitarian one. In this sense (as well as many, many others), TR was simply the better man.
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