Power of Disruptors – Theodore Roosevelt and Donald Trump

Strange how history repeats itself – and how few remember. Our much-admired 26^th President, Theodore Roosevelt, was a man of vision and energy, a disruptor. He reformed the Federal Civil Service, the New York Police, and eventually the federal government. In short, he did… what Trump aims to do.

While the New York and Federal governments were far smaller in TR’s day, he brought the same reform sensibilities, resolution to downsize and end corruption, and insistence on accountability that Trump now champions. Moreover, it worked, was popular with everyone except bureaucrats.

TR’s reform mentality and disdain for public waste and corruption began early, when President Benjamin Harrison appointed him to lead the Federal Civil Service Commission to reform things.

TR wasted no time. While initial reforms “slowed the pace of looting,” TR asserted an expansive definition of his authority to end corruption. According to TR’s Pulitzer-winning biographer, Edmund Morris, “his Commission mandate extended to a mere 28,000 subordinate positions in the departmental, customs, postal, railway, mail and Indian services,” but TR  was determined.

He felt hobbled, so he sought more authority, ultimately getting it from the President. Initially, his only option was to “recommend prosecution” for “flagrant” abuses and air them. His eight predecessors had been, as Morris explains, “sedentary bureaucrats.” TR was different. He wanted results. 

Writes Morris in his 1979, 885-page biography of TR, “Roosevelt would have none of this laissez-faire policy. From the moment he returned from the White House” with authority, “he became a blur of high-speed activity.

He mastered the Commission’s complex operation within days, throwing off a wealth of new ideas, devouring documents at the rate of a page a glance, dictating hundreds of letters with such hissing emphasis that the stenographer did not need to ask for punctuation marks.”

“Staff and visitors alike were dazed by his energy, exuberance, and ruthless outmaneuvering.” Moreover, he “was not interested in audiences of one,” but the “power of mass publicity…. As effective, if not more so, than regular political clout.”  Reform triggers resistance but is good.

Later, as reforms continued apace and the public applauded ending “business as usual” in the civil service, favoritism, and corruption, he said: “I have made this Commission a living force.” He had.

Not long after, he ended up appointed New York Police Commissioner. There, he did it again, ultimately firing 10,000 officers, many for failure to enforce the laws, and forcing them to reapply, in the process passing a new physical and moral test. Gradually, he cleaned up a corrupt force.

Not surprisingly, in both jobs, there was a political “scream for his removal,” but he persisted. In New York, the New York World proclaimed a “Reign of Terror at Police Headquarters,” as TR publicly sacked those who could not defend their jobs, failed to enforce laws, or were corrupt.

In one speech, describing his mission and the need for it, he offered what Morris called “a classic Roosevelt performance: aggression, vehemence, frankness and authority, expressed in sentences a child could understand:” adding, “the applause was long …”

TR knew “his uncompromising attitude had sharply polarized the press,” some of which “shrieked with rage.” In a statement that presages what we hear – and have long heard – from President Trump, TR noted, “I don’t care a snap of my finger; my position is impregnable. I am going to fight whatever the opposition is.” He might as well have said, “Fight, fight, fight!”

As New York’s Police Commissioner, he prowled the streets at night to find officers not enforcing the blue laws and hauled the offenders in. By the time he was done, he had so reset expectations in the force that officers wore mock mustaches and glasses to scare each other.

Having tossed by firings, layoffs, and attrition much of the deadwood, he “raised physical examination standards above those of the U.S. Army,” forced “written examinations,” demanded integrity, monitored the process, and watched outcomes.

As a result, the average New York patrolman was bigger, younger, and smarter. He was also much more honest since badges were not for sale. He promoted on merit and fired on failure.

A few years later, infuriated by all this, the city bosses engineered what they thought was his end. After a turn at reforms as a governor, he was put in what they thought was a dead-end job, the vice presidency, typically spent outside of Washington, powerless, ignored, a political dungeon.

Then, in September 1901, William McKinley – for whom the Alaskan mountain was named, canceled by Obama, name restored by Trump – was assassinated. Suddenly, TR became president, and every Washington bureaucrat, congressional Democrat, and freeloader trembled.

They were right to tremble. As President, TR was a whirling dervish, constant energy, reforming, ending the Russo-Japanese war, commissioning the Panama Canal, putting the Great White Fleet in motion to create international deterrence, enforcing antitrust laws, a disruptor, which in his day meant trust buster, law enforcer, peacemaker, conservationist, and world leader.

Without much imagination, one can look around and see the same today. While President Trump is his own man, he has the instincts of some of our best leaders, the Founders and Reagan to TR.  Strange how history repeats itself and how few remember. Reforms always kick up resistance.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).