Sam's Shorts

"The American Gentleman," dictated April 3, 1906

I am not jesting, but am in deep earnest, when I give it as my opinion that our President is the representative American gentleman—of today. I think he is as distinctly and definitely the representative American gentleman of today as was Washington the representative American gentleman of his day. Roosevelt is the whole argument for and against, in his own person. He represents what the American gentleman ought not to be, and does it as clearly, intelligibly, and exhaustively as he represents what the American gentleman is. We are by long odds the most ill-mannered nation, civilized or savage, that exists on the planet today, and our President stands for us like a colossal monument visible from all ends of the earth. He is fearfully hard and coarse where another gentleman would exhibit kindliness and delicacy. Lately, when that creature of his, that misplaced doctor, that Governor of Cuba, that sleight-of-hand major-general, Leonard Wood, penned up six hundred helpless savages in a hole and butchered every one of them, allowing not even a woman or a child to escape, President Roosevelt—representative American gentleman, first American gentleman—put the heart and soul of our whole nation of gentlemen into the scream of delight which he cabled to Wood congratulating him on this “brilliant feat of arms,” and praising him for thus “upholding the honor of the American flag.”

Roosevelt is far and away the worst President we have ever had, and also the most admired and the most satisfactory. The nation’s admiration of him and pride in him and worship of him is far wider, far warmer, and far more general than it has ever before lavished upon a president, even including McKinley, Jackson, and Grant.