# The Presidency Teddy Roosevelt Would Not Recognize On stewardship, spectacle, and the direction of executive power. ![F.P. Dunneagin avatar](https://img.paragraph.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=32,height=32,format=webp/https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/03bbfd42ac5d00bc5150167f6de2a6f68ef3bcb159c71de7f7d4137a15930123.jpg) F.P. Dunneagin August 4, 2026 ![Cover image for The Presidency Teddy Roosevelt Would Not Recognize](https://img.paragraph.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=800,format=webp/https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/9ea8294a0e98b545824f9543ae830fe8ead9b3e07a1f1fc567a690b74a9b9d9c.jpg) *If you prefer to listen, * [*click here*](https://open.substack.com/pub/dunneagin/p/the-presidency-teddy-roosevelt-would?r=2is4zu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true) * for the spoken edition. If you prefer to read, the dispatch continues below.* There is perhaps no image more closely associated with presidential energy than Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill. Whether every detail of the popular image matches the historical record matters less than what Americans have long seen in it: a leader moving forward with purpose, vigor, and confidence. Roosevelt carried that same spirit into the presidency. He believed the office should not sit quietly while national problems accumulated. A president, he argued, had both the authority and the obligation to act whenever the Constitution did not expressly forbid action undertaken for the public good. For more than a century, historians have debated whether Roosevelt expanded presidential power too aggressively. It is a worthwhile debate. Yet it overlooks a different question, one that may prove more relevant to the twenty-first century. Would Roosevelt recognize the presidency as it is practiced today? More than a century later, the presidency remains a vessel for presidential energy. What has changed is the direction in which that energy is applied. Roosevelt would immediately recognize an energetic executive, a White House that dominates the nation's political conversation, and a president willing to test the outer boundaries of constitutional authority. None of that would surprise him. Indeed, Roosevelt helped create many of those expectations. What would surprise him is not the office itself. It is what the office is currently being used for. Roosevelt's stewardship theory is often summarized in a single sentence: the president may do anything the Constitution does not expressly forbid if doing so serves the public welfare. Scholars continue debating the wisdom of that philosophy, but they generally agree on one point: Roosevelt understood presidential power as a public trust. The office existed before him and would continue after him. His responsibility was to leave the nation stronger than he found it. That understanding did not develop overnight. By the time Roosevelt entered the White House, he had spent nearly two decades in public service. He served in the New York State Assembly, helped reform the federal civil service, confronted corruption as President of New York City's Board of Police Commissioners, served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, governed New York, and finally assumed the presidency after William McKinley's assassination. Those experiences shaped more than Roosevelt's politics. They shaped his understanding of government itself. He had seen legislatures argue, bureaucracies resist change, reform succeed and fail, and public institutions struggle to reconcile competing interests. Long before becoming president, he had learned that governing required patience as well as determination. Roosevelt also prepared himself intellectually for the office. He read voraciously, wrote extensively, and immersed himself in history because he believed presidents should continually learn. His speeches and books reveal a man who viewed ideas not as ornaments of public life but as indispensable tools of governing. By the time Roosevelt became president, he had spent much of his adult life preparing for the responsibilities of the office. It should surprise no one that he viewed presidential power as a public trust rather than a personal possession. That assumption shaped nearly everything he did. He challenged powerful corporations because he believed monopolies threatened the public interest. He conserved forests and public lands because he believed future generations possessed legitimate claims upon the nation's natural resources. He strengthened federal oversight of food and drugs because he believed government owed citizens a reasonable measure of protection. He expanded the Navy because he believed America's growing international responsibilities required it. Reasonable people have long disagreed with individual decisions Roosevelt made. They have debated his foreign policy, his view of executive authority, and aspects of his progressivism. Yet beneath those disagreements lay a remarkably consistent principle: Roosevelt exercised presidential power in pursuit of objectives that existed beyond himself. That distinction deserves more attention than it often receives. Trump's path to the presidency could hardly have been more different. His career prepared him to lead private enterprises, negotiate commercial transactions, cultivate a public brand, and command organizations in which authority ultimately flowed from the top down. Those experiences rewarded instincts very different from those Roosevelt acquired through decades of public service. The similarities largely end there. Roosevelt viewed institutions as instruments through which public policy could be achieved. Congress could be frustrating. The courts could be obstacles. Federal agencies could be inefficient. Yet their existence was never the problem. They were permanent features of constitutional government within which every president necessarily operated. Trump approaches those same institutions differently. Increasingly, he judges agencies, prosecutors, inspectors general, career civil servants, and even members of his own administration less by their institutional responsibilities than by their personal loyalty to him and his agenda. Institutions that support him are praised. Those that resist him become targets of criticism, restructuring, or replacement. Roosevelt would have recognized political conflict. He participated in plenty of it. He surrounded himself with strong advisers and was willing to hear disagreement, even though there was seldom much doubt about who made the final decision. What he would not recognize is the growing expectation that institutions demonstrate personal allegiance to the individual occupying the presidency. Nor would Roosevelt recognize the modern presidency's emphasis upon perpetual performance. Roosevelt relished publicity. He cultivated it brilliantly. He understood dramatic entrances, memorable speeches, carefully staged events, and colorful language long before television transformed politics into entertainment. Few presidents have ever possessed a greater instinct for capturing public attention. Yet publicity, for Roosevelt, served governance. It explained policy. It rallied public support. It persuaded reluctant legislators. It advanced objectives that existed outside the performance itself. For Trump, performance increasingly becomes an objective in its own right. Public attention is its own reward. Continuous presidential conflict sustains public attention. Headlines become measures of success. Visibility itself becomes evidence of leadership. Roosevelt would have understood the usefulness of spectacle. He would not have recognized spectacle as a governing philosophy. That difference is more than stylistic. It reflects a different understanding of presidential purpose. Roosevelt believed an energetic presidency should enlarge the nation's capacity to solve public problems. Trump increasingly directs that same energy toward maintaining political dominance, demanding personal loyalty, settling grievances, and sustaining public attention. Roosevelt directed presidential energy outward toward the Republic. Trump increasingly directs presidential energy inward toward the presidency itself. That may be the most important distinction between Roosevelt's understanding of executive power and the way presidential power is exercised today. Historians often remember Roosevelt as the president who expanded executive authority. Perhaps future historians will remember our own era differently. The distinction, then, lies not simply in the extent of presidential power, but in the purpose toward which that power—and the energy behind it—is directed. Roosevelt undoubtedly would have recognized the office. The vessel remains. What he would not recognize is the direction in which that energy is now being applied. **—** Dunneagin --- Keep reading: [When Congress Stopped Saying No](https://paragraph.com/@civicsunhinged/when-congress-stopped-saying-no) 📬 **To receive each new essay by email the day it publishes, ** [**subscribe to Civics Unhinged**](https://ai.paragraph.com/@civicsunhinged) **.** ☕ **Reader editions and collected volumes—including Volumes 1, 2, 3, and ** ***The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy*** **—are available on the ** [**Fourthwall bookshelf**](https://f-p-dunneagin-shop.fourthwall.com) **.** If this week’s dispatch aligned with your reading, forward it to an un-unhinged colleague who still keeps an eye on the clockwork. *Reader and listener correspondence is always welcome at f.p.dunneagin@gmail.com. Questions, observations, or a note on how you first stumbled into the chronicle are particularly appreciated.* ***_A note on the shelf: Every Tuesday dispatch compiles toward a permanent, physical record. We print what the screen forgets.*** ## Subscribe to Civics Unhinged A chronicle of American absurdity, written with a straight face and a sharp pen. Civics Unhinged — satire for those who still give a damn. Thanks for subscribing. 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