A positive American nationalist vision inspired by the career and philosophy of Theodore Roosevelt
As we prepare to elect a new president, we remember the man who personified our country in every way. He unified instead of divided, and called Americans to be best they could be. Happy Birthday, TR. We miss you!
This is the seventh of a series examining the issues in the 2024 presidential election. To see previous articles, click on the “2024 Election” category under the “Politics” tab above.
Presidential campaigns should be informative discussions about the issues that face our country. Many historians believe that the 1912 election between Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and William Howard Taft was among the most intellectual and consequential in our history. Unfortunately, this campaign so far is sorely lacking in those qualities.
However, presidencies often are defined not by the issues raised in the campaign, but by crises that were totally unforeseen. Think George W. Bush and 9/11 or Donald Trump and Covid. Both risks were “known unknowns” discussed only in academic circles and were never campaign issues. Nevertheless, they happened and required fateful decisions by the president on behalf of the nation that became right or wrong. Since we don’t know what the crisis will be, we lack any indication of how today’s candidates may deal with it. There is only one indication of how they might – their political philosophy or ideology.
In a recent series on this website, I argued that the most relevant ideological divide in politics was between globalism and nationalism (see the category under the “Politics” tab above). Globalism believes that national borders should be irrelevant. Leaders and elites should have obligations not just to their own peoples, but to the entire world. Nationalism believes that individual communities represented by nation states are natural and legitimate actors in the world. National leaders owe primary allegiance only to their respective peoples. The two ideologies actually break down into four subsets – socialist globalism, corporate globalism, ethnic nationalism and the progressive nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt. If we can place a candidate’s ideology on this spectrum, we can make an intelligent guess about their approach to future issues.
Kamala Harris‘s rhetoric and past issue positions place her squarely in the camp of socialist globalists. As she repeated in these clips from past interviews, Harris believes government should insure that everyone “end up in the same place”, regardless of circumstances. While she is clearly correct that people do not start in the same circumstances, her goal is not equity (equal opportunity) as she claims, but an empirical equality that is inherently impossible in a free society. Moreover, her past positions on issues like immigration enforcement suggest that this desire to achieve empirical equality extends to the rest of the world as well. Thus, when confronted with a crisis, her response will likely be to cater to the rest of the world, even to the detriment of the American people. She thus rates a -2.5 on the globalist side of the ledger.
Donald Trump is more difficult to pin down. While he campaigned in 2016 on a nationalist platform that included progressive ideas, his administration adopted policies dear to the corporate elite. His 2018 tax cuts reduced taxes on business and higher earners while widening the budget deficit and stoking inflationary pressures. His immigration policy successfully limited and deterred illegal border crossings, but it was often justified on ethnic rather than economic grounds. He has also favored increasing the number of higher skilled immigrants to compete with American tech workers, even to the point of “stapling green cards” to foreign students’ diplomas. His new alliance with consummate corporate globalist Elon Musk is also worrisome.
Thus, Trump may simply be a corporate globalist masquerading as an ethnic nationalist. Nevertheless, there are three groups that could pull him back to the nationalist side. First and foremost is his voter base, which is ardently (and sometimes dangerously) ethnic nationalist. He will be loathe to cross them after their past support. His embrace of RFKJr. also introduces a progressive nationalist influence that will be more difficult to dismiss in a new term. Finally, his vice president JD Vance is a professed foreign policy nationalist.
Needless to say, Donald Trump is a mercurial and strong-willed candidate who has ignored outside advice in the past. When all of these influences are taken into account, he is best rated as plus .5. In other words, he will tend to react to a crisis as a nationalist, but exactly to what extent will depend on the particular nature of the crisis. Since we cannot know what those particularities will be, we can only hope that his nationalist side will prevail.
I recognize this analysis is based on guesswork, though it is leavened as much as possible with the facts. Trying to predict a person’s future decision on an unknown matter can easily degenerate into a form of divination. However, TR teaches us that avoiding such decisions can have worse consequences and the unpredictability of today’s world requires that a decision be made. I hope the four ideological categories I cited earlier are at least helpful in telling you where you stand, and then aiding you in determining where your candidate will stand as well.
This is the sixth of a series examining the issues in the 2024 presidential election. To see previous articles, click on the “2024 Election” tab under the “Politics” tab above.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt has returned to San Diego after a nine-month deployment in the western Pacific and Middle East. The 6000 sailors on the “Big Stick” visited numerous ports and conducted over 9000 aerial sorties from the ship. We should be proud of them and all of our soldiers and sailors who work hard to keep us free.
However, their bravery would be futile if it was not backed by a nation whose people were equally determined to defend its national strength and values. We learned during the COVID pandemic that resilience – the ability to withstand an internal or external shock – is now a key factor in national strength. We know that China, Russia and other adversaries are forming alliances to challenge our security and values. They are strong-willed, though the attraction of our values makes them weaker in the long term. Nevertheless, we are in a dangerous transition. If we ignore the very basics that keep a country sovereign and free, we risk losing our children’s future to those adversaries.
The most fundamental duty of any government is to secure its own national borders. Kamala Harris was tasked by President Biden to be the “border czar” in charge of controlling the influx of migrants. By any measure, she miserably failed
The statistics don’t lie. As disclosed by Congressman Chip Roy, at least 7 million migrants illegally crossed the border, including an estimated 2 million “gotaways” who were never identified. Worse still, the administration knew that thousands of past and new migrants had violent criminal histories yet were turned loose with simple notices to appear.
Then came the hypocrisy. No assistance was given to the border states initially hit by this wave of millions, so they were relocated to other cities where they were put up in hotels and given benefits American citizens could only hope for. Some children ended up being trafficked into child labor and sexual slavery. The administration actually began flying migrants into the country on the theory that it relieved pressure on the border. When the electoral backlash finally hit, it claimed that it had no power to close the border and tried to use the crisis to blackmail Congress into passing aid to Israel and Ukraine. It didn’t work, and when the uproar continued, Biden suddenly found the authority to control the border that he said he did not have,
The inevitable threat to our internal national security that developed caught the administration by surprise. A new violent Venezuelan gang called Tren de Agua used the opportunity to set up bases in cities and began to terrorize residents. Reports emerged that thousands of Chinese men were crossing the border as well as potential Muslim extremists from the Middle East.
While President Biden bears ultimate responsibility, all of this was done on Kamala Harris’s watch as border czar. Indeed, it broadly matches her own past statements opposing strict immigration enforcement. Thus, there is no reason to believe it will not continue in a Harris Administration and thus rates a minus 3 score – the worst possible globalist score.
Donald Trump clearly appreciates the gravity of this crisis and has committed to closing the border. Otherwise, he simply has used it as campaign fodder. Any solution will be through a process that will need broad legislative and public support, not an event like the slogan of “Mass Deportation Now”. Nevertheless, Trump earns a plus 1.5 for promising to secure the border and committing to reverse in some way this threat to our national and economic security.
In his book “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, realist international relations theorist John Mearsheimer cited manufacturing and infrastructure as key elements of a state’s inherent power. There are two ways to spur the development of manufacturing – tariffs or subsidies and tax expenditures. The Biden-Harris Administration opted for mainly subsidies through the Chips Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. At the same time, they maintained most of the Trump tariffs on Chinese goods and imposed new restrictions. How has that plan worked out?
On these kinds of economic issues, I rely on Alan Tonelson of the website RealityChek, a former Foreign Policy magazine editor who examines economic issues from the nationalist standpoint. His post from October 18 analyzes the manufacturing data since Biden took office. It shows that, after taking into account the recovery from the COVID shock, manufacturing output has increased only marginally despite the new subsidies. Some sectors like construction materials actually declined. In contrast, spending on goods like steel rose more during the Trump Administration.
It is true that it can take years for manufacturers to build factories and respond to governmental incentives. The Biden – Harris Administration deserves credit for promoting manufacturing, but since the results are still uncertain, they earn just a .5 score. Trump has long been a champion of reshoring manufacturing but wants to rely more on much higher and across the board tariffs. His administration showed targeted tariffs can be successful with a minimal or no impact on inflation. Trump deserves credit for his commitment to the issue, but the uncertain impact of his current radical tariff proposals on inflation and the economy earns him just a plus 1.5.
The numbers are staggering and dangerous. Our national debt has swollen to the point where the interest payments alone now exceed $1 trillion. The total debt equals over $106,000 per capita, a burden that will pass to our children. The main causes are rising health care costs, changing demographics and insufficient revenues. The debt endangers the future of the dollar as a reserve currency because of the temptation to simply inflate the debt away. A true nationalist leader would call us to make the tax and spending sacrifices necessary to begin to close this gap.
Neither candidate exhibits any such leadership. Instead, Harris and Trump promise further cuts and expenditures that would swell the budget deficit. Trump and his new supporter Elon Musk trumpet a Department of Governmental Efficiency as a solution along with vague but huge tariffs. This ignores the fact that amount of the budget that is discretionary is dwarfed by entitlement programs. In the end, government is not a business and should not be. Solutions will require inspirational leadership, not pandering to American’s lowest instincts.
A recent economic analysis shows both the Harris and Trump plans would increase the deficit, though Trump’s is worse. Trump thus deserves a minus 2.5 for his program, while Harris should still be ashamed of her minus 2 score. Leadership on this issue will have to wait, hopefully not after it’s too late.
The Robert F Kennedy, Jr., presidential campaign began as a reaction to the heavy-handedness of the COVID-19 pandemic response. While this website strongly supported the vaccine and the strategy of the response, the Kennedy campaign raised legitimate questions that merit an open investigation. In the process, Kennedy also highlighted the horrible state of American’s health and the contributing effect of food additives and our poor diets. His disclosures of conflicts of interest within federal health agencies are deeply disturbing. Even former Center for Disease Control head Dr. Robert Redfield has come out in support of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again program. Kennedy’s recent alliance with the Trump campaign potentially gives him the ability to implement these reforms.
Theodore Roosevelt greatly respected science. However, as an advocate of “the strenuous life”, he would be alarmed at the state of our nation’s health. The Biden- Harris response has been to lionize the bureaucrats and condemn Kennedy and other critics as “anti-science”. This is ironic since the scientific method squarely rests on the process of constant reexamination of hypotheses and theories, not their exaltation into a quasi-religious faith. Their position deserves a minus 1 for it’s lackadaisical attitude toward a serious issue, On the other hand, will Trump really allow RFKJr to reform the health bureaucracy in the face of opposition from Big Pharma? Kennedy offered to do so in the last Trump administration but was dropped after such opposition. However, RFKJr’s higher profile and grassroots support would make that more difficult now and so we can hopefully assign a plus 1 to Trump in this election.
As someone who became President after an assassination and survived one himself, Theodore Roosevelt would be sickened by the violence and rhetoric of this campaign. TR was no slouch at using strong words, but they never sunk to the crudeness and inflammatory attacks we are seeing today. He would admire Donald Trump’s defiance in the face of the Pennsylvania assassination attempt but condemn his sympathy for the January 6 insurrection. He would also be distressed at the mild response of the Harris campaign to the two attempts and its toleration of personal attacks on Trump.
This will be one of the closest presidential elections in American history that will undoubtedly face real questions afterwards. The best way to build legitimacy for the outcome is for the winning candidate to give the American people a civil and coherent discussion of the issues. Whether it is Biden’s flippant comment about jailing Trump or Trump’s crude insults of Harris, neither campaign has fully adopted such a respectful approach to the process and the electorate. Both deserve a minus 2 score. This does not differentiate them, but at least registers a strong rejection of the poor campaign they have inflicted on us.
Theodore Roosevelt called Americans to the hope and sacrifices that helped build the strong America of the twentieth century. In today’s world where that strength is under challenge by the despotism of China and Russia, the scores of Harris and Trump are positively dangerous. All of the issues in this area require the kind of foresight and vision that neither candidate seems able to muster. It will fall to the Congress and then the rest of us to insist that the winner show some of TR’s courageous commitment to our American future.