Teddy Roosevelt was a writer, explorer and widely-celebrated soldier who became the 26th president of the United States. His colorful exploits in Cuba during the Spanish-American War as leader of the Rough Riders made him a national hero. Though Republican, he expanded the role and power of the federal government and the presidency, consistently taking the side of the public interest in conflicts between big business and big labor. He engaged our nation in the affairs of Asia and Europe, and won the Nobel Peace prize in 1906 for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese War. He also promoted the construction of the Panama Canal.
If you had seen Roosevelt as a child, however, none of his future accomplishments would have seemed possible. Throughout his childhood and youth, Roosevelt was thin and scrawny--a physical weakling. Furthermore, he had been born into a moderately wealthy family and was educated by private tutors and at Harvard College. His was a life of privilege and relative ease during, as one writer put it, that blessed, fortunate, short-lived age of placidity and divine naivete that existed just before the dawn of the twentieth century and the subsequent destruction of innocence.
But something within young Teddy moved him to demand more of himself. He decided to turn himself into a man of action. Through persistent physical exercise and dogged determination, he slowly developed his skinny body into a rugged physique. He boxed, wrestled, and swam, and he always carried a revolver. After Harvard, Roosevelt successfully ran for the New York State Assembly, where he became known for his opposition to party-machine politics. But then he suffered three successive political defeats. Undaunted, Roosevelt headed west to Dakota, where he spent two tough years on a cattle ranch. His return to public life came in 1889, with his appointment to the U.S. Civil Service Commission. Within a decade, he had become assistant Secretary of the Navy, a job he gave up to form the Rough Riders.
In 1899, one year after Roosevelt's triumphant return from Cuba, he became governor of New York. In a speech given that year in Chicago, Roosevelt reveals the nature of his earlier transformation:
I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the person who desires mere easy peace but to the one who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.
The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease, and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where we must win at the hazard of our lives and the risk of all we hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty courageously and well; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, and to serve high ideals.
In some ways, Roosevelt's description of life at the last century's turn applies to this one as well. Many people in this time of relative prosperity are tempted to seek what Roosevelt called a life of swollen, slothful ease and easy peace. Few Americans seem to care about great things and high ideals anymore. Many won't even vote on Tuesday. Although polls show that the current race for the presidency is the closest in years, some predict voter turnout will be the lowest ever. Unlikely voters cite several reasons for their apathy. Some say, wrongly in my judgment, that there is no significant difference between the two potential winners. Others point to an Electoral College system which can obliterate the difference between a squeaker and a landslide. Still others excuse their inaction by citing that Achilles heel of large democracies: I am only one voter among 100 million. As such, I am less likely to make a difference in the election than I am to win the lottery.
But underlying all these explanations lies the issue that Roosevelt identified first within himself, then in the life of our nation as a whole. The primary issue is a lack of desire to strive after great things. Our problem is not a lack of means, it's a lack of motivation. That was the problem for Americans who faced uncertainty at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it remains a problem for us today. What we need is what Roosevelt discovered: a force within that moves us to take up the strenuous life of effort and toil, resolutely striving after great things.
I was wondering how to address that issue when I recalled the story of Archimedes, perhaps the greatest of all ancient Greek mathematicians and inventors. He lived during the third century BCE in the Sicilian city-state of Syracuse. Among many other advances, Archimedes is credited with inventing what today is called the Archimedes screw, a device made of spiral fins on a central shaft that was used in ancient times for raising water. But the most famous story about Archimedes concerns his discovery of specific gravity, also called relative density, which is the ratio of the density of a substance to that of water.
It seems that the King of Syracuse, Hieron the 2nd, had commissioned a gold wreath that he wanted to consecrate to the immortal gods. When the wreath arrived, Hieron suspected that he had been ripped off: he suspected that the wreath contained less gold than he had paid for. So he had the wreath weighed, but it weighed precisely what it was supposed to weigh. He remained unconvinced, however, and he called in his friend and adviser Archimedes. What if the some of the gold in the wreath had been replaced by an equal weight of another substance, such as silver, the king asked? Then the wreath would weigh what it should, but be worth much less. Find out whether this is pure gold, the king instructed Archimedes, but don't damage it in any way. Archimedes promised to study the problem, and was obviously thinking about it one day when he got into his bath. As he sank into the tub, water overflowed. The further he sank, the more water poured out.
Suddenly Archimedes knew what to do, and leapt naked from the bath and race through the streets of Syracuse shouting, "Eureka! Eureka! I found it! I found it!" And indeed he had. When the crown was immersed in water, it should have displaced the same volume of water as a cube of gold of equal weight. But the crown displaced more water then it should have. The king was right: he had been ripped off.
Because of his quirky brilliance, both Archimedes' discoveries and his sayings-not to mention his occasional lack of a wardrobe-became famous throughout the ancient world. The most well known of all his insights may be his claim for the lever: "Give me a place to stand," he once boasted, "and I will move the world." I've though a lot about that claim, wondering how it relates to presidential politics and to our lives. My first impulse was to take from it a lesson something like this: each of us should discover where in life we have the most leverage, and we should spend our energies there. Wherever we can make the most difference, that is where we should apply ourselves. By that measure, each of us should evaluate ourselves based on whether we have made as much of a difference as we could have made.
If one were inclined to apply this insight to the presidential campaign, I suppose one would compare the candidates mainly in those areas where presidents can make the most difference. As Jonathan Alter recently pointed out in Newsweek magazine, presidents do not decide how much you will pay for drug prescriptions at your local pharmacy. Nor do they determine whether your child's classroom will be overcrowded or your streets safe. They can have an indirect impact on domestic life, but most domestic policies must be hammered out with one or both branches of Congress. It's only on the world stage that the true power and importance of the American presidency crystallizes: when a terrorist bomb goes off, or a critical region of the world explodes, and devilishly complex national-security decisions must be made on how to retaliate, negotiate, mediate. In short, Alter concludes, the power of the presidency is focused on those moments "when the nation and the world must be consoled, cajoled and, at best, inspired by the only person everyone-friend or foe-looks to for leadership."
To which I would add the one other area in which the power of the presidency is enduring and relatively untrammeled: the right to nominate justices to the Supreme Court. In other words, if one applies the insight derived from Archimedes-evaluate individuals most carefully in those areas where they can make the most difference-one can decide between the candidates based on foreign policy and the Supreme Court.
Even if that approach is a useful way to think about the election, I'm not convinced it's the best way for us to think about our lives. Because most of the time, the issue for us is not what kind of a difference we can make, it's whether we will make that difference. As Roosevelt knew well, the biggest obstacle to accomplishment is not a lack of ability, it is a lack of desire.
The medieval thinker Rene Descartes-he of "I think, therefore I am" fame-once reflected on Archimedes statement about moving the world, and said, "Archimedes, in order that he might push the terrestrial globe out of its place and transport it elsewhere, demanded only that one point should be fixed and unmovable." The crucial factor in moving the world turns out not to be the lever, but the point that is fixed and immovable. That's the point of fulcrum: whatever remains firm and unchanging.
In other words, most of the work for good in this world gets done not by people who have great power, but by people who have great passion. It's what Teddy Roosevelt called a deep and unshakable desire to strive after great things. Roosevelt himself had it in his day, as did one of his contemporaries, Susan B. Anthony, whose dogged and tireless crusade to give women the right to vote eventually led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. It was a victory that, for Anthony at least, came fourteen years too late.
She was a teacher by training, but Anthony became publicly active first in the temperance movement, then in the fight against slavery. But she reserved her greatest zeal to advocate for women's rights. It was an uphill battle. For decades, Anthony was the subject of constant ridicule by her many opponents and incessant abuse by the press. At a women's right's convention in 1853 here in New York, Anthony's presence on the platform, dressed in a new-fangled trouser-style garment called bloomers, caused such anger among the women in attendance that even the police were unable to keep the peace.
But Anthony persisted. She began to publish a new periodical called Revolution and formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. She traveled incessantly and lectured constantly. Slowly, she began to make headway. By 1900, Anthony's work on behalf of women was widely recognized, and she emerged as a national heroine. But it would still be another two decades before the first women could cast a vote. When they did, the reason was not Susan B. Anthony's power, it was her steady passion-her deep and unshakable desire to strive after great things.
So yes, do vote on Tuesday. For both men and women, though at different times and in different ways, the right to vote has been hard won. Don't treat it casually, even if you aren't inspired by some of the choices before you. But much more important than pulling the lever in the voting booth is finding your own point of fulcrum. What great purpose lies within you, steady and unwavering? What dream engages your passion? For which cause do you stand firm? Archimedes and Susan B. Anthony and Teddy Roosevelt agree: the world belongs to those who know both where they stand, and what they stand for. Just please don't run naked through the streets when you discover it. Copyright AllSouls 2000.