The 2008 Minnesota State Fair's last day coincided with the Republican National Convention's first day Monday, which prompted the history-minded leader of the think tank Growth & Justice, Dane Smith, to note that the fair was the venue of an important speech by a Republican president, delivered 107 years ago Tuesday. President Theodore Roosevelt, in office barely a year after succeeding assassinated President William McKinley, came to Minnesota's Great Get-Together to summarize his approach to foreign policy with the immortal line, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."
The full speech, available here, went far beyond foreign policy. It's a fine window on the thinking of the president who charted the nation's 20th century course and helped launch the progressive Republican movement. Roosevelt stressed both individual responsibility and Americans' shared stewardship of their nation: "Besides each one of us working individually, all of us have got to work together. We cannot possibly do our best work as a nation unless all of us know how to act in combination as well as how to act each individually for himself."
McCain has said that if elected president, he wants to govern in "the Theodore Roosevelt model." As the State Fair speech suggests, hat's a model of more government activism than many of today's Republicans would likely approve.
