Obama, reading up on Roosevelt (Theodore)

Mar 9, 2010 — USA Today

Many presidents like to read about their predecessors, and President Obama said yesterday he is studying up on Theodore Roosevelt.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tells us the president is reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris -- a true classic of the presidential genre.

First published in 1979, the beautifully written narrative tells the story of how a privileged yet sickly New York City boy grew up to become the outdoorsman, writer, military man, political leader, and occasional bully whom history remembers as TR.

The Pulitzer Prize winning biography ends with the unforgettable image of the 42-year old Roosevelt -- on vacation in the mountains -- watching as a park ranger climbs toward him with the news that William McKinley has died and Roosevelt is now to be the president.

A 2001, sequel, Theodore Rex, covered the Roosevelt presidential years.

In between TR books, Morris had an interesting White House connection, serving as official historian during Ronald Reagan's presidency. But his 1999 Reagan biography, Dutch, got panned because Morris included a fictional version of himself as a character in Reagan's story.

Morris is now said to be at work on a final volume of Roosevelt's post-presidential years. They include his failed 1912 presidential campaign as the head of the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party, on a platform that included health care -- which was Obama's point yesterday in Pennsylvania.

"We've been talking about health care for nearly a century,' Obama said. "I'm reading a biography of Teddy Roosevelt right now. He was talking about it. Teddy Roosevelt."