Clay Jenkinson , Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt
Thoughts on Thomas Jefferson
In his own time, Jefferson advocated a tiny, almost non-existent national government (he actually called it the “foreign
department”), somewhat more energetic state governments, and still more emphatic local governments, his cherished AngloSaxon “hundreds” or ward republics. He believed the national government’s portfolio should be strictly limited to the
powers enumerated in the Constitution of the United States, and that the national government should do only those things that
were truly national or international in scope.
At the same time, he believed that government, at any level, should do only those things that government alone can
accomplish, and that everything else should be undertaken by individual and private enterprise. The goal of the national
government, Jefferson wrote, consists of a few plain duties to be performed by a few honest men. He believed that ambition
and careerism were the death of republican liberty. In theory, at least, Jefferson declared himself to be a semi-anarchist.
Jefferson advocated minimal government chiefly because he had faith in the individual’s ability to craft a life for him or
herself, partly because he understood that “the tendency of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”
Although he was no Leninist, he looked forward to a time when formal government would almost disappear altogether, and
highly evolved individuals would govern themselves in the profoundest sense of the term. Such dreams as this led Alexander
Hamilton to dismiss Jefferson as an “intellectual voluptuary,” and John Adams to ask whether he was not perhaps “fast
asleep in philosophical tranquility.”
Jefferson believed that the history of the world was the story of all the ways in which too much government had spoiled the
happiness of the peoples and trampled on their rights.
Recommended Reading List for Jefferson
Merrill Peterson. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography. 1970.
Albert Jay Nock. Mr. Jefferson. 1926.
Joseph J. Ellis. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. 1997.
Thoughts on Theodore Roosevelt
In any poll of historians or American citizens Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) ranks among the top five of presidents of the
United States. He is certainly one of the two or three most colorful individuals who ever held the highest office. The mere
mention of his name inspires smiles and, often enough, imitations of his toothy falsetto. Roosevelt is an American giant—
smaller in achievement, perhaps, but greater in American mythology than his distant cousin Franklin. Indeed FDR’s New
Deal was in many respects a working out of ideas that were formulated during the later phases of Theodore Roosevelt’s
career—particularly during the Bull Moose Party era that began in 1912.
He despised the cherished civic tradition—best represented by Thomas Jefferson—that the Constitution should be read as a
restraining rather than an enabling document. Roosevelt believed that the national government had a right—and duty—“to
do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws.” “I
am not,” he insisted, “pleading for an extension of constitutional power. I am pleading that constitutional power which
already exists shall be applied to new conditions which did not exist when the Constitution went into being.” Theodore
Roosevelt was a thoroughgoing Hamiltonian, though his favorite president, and his most frequently cited presidential model,
was Abraham Lincoln. “The Constitution belongs to the people and not the people to the Constitution.”
Roosevelt believed that the executive branch (and especially the president) needed to take charge of American national life
on behalf of the American people, and that state and local authorities, not to mention the national legislative branch, ought to
defer to the national executive. Between 1901 and 1909 Roosevelt increased the authority and power of the American
presidency to an unprecedented mass and volume. The president, Roosevelt wrote, should “do all he could for the people,
and not . . . content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in napkin. . . . I did not care a rap for
the mere form and show of power; I cared immensely for the use that could be made of the substance.”
Suggested Reading:
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Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. This won the Pulitzer prize. It is the book that led me to take on the character
of Roosevelt. It is one of the best biographies of our time. Morris' Theodore Rex (about the Presidential years) is also good, but
not as compelling as his first volume
Carlton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years. Out of print but worth looking at in the
library. It is the best account of Roosevelt's sojourn in the Dakota badlands, and it is insightful throughout.
About Clay Jenkinson
About Clay Jenkinson
Clay Jenkinson is a humanities scholar, author and social commentator who has devoted most of his professional career to
public humanities programs and is considered one of the most entertaining public speakers in the United States. His
performances are always humorous, educational, thought provoking and enlightening, while maintaining a steady focus on
ideas
Clay is also one of the nation’s leading interpreters of Thomas Jefferson. He has lectured about and portrayed Jefferson in
forty-nine states over a period of fifteen years. Clay also portrays Meriwether Lewis, John Wesley Powell, J. Robert
Oppenheimer, Theodore Roosevelt, John Steinbeck and Sir Walter Raleigh.
As the host of the nationally syndicated radio program The Thomas Jefferson Hour , as well as author, historical consultant
on several documentaries for Ken Burns and HBO television, film maker and developer and host of annual historical
symposiums, Clay is nationally known for his work. He is a Distinguished Scholar of the Humanities at Bismarck State
College, as well as the president of Dakota Sky Education, Inc, the founder and Chief Consultant for the Theodore Roosevelt
Center through Dickinson State University, and Scholar of Humanities at the University of Mary in Bismarck. He also writes
a weekly column for the Bismarck Tribune. Clay lives and writes in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Select Products- available on www.fortmandan.com
Latest books from Clay Jenkinson• For The Love of North Dakota – Sundays with Clay in the Bismarck Tribune- DI press 2012
• A Free and Hardy Life- Theodore Roosevelt in picture and word- DI Press 2011
• The Character of Meriwether Lewis: Explorer in the Wilderness by Clay Jenkinson – DI Press 2011
• Theodore Roosevelt in the Dakota Badlands 2006
• Becoming Jefferson's People: Reinventing the American Republic in the Twenty-First Century- 2005
• Message on the Wind-A Spiritual Odyssey on the Northern Plains by Clay Jenkinson
Dakota Sky Education, Inc. 1-888-828-2853 www.jeffersonhour.com