EDITOR’S note:

This is a review of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of American Journalism.”

THIS amazing work is both a historical and literary masterpiece! I cannot remember the last time I so enjoyed the linguistic beauty of a book of “history.”

This is not a work to be approached with the expectation that one might devour it in an evening or two. The text runs to 750 pages, followed by an additional 120 pages of footnotes documenting sources. This is the only caveat I would attach to Kearns’ work, however, as it is a joy to read. It is about as close to time travel as we can hope to achieve.

The latter decades of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th become almost as familiar as our own time as we follow Roosevelt and Taft from their childhood through their epic struggle for the presidency in 1912. Now, if this sounds somewhat off-putting to you — after all, who wants to hear more about politics! — I assure you that it is anything but.

Kearns takes us into the families and homes of both men from the time they were boys through their adulthood, allowing us to meet many principled and charming men and women, and giving us intimate details about the loving support both received from their parents and siblings, close friends, and spouses.

I must confess that my previous knowledge about Roosevelt was relatively superficial, while I knew almost nothing about Taft. I was amazed to find how much I liked both men, and astounded to find that my sympathies were overwhelmingly with Taft on most issues.

Both were born into wealthy families and thus afforded the kind of education and larger world knowledge denied to most Americans in those days. As might be expected from this kind of background, both men were predictably inclined to conservative views comfortably in line with respectable society and business-minded men.

However these times were extremely turbulent, with a struggling economy, wide-spread disparity between the relatively few wealthy and the large number of impoverished, often long-unemployed workers, and governments that at all levels supported the rights of property over the rights of people.

As a result, both men were exposed to grimmer realities through the writings of investigative journalists. Hence the important role given to these men and women by Kearns in her title — the golden age of journalism.

The most prominent of these either got their start with a remarkable magazine begun by Sam McClure, called McClure’s magazine, or were soon drawn to it through McClure’s rapacious search for the finest talent. Among the most prominent were Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens and William Allen White.

Perhaps it was their dissimilarity in temperament that explains, at least in part, why Taft and Roosevelt so quickly became such close friends.

Extrovert v introvert

Roosevelt was supremely self-confident, an extraordinary extrovert, and ready to always take charge, while Taft was much more of an introvert — shy, inclined to move more cautiously, always attentive to determining the facts of people and situations.

In fact, as Taft often readily admitted, he was really ill-suited to the rough and tumble of the political world and much preferred the more orderly, “just the facts, ma’am” world of the judiciary. (His life-long desire was to join the United States Supreme Court, finally realized in 1921.) Despite this, and with the steady urgings of his wife, Nellie, he did enter the political world, serving as governor of Ohio, governor-general of the Philippines (following America’s acquisition of that island nation as a consequence of the brief war with Spain in 1898), then a member of Roosevelt’s Cabinet and, finally, elected president with Roosevelt’s strong support in 1908.

Roosevelt, on the other hand, plunged into politics early (he was a state assemblyman in his mid-20s) and rose to prominence quickly, including postings as a member of the federal Civil Service Commission, police commissioner of New York, vice president under President McKinley, and then president following McKinley’s assassination in 1901, and re-elected in his own right in 1904.

Roosevelt developed a remarkably close relationship with many reporters from his earliest days in the political arena, discussing events and his own perspective on them with amazing candor. As a consequence, he enjoyed throughout most of his public life very favorable and enthusiastic newspaper and magazine coverage.

The muckraking journalists — especially those from McClure’s — fed information to him, and he to them in return. This afforded him valuable access to how the “other side” lived and, in his efforts to ameliorate some of the economic and political wrongs of his time, he ran headlong into the entrenched city and state “bosses” that called the shots from behind the scenes.

Goodwin explores all of this in intriguing detail and lovely prose. There are truly sad human parts of this story, too. McClure’s brilliance was accompanied by a manic-depressive personality that, while spurring him and his driven reporters to inspiring inquiries and brilliant articles, also caused him to behave in often erratic and irritating ways. Also sad was the fact that Nellie Taft, who so yearned to one day be in the White House, suffered a debilitating stroke in her first summer as first lady and, although she made a substantial recovery, was never quite the same person.

Further, the growing distance from 1910 onwards between the once very close Taft and Roosevelt anguished their families, friends and associates.

Happily, the two men eventually became reconciled, but only less than a year before Roosevelt’s death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1919.

I heartily recommend this book to all who love history, great literature, stirring biography, and the sense of being surrounded by the sights, sounds, and thoughts of a time other than our own.

The author has been a college teacher of American history and political science, and the director of the US National Catholic Rural Life Conference; he served as a member of the Iowa State House of Representatives and retired from public service in the Iowa executive branch in 2004.