Obama’s Theodore Roosevelt Speech Resonates Core American Values

Newswise — “The President's ‘Teddy Roosevelt’ speech in Kansas on Tuesday represents a milestone both in his presidency and in the recent history of the Democratic Party. With this speech, the President finally brings long-sought thematic and programmatic coherence to his many proposals and policy initiatives, while the Democratic Party reclaims its role not only as the ‘party of ideas and values,’ but indeed as the party of quintessentially American ideas and values. “An unflagging commitment to fair burden-sharing and real opportunity for all, and to that vibrant middle class which always is fair opportunity's upshot, has been the American political and economic value since the founding era; it is just what the ‘American Dream’ has always dreamed of. And so naturally those candidates and parties have always done best — whether Lincoln’s and Theodore Roosevelt’s Republicans or FDR’s and JFK’s Democrats — when they made this cause their cause. “The President now has at last ‘messaged’ with clarity that it is he and his Democrats who take this American cause seriously, while today's TR- and Lincoln-forgetful Republicans continue to traffic in all of the sideshows and plutocrat pandering that have been their dispiriting hallmark for all too regrettably long now.”--Robert C. Hockett, professor of Law at Cornell University