Col. Theodore Roosevelt & Dr. Woodrow Wilson: America's Marius and Sulla

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson: America’s Marius and Sulla

Let me make one thing clear before I begin. Those who may know me know that, like the Mario Puzo, I have two opinions of people: business and personal. This is a concept that society is often unable to grasp. Nevertheless, I will make one last attempt to explain it. I think most US presidents were horrible, but I probably would have loved all of them. I probably could have been friends with them. When I rail about the shortcomings of our former leaders, I am merely trying to be objective. I’m sure many of them were all great guys, loving husbands; or lots of fun to talk to. What we need to get serious about today is looking past all that and focus on the actions of our leaders.

You may often hear me refer to FDR as America’s “Julius Caesar”. I say this non-maliciously as even Caesar was a benevolent dictator toward his people. Indeed, FDR intended more good than harm. But one cannot ignore the fact that he had injected the American Empire with steroids, creating a government that no president after him has been able to properly control. But if we did have our own Julius Caesar, then we must certainly have had a Marius and Sulla as well. Marius and Sulla were bitter rivals in the Roman Republic of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. They created new dangerous precedents and broke the old rules. They laid the effective groundwork for the formation of imperial Rome. Within a generation after their deaths, Caesar had brought reform, conquest, and a permanent dictatorship to society. Caesar's successors brought a sort of even-handed tyranny and a bureaucracy that superseded the old senatorial system. Within 200 years after the deaths of Octavian and Marc Antony, feudalism was growing out of that decadent bureaucracy.

Here are two of America’s favorite presidents: Col. Theodore Roosevelt and Dr. Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt is popular today for his “Big Stick” diplomacy and “Busting” the trusts. Wilson is popular for—well, I don’t know. If you think Woodrow Wilson was a great president, I beg you to please write or email me at least one good thing that he did for us...

Theodore Roosevelt: Our Marius

Our two quasi-dictators were close to the same age. "T.R." got into the political saddle much earlier than Wilson though. Born to an old New York Dutch family of the patroon class, our "Marius" was brilliant. For the sake of brevity, I’ll skip his earlier days of love and loss; of adventure and adversity; of New York politics and reform. His adoring fans at the Hearst Corporation and Walt Disney can tell the whole story far better than I can (Ironically, W.R. Hearst and T.R. were bitter rivals when living). I will begin at the period during which Marius went from being an opinionated political climber to being the most important man in the nation. Strangely enough, our Marius was made famous in the Spanish-American War through his time serving as a pawn in Cuba. But his more significant contributions in that war took place in the far east.

The year was 1898. The old “Gold Standard and Tariff” Republican William McKinley was president. McKinley was an old school scion of the “Gilded Age” of American politics—another Ohioan (and the puppet of the political boss Mark Hanna). Marius was serving as McKinley/Hanna’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy when war was declared against His Catholic Majesty, Alfonso XIII. As second-in-command of the American fleets, Marius took initiative and had his Pacific squadron conquer the Philippines. After that, he demoted himself six pay grades and raised a cavalry cohort for the invasion of Cuba. Though the US Army was nearly decimated by Yellow Fever after the invasion, the Spanish garrison in Havana surrendered after a few weeks of skirmishing. (The US Navy had again delivered the decisive blow) The press honed in on a scuffle taking place on the San Juan Heights and made a national hero of Marius. He was soon elected governor of his home state of New York. He later served as president of the Senate for a few months before old McKinley was suddenly gunned down in Buffalo by an assassin. With McKinley’s death, Marius ascended to consular power as Head of State. The year was 1901 and the country was on a precipice. Imperialists Elihu Root and John Hay ran Marius’ departments of war and state. Marius appointed none other than Napoleon Bonaparte’s great-nephew as Attorney General. Bonaparte, true to his familial nature, created the FBI (by another name). The Secret Service was pulled away from investigating financial crimes and took on the additional duty of guarding the president.

The US now controlled Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Cuba. But all was far from calm. There was an ongoing insurgency in the Philippines against US occupation. The American commander there was Gen MacArthur—no, not Douglass MacArthur. General Arthur MacArthur began the family tradition of military governorship of that distance province. In a foreshadowing of events to occur half a century later, Gen MacArthur started getting out of hand. Marius sent a skilled lawyer, William Taft, to reign in MacArthur and to serve as proconsul over the Iraq War—oops, I meant the Philippine War.

Despite the trouble, American businessmen were thrilled as they finally got to wet their beaks (another gangster term) on the raw resources and cheap labor of Latin America and the Orient. Our Oil Barons moved into Mexico. National City Bank got rich in Cuba and Haiti. The US sugar industry took the Dominican Republic. Brown Brothers received Nicaragua. The “Trust Buster” Marius (who was on the bribery payroll of Standard Oil) sent military forces to China to help defeat the Boxer Rebellion. Standard Oil moved into China. The Gilded Age evolved into an age of Empire bent on money and...well--just money. The Republicans were the big leaguers. The Marine Corps and Navy earned a cynical reputation as a private security force for the “East India Companies” of American capitalism. Indeed, Marius’ men had claimed the remnants of the old Spanish Empire for the US—a nation of un-worldly agrarians. America (and Japan) at last had seats at the big poker table with France and Britain. The US constabulary armies (with no Indians left to fight in the Wild West) now shipped off to guard the new frontiers: Nicaragua, Panama, and Guam. Marius and John Hay got embroiled in international events. The unified countries of Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary had formed a formal alliance several decades earlier. Russia, Britain, and France formed a counter-balance of their own; called the Triple Entante. Marius mediated in foreign wars and alliances. He saw a fraternal bond between Japan and the US. The US had money and had influence over the old world powers. But the world was preparing for war again. Europe was arming and all the empires were prepared to become the new dominant power. Spain was out. America was in. The old tribes of Britons, Franks, Italians, Russians, Turks, Slavs, Huns, and Germans eyed one another with envy and contempt. It would only be a matter of time before one of them made a move.

Marius’ man Taft had proved to be such a good lawyer that Marius appointed him the new Secretary of War. The army was reorganized. Instead of a commanding general, there would be a chief of staff with a role of advising the president and coordinating with all of the overseas commanders. The old republican-blue uniforms were replaced with the olive drab cotton—more practical for jungle fighting. It all happened so quickly. After eight years in office, Taft became Marius’ chosen successor. William Howard Taft was elected president in 1908.

But poor Taft did not possess the martial spirit of his predecessor. He was after all, corpulent and sluggish. Worst of all, Taft did something Marius had only talked about doing: attacked big business monopolies. This was too much for the jealous Marius, who challenged his successor in the 1912 election as a third party candidate. Neither of the men backed down as they effectively split the Republican Party vote that year. An assassin even gunned down Marius during the campaign in an attempt to stop him. This was to no avail. The Democrats would finally win an election that year. Enter the Governor of New Jersey: Dr. Woodrow Wilson; Sulla.

Woodrow Wilson: Our Sulla

Sulla was born and lived in Virginia during the turmoil of the 1860s. He grew up hating Republicans and black people. He became educated and practiced law briefly before continuing his education, joining the faculty of Princeton. He eventually became the university's president. Ambitious as any politician, he finally won a great office during the Taft administration. He was a lively man for an intellectual; a great tap dancer and performer. He loved baseball and had played in college. He was more comfortable around women than men. When his wife died during his first term in office, he wasted no time and married another one immediately. He broke Thomas Jefferson’s tradition of mailing his State of the Union address to congress. Instead, he entered the chamber and presented the address verbally—far more dramatic, but the information was far less substantive or objective. His first term was spent invading Mexico and trying to maneuver the US into WWI. The “Great War”, as it was called, started just five years after Marius left office. Since 1914, the war was destroying the great empires of Europe. Germany and Austria-Hungary were at war with Russia, France’s ally. Germany plowed through Belgium to reach France, causing Britain to jump into the war. Italy, preferring not to honor the treaty they had made forty years previously, stayed out of the first year of fighting. In 1916 Italy changed its mind and fought against Austria. The old days were back. In the era of Emperor Napoleon I, the US had only participated in some side show conflicts, but never got too involved in global politics. As a result, the nation prospered. During the wars of Napoleon’s nephew Napoleon III, the US was too busy with domestic wars to participate. But in 1910s Europe, Wilson saw an opportunity. There was a Czar (Slavic form of “Caesar”) in Russia and a Kaiser (German form of “Caesar”) in Germany, battling it out for continental dominance. France and Britain wanted to take the Middle East from the Turks.

It fell on Sulla to be the first president to ignore George Washington’s warning of entangling alliances. During his 1916 re-election campaign, he ran on a platform that he had kept us out of the war. After election, with true guile, he immediately got us into the war. America was not ready for war and the common citizens were getting dragged in by the scruff of their necks. A third of the US population at the time was of German or Irish descent and hated the United Kingdom. Conscription was the only way to fill the ranks. Sulla used Hollywood films for propaganda and censored the free press. German culture was suppressed. Finally, he created the secret police who spied on and arrested Americans sympathetic to peace. One of Sulla’s contributions to the growing military was to take the battle-hardened Buffalo Soldiers and make them into units of cooks and quartermasters for the white soldiers. Their main significant battle in the war was fought against Mexican and German soldiers on the southwest border. (Yes, we also fought against Mexico in WWI)

During the war, Marius had been hoping to lead legions into battle, but Sulla denied him this. Marius died after the war ended, leaving GOP leadership to Taft. By that time, Taft was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. America saw about six months of heavy fighting in France before the November 11 Armistice. After that, Sulla went to work. First, he immediately deployed about 15,000 troops to Archangel and Vladivostok in Russia to battle the Communists, who had overthrown the Czarist regime. Next, Sulla and his assistant, Colonel Edward House (who never served in the military), drew up a new plan for Europe. The US had a great deal of leverage. It had not been ruined by several years of war. Sulla, as head of state, lowered himself to travel to Europe and meet with prime ministers (heads of government, not of state). This started yet another bold tradition of American presidents leaving their country while still in office. He passed his Fourteen Points at the peace negotiations, complete with his and House's redrawn map of Europe. Austria-Hungary would be broken up into several sovereign nations. The Ottoman Empire would lose Mesopotamia and the Levant to Britain and France. Germany lost its conquests and would pay humiliating reparations. Herbert Hoover, remembered now for his coldness during the Depression, began his plan to rebuild Europe and provide food and assistance to the needy.

In the end, Sulla had alienated the entire country too heartily. The Republicans would filibuster his bill for the US to enter the League of Nations (his creation). Asdtonishingly, the GOP brought America back out of European entanglements. Sulla’s war against the Russians was also a failure. In his final year in office, Sulla was paralyzed by a stroke and would receive no visitors. The press speculated that he might be dead and that usurpers were running the government. It eventually became clear that his wife was illegally performing many of the presidential duties while he was in his incapacitated state. Constitutionally, this was the role of the vice president. This may not seem important, but the establishing of dangerous traditions is a long game of inches. The Republicans came back to office in the 1920 election after their eight-year hiatus. Sulla finally died in 1924, age 68.

Sulla’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy was none other than “Julius Caesar” Franklin Roosevelt, who was following the career footsteps of his distant cousin, Marius. Caesar ran for vice president in the 1920 election and lost before contracting polio. But his day would eventually come...