E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Obama’s Osawatomie Offensive

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is a columnist for the Washington Post.

Presidents have many obligations and one of them is to be teachers of history. So may I offer three cheers for President Obama’s decision to give a speech today in Osawatomie, Kan., where Theodore Roosevelt gave his great and important New Nationalism speech in 1910.

Channeling TR is an excellent idea because the Republican Roosevelt (who created the breakaway Progressive Party in 1912 to give political life to the principles of the New Nationalism) was in many ways the prime mover of many of the achievements of American liberalism and progressivism. The principles of Osawatomie still command our attention.

(To read the entirety of TR’s speech, click here . The Occupy Wall Streeters will especially enjoy this text. Those who want to know more about the upshot of the TR speech should check out Sidney Milkis’s excellent 2009 book, “Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party and the Transformation of American Democracy,” published by the University Press of Kansas.)