After three episodes of The Roosevelts on PBS,  I find beginnings myself mourning what we’ve lost in our part of history.  Due in no small part to the “Hollywood-ization” of politics wrought by electronic media,  Theodore Roosevelt would be “unelectable” today.  As Ken Burns told Jon Stewart in his Daily Show interview Monday night this week,  “He’d have 10 Howard Dean moments A DAY”  ; today’s “anal” political press would have a field day,  and the notion that “The Constitution is for the people and not to the people for the Constitution”  would be picked apart in the same anal, oblivious manner.

The hegemony of the 1% has surpassed , it seems,  what it had become in Teddy’s context.   And that was egregious enough for Teddy to have no patience for it,  he who was himself of aristocratic, wealthy upbringing.  It had become so obvious and entrenched that even a man from his privilege could not help but see it right in front of his nose.   But today,  even the humble beginnings of a now president cannot cut through the layers of spoiled politics we have before us in our system.  He cannot cut through because the thickest part of those layers is the massive money system that Mark Leibowitz was compelled to sub title “This Town”, his book on DC culture, “Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital “.   The massive money fest it has become has brought us to a point where ou system rolls on seemingly oblivious to the conversation about the now historic levels of income inequality.  And the typical “political realism” of the status quo : “You gotta do what works”  or “be practical” is used to defend a stand-by and “don’t rock the boat” approach that simply insures that the operation will continue as is.

I am aware that Theodore Roosevelt was largely of a piece with the prevailing ethno-centrisms of White Euro-Americans,  with a host of despicable notions toward the Native Americans,  and beting unwilling to rock the boat on race,  succumbing to the intense backlash against his inviting Booker T Washington to a White House dinner ,  never again inviting another African American in this manner.  But this did not extend into the class warfare layer we have today.  “Teddy” was known as such because of his disdain for the shady dealings of the 1% of his day.   If Barak Obama could combine that feature of the Roosevelts with his matured, more diverse notions of American citizenship,  the prospects of a more powerful movement by the 99% would likely be enhanced.  This is an ongoing criticism I have for Obama;  his failure to avail himself of that “Bully Pulpit” to confront the wrongs he sees.  It’s reached the stage now that I wonder just how wrong he really thinks it is.  How different is he, really?  Half way through a second term,  the income inequality has not only not abated or begun to be reversed,  but has continued and grown.  How different is he,  really?  Very much a disappointment for me.