Oh, that was beautiful. I remember when someone was trying to paint Bush as TR, and I so wanted Morris to jump up and say "I knew Roosevelt, and you sir, are no Roosevelt!"

I'm very much looking forward to the third book. His first two were fantastic.

What would TR's view of Obama's election be?
Two words: Brownsville.

On he other hand, TR's actual views on the undue influence of big business would today place him to the left of Noam Chomsky. It's always dangerous to play these time machine games with personalities from the past; TR was not really a civil rights activist -- almost nobody was back then, after all -- and his views on the, I quote, "savagery" of nonwhite races are historical record, an unplesant one at that. He'd probably appreciate Obama's good manners and obvious intelligence, but still, it's hard to imagine him as a Obama fan. Times were different back then, it was a different culture, the idea of some sort of genetic neurological inferiority of non whites was still too deep seated, before actual science debunked it. It came straight from the 18th century. What's horrifying is that one of the most "modern" historical characters, in his views of equal rights for blacks and women, is John Brown.

As much as I admire Churchill, historcial record shows he was a dyed in the wool racist. FDR, my political hero, was no bigot but didn't lift a finger to attack segregation because he needed the South's votes too much. Truman himself, who desegregated the Armed Services FDR had kept segregated, was known to sometimes use racial slurs.

But I agree Morris is usually very good on TR. His Reagan book, not so much.