 Well, you've given us, I mean, I don't know, I'm not trying to speak for the audience, but you've given us a very fresh look at all of this, and it's, I'm a little troubled by some of it, but I want to ask you a question. I know the audience has some questions, but I mean, so if I get it right, so during this period, the young Roosevelt, 24, 25, 26, who comes out here, is characterized by some rather conventional thinking of the time, and to our way of thinking, it feels a little illiberal and bigoted, but he's caught up in what you're calling the tropes that were common among certain parts of the American population, and he comes here to get to something that he feels is disappearing, or that he can get a transfusion of out here that's no longer available somewhere else. Yes. But then somehow, and you haven't gone into much detail about this, later there's a maturation process where he becomes less caught up in these ideas and thinks the more, has some original thoughts about them, and winds up being a leader of a country that moves into the 20th century. So is that fair so far? Yes. So two things. First of all, what do you think that maturation process looked like? And I know you're not a Roosevelt biographer or scholar, and then what does this sojourn hear? What does it really amount to in Roosevelt's life? Couple of questions. In the first place, I think you've got to look at the those years, those critical years early after his time in Cuba. You can look at those critical years when he becomes, when he moves into real power. For example, in this question, this whole question of Indians, Roosevelt and Indians, I think that for the first time that Roosevelt really came to connect to or came to had any really significant exposure to what it was like to be an Indian in America, and the kinds of issues that they were faced, was ironically after he went back east. It was when he was governor of New York, and if you look through his correspondence, you see him writing about the difficulties of the remaining, the surviving reservations out there, and he becomes a great advocate of trying to clean up the corruption in those places. He begins to get an understanding of what that was. I think that over time, especially as president, as he became increasingly involved with the kinds of other kinds of political issues that dealt directly with these questions of race, I think he began to get, if you look at his correspondence, you begin to get a real sense of that. And of course in terms of the economic issues, it's his exposure to the realities of that and the realities of power, especially those individuals dealing with him. He's no longer playing cowboy out there in Madura. He's now having conversations with J.P. Morgan. And when you begin to have those kinds of conversations, that kind of exposure, then your whole understanding of what the kind of power this is and what it means in terms of the American people. That takes a very sharp return, yeah. That makes sense, and I reckon that you would say something like that, but then what do you make of his errand into the wilderness? You know, I have to say at the end of this, I look back on that, and that was my great question as well. Roosevelt, let's face it, Roosevelt was sort of, he was described as pure act, you know, and he was not a man that I'm aware of, at least, that was very reflective about looking back on this. And I guess those fantasy experiences we have, you want to sit down with him over dinner, you know, that's the kind of question I would like to ask. I alluded to that briefly. Did he ever realize, you know, as he's trying to wrestle through the Hepburn Act, did he ever realize looking back on this, you know, why didn't I see that? That was in fact exactly the world that I was living in out there. But that's just not the kind of thing that he did. So I think as for me, it's mostly a question of speculation. How do you look back on that? Let me ask you this in a slightly different way, and we'll turn to the audience, but you know, in 1910 he came to Fargo, North Dakota, he said things that would never have been president of the United States, that had not been for my time in North Dakota. We North Dakotans take that pretty seriously. In fact, I believe we require all North Dakotans to memorize that at birth. So for us, this is our mythology of Roosevelt, that he got something here that then propelled him into national greatness, and it wasn't just a cowboy mythology, it was something that he learned here. It was something that he absorbed in seeing this country, working with common people, with rugged individuals. I guess I'm asking you whether you need to disabuse us of that myth. No, I see no reason for that at all. I think he certainly learned plenty out here. I think what I hear that quote, you know, I've heard that many times. When I hear that quote, I think of it primarily in personal terms. One of those occasions when he did sort of get personal and remember about that. I think what he's saying is, you know, it was my time out here that healed the wound, and it wasn't so much the lessons that I learned, although I'm sure there were plenty. It was part of the fact that I was able to get my sense of myself back together and to heal enough to go back and do what I needed to do. Let me just try one more time. I want you to solve this problem for us, but how does a person who comes into a backward looking ativism go on to become a person who carries the country sometimes kicking and screaming into modernity? I mean, there's a paradox here, right? There is a paradox. What do you make of it? All I can say is just stated, that's what I came away with here. What we see here is this young man out here sort of misreading so much of what he sees, and yet we follow him forward and we see him so different in his attitudes. What happens in between? How he resolves that paradox? I don't know. The Eastern establishment of the Western experience. Perhaps we'll get some more thoughts on it tomorrow. Questions for our distinguished keynote speaker? Yes, speak up, please. I was thinking that it could be out here in the West where, as an individual from an aristocratic family, you really came into contact with basically the common people for the first time to a great extent. The ordinary people were not his fellow aristocrats, definitely. And this would later be emphasized as he went on. He was a police commissioner in New York. In his class, he would develop a lot of capital, so he was a police commissioner. And also, everybody, every other, I think, he was playing in New York at that time. But that would be the army after that. And perhaps he'd be in a stretch sort of a common threat between all of us. So the possibility that this experience as a window on common men and women's experience. Sure, that makes perfect sense. And again, I think it builds upon when he, as you said, when he goes out, when he goes into the army. And again, the irony here is that it's not until he goes back east that he sees confirmed some of the things I think he saw beginning that he began to begin to see out here. Yeah. Other questions? If I don't see you, just speak up. Someone out here. Just a follow-up raising the opportunity that when he came out here, he had to prove himself to them. He was this aristocrat and four eyes and all those other things. And they're like, sustained for him. But he proved himself. And time and time again, we see, throughout his dealings with people of different races, that he said he sees third individual qualities. And he says, well, if everybody was like this person, like Booker T. Washington as an example, then they would be perfectly in the modern society. Well, there are two things there. One is that Roosevelt had to prove himself to people in his aristocratic roots and his Harvard education. And all of those things that were great badges of respectability in New York were actually detriments out here. And he managed to want to overcome that. So that's a character question. But also that he went on to find this Indian or that black person admirable, but not so much Indian-ness or African-American-ness as a larger tribal entity. Yeah. My own impression of that is that the first part of that, I think, has more to say to it than the second. And that's part of what I was saying. I think when he says I wouldn't be president if it weren't for North Dakota, I think that's the kind of thing that he was talking about. Have he overcome? Yes. It was this sort of facing down, not just the tragedy back east, but facing down these kinds of impressions people had of him, this kind of individual overcoming these individual situations that brought out things, I think, that gave him the kind of self-confidence, that gave him the kind of gravity that he would need when he went back east. The other, I think, again, I think it was really more the case when he had to go east, you know, and began to wrestle with these sorts of questions that I think he came around to those sorts of positions, yeah. Other thoughts? Yes, here? Yes, here? Yeah, quite welcome. Yeah, what a fascinating point. Yes, right, right. There's a reflection of what you have said about his experience here in North Dakota, that he has that coming down from being part of the elite, to being a common man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well thank you, what a great expression of Western common sense, you know, what a nutty idea that we, you know, that a prerequisite for becoming president is something that I don't change, I don't change my mind. I don't come to believe different things. But for you, as you studied this great man, what did you find most admirable about him? What do you find most admirable about T.R.? Given the work that you've done? I've got to say, and of course many, many others have said this as well, and this is what has drawn me to him from the first time I began to read him Pringles, you know, Pringles biography, I think. And that is just his sheer love of being alive, and just that absolutely irresistible sense of energy and power, that it's very, very, very hard to resist, you know. There was an Ida Tarbell set about him, she set a few seats down from him at a concert, have you ever heard that story? Yeah, she said she had the feeling that he was about to explode out of his clothes. It's that sense of energy, but just this sort of a joy of combat, joy of the chase. Dear, dear friend, Willard Gatewood, one of my colleagues, died last Sunday, memorial service tomorrow, with a book called Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, and Willard wouldn't make that point. This guy, you know, controversy fights, you know, there was just his lifeblood, and that was part of this larger phenomenon of him, that he just sort of loved being alive, and I think that's what I admire most. Go ahead. Other thoughts? Yes, here. So healing. Yes, I think so. I think so. I think that's really, ultimately, I think that's what you have to look for most of all in terms of what happened to him when he was out here. But I mean, kind of emerging in your talk, and particularly during the Q&A session, is the sense that Roosevelt had a certain type of genius for keeping his soul open over time. You know, these other guys that you mentioned are not very well known historically. They didn't lead the United States. They're not world historical figures, however important they might have been in 1885. But Roosevelt didn't flame out. He didn't plateau out because he had that capacity to keep seeing experience and working his way through it and finding, staying with a certain set of core values but not over-applying them to situations. Yes, right. Sure. He was, you know, a couple of things to say about that. First of all, of course, that's, you know, that's the essence of a good politician. The second thing is, you know, the point I made at the outset, and that is he had this, if he had a touch of genius, it was the ability to sort of identify with where the public was moving. And in most cases, in fact, to stay a bit ahead of them. That's where, you know, that's what I see in him, in these changes. What he's really, what you really are seeing here is seeing this man as a revelation of how America is moving, of this newer America as it's emerging. You know, that's about as invaluable, as about as valuable an ability and a political figure as you can have. But it also, of course, makes him this, exactly what you were saying, someone who stays open to the changes that are going on around him and reflects them. And at least the ability to reflect that, you know, to reflect those changes, but at the same time to stay a bit in front and to pull America along with him. You know, back when he was here in the Haymarket riots occurred, he said, we should take some of our ranchers and we'll deal with this problem and shoot some of these people. Very conventional anti-labor views as a young man, but they changed radically over time. Yes. The same thing. Yeah. We have time for just one or two more. Yes. I'm going to have a panterian point of view, so it may not be a question, but I think Roosevelt is a figure, standing out amongst almost any other figure in American history. We could say that his views on many important things, and many sensitive things like race and labor and immigration did not change so much. Here's a book up top there that says you can take statements from his career, from his speeches and letters and articles, and mask the day. And very often you can't tell whether they're from the 1880s or the 90s or the last years of his life. And the running of the West, he wrote about massacres and said that the whites very often committed as many massacres as possible. Yes. Yes. And the last speech he wrote in his life that he didn't believe in his birth date today, and this was, I think, red, on the day that he died, he wrote he couldn't deliver it. But he talked about immigration and the fear that America was becoming a powerful recording house. And in your view that he evolved from these, you never used the word of your whole speech, but obviously you're calling them a racist. Well. But everyone else was. Yes. So if that's what he was, would you say, anyway, I don't think, I don't think he did evolve that much. I think he was very consistent. I don't think all his views were so credible through the crucible and maybe should otherwise see them. But I don't see all the evolution in a lot of these matters. Suggestion of more stasis rather than evolution is his thinking. A couple of points on that. And writing in the winning of the West, and Patty Lemmer is going to be talking on that, I guess, on Saturday. He does say that. He does say that there were things done on both sides. There's a wonderful letter in which he talks about chastising Nelson Miles. For Wounded Knee. For Wounded Knee. Miles had come to complain about the reports of massacres in the Philippines. He said, well, that was nothing what you guys did out there at Wounded Knee where Miles was in control. Yes, he did so. But if you look at those on ballots, I think he sees that. And again, it's part of sort of a common trope of that time. Yes, things were done by both sides. But clearly it is the Indians who are the ones who are most responsible for this. And clearly they are the ones who must give way. That is what you see in something like the winning of the West. On the question of polyglot boarding house, those kinds of statements can be quite misleading. Because what he's saying there is still quite different from what people like Grant and others, those racial theorists are saying. They're saying that these people will never change and that these are irreconcilable differences among these people. But when Roosevelt is talking in that comment about the polyglot boarding house, something else he also says in an article in the 1890s. What he's saying is that we must do all we can to encourage these people to engage in this. And if we do, and over time, this will happen. This transformation will happen. That's the position at least in my reading of him that he comes around to by those last years. He's saying we need to be careful that what he calls these perversities of holding on to these old world ways are resistant. And do all we can then to facilitate this. But it will happen. He's really quite clear on that point. This amalgam, this melting pot will ultimately work. I wish we could go on and take a break, maybe come back and pummel you for a while. But what I want to do, we're going to have Sharon Kilser come up for a moment. There will be a book signing immediately after, but I'm glad you mentioned, of course, that it is Theodore Roosevelt's birthday. I think we should sing Happy Birthday to the President of the United States. So are you ready? Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, Mr. Roosevelt. Happy Birthday to you. Cool. Dr. Elliott West.