This book really is going to be about TR and not Obama, right?  

Another alternative to the two you refer to on strategy (perhaps meant to illustrate with  "ideal types" or relative poles and not intended to exhaust the potential alternatives) is to propose something more, rather than less, ambitious, not as a quickly abandoned bone offered to appease a bunch of demanding and ungrateful activists, but fighting hard for it, with the thought process being, in part, that you're likely to get a better compromise in the end if you go that route.  La Follette was never President, of course, and never had opportunity to fight for a farther-reaching, more ambitious legislative initiative from the presidential Bully Pulpit.  Of course as a legislator he was free to introduce any legislation he wanted, but he had less of a platform to command. 

But, really, I hope that as much as it's possible for the book to be free from the bias of being written to try to support a preconceived point, that it illuminates.  I am optimistic that it will.  Congrats again. 

I do know that Teddy once opined that automobile racing was even more evil than professional boxing.

P.S. There's a load of good TR-related political cartoons to mine here, by chance you haven't caught that page yet.

TR was also the LAST president to ride in a horse drawn carriage, the Smithsonian once had it on display in the transportation section.

The industrialists and capitalists he went after, like JP Morgan and Rockefeller, were not so upset that it kept them from donating to his reelection campaign.

Wow.  I hope you'll develop that point in the book.  Hard to imagine a similar dynamic in our day.  What to make of that?  From its description, I'm wondering if Chris Hayes' book, Twilight of the Elites, due out next week, might offer some comparative cultural commentary food for thought on that.  In TR's case, might that have been in part because those titans of industry respected TR's toughness and strength, inconvenienced as they were by it?  I wonder whether the Koch brothers, say, feel that way about Obama, or instead can only find it within themselves to feel contempt and scorn for him?

You might be disappointed , 

Another disappointment?

TR may have realized, he had been bought and paid for too and he owed them their moneys worth? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1912) 

"The party also became known as the Bull Moose Party ……

Inspiration for the party's beginnings may have come from Roosevelt's friend and supporter, U.S. Senator Thomas Kearns of Utah, who in October 1906 broke off from the Republican Party and started the American Party in that state. Kearns was a Roman Catholic, and this

was a direct response to the influence of the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"

However, the main theme of the platform was an attack on the domination of politics by business interests, which allegedly controlled both established parties. The platform asserted that

"To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day"

 

Genghis,  please hurry up and get the book done so we can discuss it. 

After the elections and the end of the gnashing of teeth, throwing ashes and ripping our outer garments, we'll be looking for something to discuss.