Rhetorical restraint was not Teddy Roosevelt’s forte. His occasional fulminations against the intelligentsia could sound like vivid twists on the most inane populism. He called academics “logical vegetarians” and “sublimated sweetbreads.” But when Roosevelt wasn’t damning effeminate, cosmopolitan mollycoddle, he could be downright effete. If Woodrow Wilson ranks as our most academic president, Teddy Roosevelt was perhaps, despite his efforts to brand himself as a warrior, our most intellectual commander-in-chief.
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