TR’s ego wrote checks that we are still having a hard time cashing.
I’d like to begin by noting that H.L. Mencken wrote a vanity press book, simple in composition, of the speeches of TR on one page, and the near identical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche on the opposite page. So when you think of the philosophy of TR, keep this in mind.
Next, TR was in many ways responsible for the overburdening federal government we have today. He had no use for the individual States at all, and saw them as just obstructing absolute federal power.
Likewise, in his “Imperial Presidency”, he had disdain for congress, to the point of sending the US navy halfway around the world, to force them to pay for its return.
His idea of taking State lands for federal parks and conservation areas, purely by proclamation, has become a nightmare for the western United States, the federal government now claiming the majority of the land West of the Mississippi, and seizing more and more land with each president.
TR also laid the groundwork for his fellow progressive Woodrow Wilson, and his nightmare image of America. So convinced of his own grandeur, he was willing to tear apart the Republican party to prevent its candidate from being elected.
More than anything else, TR is regarded as a great president solely because of his progressivism. The progressive movement made sure of that, with the help of the Hearst newspapers, especially.
Though I am loathe to even suggest it, for similar reasons today, if you can imagine the MSM demanding the face of Obama on Mount Rushmore, you can see the parallel.
As pointed out in the books above, the press was equally complicit in molding the image of TR, as they are with Obama, and it is entirely because he was a progressive.