Word Play: A presidential wordsmith

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 11th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, Word Play for the month of October.

The 26th president of the United States is remembered for a lot of things—his foreign policy, the Panama Canal, and many of our national parks. But did you know he was also an accomplished wordsmith and he coined many memorable phrases that live on to this day?

Here’s George Grant.

GEORGE GRANT: Before his fiftieth birthday Theodore Roosevelt had served as a New York state legislator, cattle rancher in the Dakota Territories, New York City police commissioner, Under-Secretary of the Navy, civil service commissioner, colonel in the U.S. Army, governor of the State of New York, vice-president under William McKinley, and two terms as the president of the United States. He enjoyed hunting, boxing, hiking, and rowing. He conducted scientific expeditions on four continents and was an amateur taxidermist, botanist, ornithologist, and astronomer. He was a devoted family man who relished a storied romance with his wife with whom he lovingly raised six children.

Though most famous for his political career, like his younger contemporary, Winston Churchill, he made his living as a writer. He served as a reporter and editor for several journals, newspapers, and magazines. He read at least five books every week of his life and wrote nearly fifty on an astonishing array of subjects—from history and biography to natural science and social criticism.

It probably should not surprise us then that he was quite a wordsmith. Contrary to his well-known slogan “speak softly and carry a big stick,” he very rarely spoke softly. According to historian Paul Dickson, “Roosevelt created a huge body of strikingly humorous slang.” He coined a host of colorful words and phrases, including “packrat, frazzle, malefactors of great wealth, and loose cannon.”

He described a next to impossible diplomatic negotiation as, “trying to nail cranberry jelly to the wall.” He dubbed the ambiguous rhetoric of his conniving political opponents as, “weasel words of mollycoddles.” He called out the sensationalism of the press as “unscrupulous muckraking.” He called the left-wing advocates of socialism and anarchism, “the lunatic fringe.” And he called complacent armchair conservatives, “do-nothing pussyfooters.” He disdained the coarse irreverence of profanity, so when he was frustrated or exasperated, he would often exclaim, “flapdoodle” or “bullfeathers.”

He announced his presidential bid in 1912, exclaiming, “My hat is in the ring,” promising a “square deal,” and declaring that he was “as strong as a Bull Moose.” He transformed his campaign into a “bully pulpit” from which he could preach virtue, fairness, justice, and righteousness with his “artillery of words.”

His wry humor was such an important part of his stump personae that several newspapers began running weekly columns containing nothing more than witticisms from his speeches. The comedian, Homer Davenport, asserted, “Roosevelt is a humorist. No one can sit through one of his speeches with a straight face. He can make a joke as fascinating as he can the story of a sunset on the plains of Egypt.”

Amidst the fractiousness of contemporary partisan politics, we could do with a little more of that and a little less of what Roosevelt called a “flubdub of slights and slurs.”

I’m George Grant

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.