In making a film about Theodore Roosevelt you can't help but be touched by his enthusiasms. Imagine a president who could speak many different languages, a president who had an intellectual curiosity that ranged so wide across science, across history. He was a best-selling author. He was a big game hunter, a cowboy. There are so many different facets to the life of Theodore Roosevelt that make him a fascinating figure to cover. And he was so exuberant.
He had an opinion on everything. You may disagree with his opinions, but they're fun, some of them, to just hear. Although startling. For instance, the idea that it was the patriotic duty of every healthy American wife to bear her husband at least four children. That's an incredible thing to say. He believed in simplified spelling. Well, maybe we all believe that it would be easier if we didn't have to remember "i before e and except after c," but he went and tried to do something about it and raised a ruckus, also, an uproar. It's not easy to change spelling and he didn't mind putting those kinds of issues before the American public.
In the end Roosevelt saw the presidency as a moral force for the country. We talk a lot today about moral values and the presidency. Well, Roosevelt said my issues are moral issues, the presidency is a bully pulpit. But for him the central moral issues for Americans were that Americans should know their vigor, should know their strength, that Americans should stand up and take their place on the world stage, that Americans should lead the strenuous life as people and be vigorous as a nation. There was a darker side to that, too, which makes him interesting because he believed America should take its rightful place on the world stage but it was also a form of imperialism. When he said speak softly and carry a big stick he meant that America should be a guiding spirit for the rest of the world. He didn't think that the rest of the world had their own sense of morality, their own sense of nationhood. He was ready to go into Panama or go into the sovereign nation of Columbia, and take Panama away from them.