Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the two “outsiders” contesting, respectively, the Republican and Democratic nominations for the American presidency, each seem to regard the two Roosevelt presidents as models.
Trump is an economic nationalist who advocates a robust and nativist foreign policy — a platform very similar to that of President Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican in the White House from 1901 to 1908.
Sanders wants to recreate the liberalism of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal.
The multimillionaire Trump comes out of the early 20th century “titans of industry” tradition, while the socialist Sanders is the child of the 1960s New Left, which was itself an attempt to recreate earlier American revolutionary movements for economic, racial and social change.
While at the University of Chicago, Sanders joined radical student organizations like the Young People’s Socialist League and the Congress of Racial Equality.
Both New York born men are secular and neither makes much use of religious imagery.
Trump battles socially conservative evangelical Christians like Ted Cruz and “establishment” figures like Jeb Bush. Sanders has single-handedly taken on the well-oiled Hillary Clinton political machine, with only “grass roots” financial backing.
Trump, who has never held elected office, is no dyed-in-the-wool Republican. He espouses socially liberal positions at odds with many in his party — indeed, his views have been sneered at by Cruz as being “New York values.”
Like Teddy Roosevelt, Trump portrays himself as a “man of action.” (TR was a soldier in the 1898 Spanish-American War and one of its most conspicuous heroes.) Fred Trump, Donald’s father, told his three sons to be “killers.”
Trump supports the capitalist system but, again like Roosevelt, sees it as being in need of reform, in order to “make America great again.”
Theodore Roosevelt believed that America should “speak softly and carry a big stick” in the realm of international affairs and that its president should be willing to use force to back up his diplomatic negotiations. This is clearly something Trump agrees with.
Trump accuses the country’s elites of selling out America’s economic interests on behalf of a vague notion of “globalization” — one that has devastated domestic industries and has cost millions of workers well-paying jobs.
“We’re going to beat China, Japan, beat Mexico at trade,” he shouts at rallies. “We’re going to beat all of these countries that are taking so much of our money away from us on a daily basis. It’s not going to happen anymore.”
A populist, Sanders wants to revitalize the left and advance equality in the country. He also wants to reduce the power of the financial plutocrats on Wall Street who now dominate the economy and “buy” politicians through contributing billions of dollars in campaign donations.
Sanders is the only candidate who prioritizes campaign finance reform and appeals to those who feel the entire democratic system has broken down.
As well, Sanders advocates major reforms, including making public colleges and universities tuition-free, instituting universal health care, and transforming a criminal justice system that over-incarcerates people.
On foreign policy, Sanders is what used to be called a “dove.” He advocates abandoning policies that favor unilateral military action and pre-emptive war, ones that make the United States “the de facto policeman of the world.”
In effect, both men are independents.
Teddy Roosevelt left office after 1908 but, displeased with his Republican successor, William Howard Taft, in 1912 he bolted to form the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party. (Roosevelt had once referred to himself as being “as strong as a bull moose.”) This split the Republican vote, resulting in victory for the Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Trump, too, often seems a bull in a china shop, his loyalty to the Republican Party paper-thin. Might he, like Roosevelt, do the same if he loses the nomination?
As for Sanders, he was not even a member of the Democratic Party until last November. His political career in Vermont began with the Liberty Union Party, which grew out of the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s.
Sanders ran, and lost, as the Liberty Union candidate for governor of Vermont in 1972 and 1976 and as a candidate for U.S. senator in 1972 and 1974.
Later an independent, Sanders was mayor of Burlington in the 1980s, and a member of Congress after 1990, first in the House of Representatives and, since 2006, in the Senate.
Either or both of these candidates, if successful, may overturn the American political system as we know it.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.
