I was embarrassed when I realized that I have been so busy that I had not posted any new content in over a year. Ok, time to fix that!

As I present Roosevelt across the country, I am finding more and more people asking me if I would run for President again.  Of course, this is tongue-in-cheek, but it really is a desire by our citizens for leadership that connects to most, not only some.

Roosevelt started his life with a father who had a very moral view of right and wrong.  Theodore Roosevelt Senior felt that wealth meant responsibility to use resources to help others.  Roosevelt helped found the New York City Children’s Aid Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the New York Children’s Orthopedic Hospital.   of His father, “Teddy” said “My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness. As we grew older, he made us understand that the same standard of clean living was demanded the boys as for the girls; that what was wrong in a woman could not be right in a man. With great love and patience, and the most generous sympathy and consideration, he combined insistence on discipline. He never physically punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom I was ever really afraid. I do not mean that it was a wrong fear, for he was entirely just, and we children adored him”

With a great leader roll model growing up, President Theodore Roosevelt could apply what he had learned from him, along with his own brilliance, to create a Presidency that today we embrace as visionary.

Roosevelt had three main areas on which he focused:

• Conservation of our Natural Resources
• Control of Corporations
• Consumer protection (which became American Protection)

It is my opinion that Roosevelt, as a father of six himself, viewed the role of President as being “the Father of the Country”.  If you read his speeches, he often speaks of the importance of the role of the farmer as an American steward, not only of the land, but of the family, and the handing down of their resources thoughtfully from generation to generation.    Roosevelt embraced this farmer approach to his Presidency.

“Of all the questions that can face our nation, short of it’s preservation in a war, there is none, that compares in the importance, to the great task, of leading this land even a better land for our descendant’s than it is for us”.

Great Leaders demonstrate an ability to create a vision that can be embraced by the masses to the benefit of the masses.  They recruit great thought leaders to share opinions and work towards a common goal.  They support, encourage and recognize the important contribution of all the stakeholders and make them feel they are critical to the agenda’s success.  Most importantly, they promote others for the accomplishments when successful, and take personal accountability when they do not.

That’s the Leadership that lead to 230,000,000 million acres of land preserved for future generations of Americans.  That’s the leadership that held Corporations accountable to follow the laws.  That’s the leadership that sent a “great white fleet” across the globe to promote world peace.  That’s the leadership that built a canal across the Isthmus of Panama.  That’s the leadership that earned a great man a Nobel Peace Prize.