TEDDY ROOSEVELT AND BILL CLINTON: SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS

We began and ended the 20th century with two of the youngest men ever to hold the office of president of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he became president after McKinley's assassination in 1901. Clinton was 46 when he first took the oath of office. John Kennedy was 43.

Theodore Roosevelt is deemed one of the most colorful presidents in our history, and Bill Clinton is certainly one of the most controversial. In some respects, they are remarkably similar.

As restless young men, both Roosevelt and Clinton decided early on that they were destined to be president. They were exceptionally bright, feverishly active and insatiably ambitious. Both were voracious readers. They attended Eastern schools, Roosevelt at Harvard and Columbia Law School and Clinton at Georgetown and Yale Law School. Each lost his first race for major public office, Roosevelt for mayor of New York, Clinton for Congress.

Both were careless with the truth.

Roosevelt was perhaps not a conscious liar. He frequently stated facts and events incorrectly. Egotism, not mendacity, was his motivation. For example, his recollection of the events surrounding the creation of the Panama Canal ("I took Panama") is often replete with misstatements and unexplainable gaps in knowledge. William Cromwell of the now famous law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell was the adroit, skillful bagman of the canal conspiracy, yet Roosevelt was deliberately vague about even meeting with Cromwell in the White House or having any knowledge of what he was up to. One historian writes that when dealing with the history of the Panama Canal, Roosevelt was "the victim of self-hypnosis."

Clinton's dance around the truth needs no elaboration.

Although Roosevelt came from a moderately prosperous background, he was like Clinton, somewhat embarrassed and careless about his personal financial affairs.

Roosevelt and Clinton had outstanding powers of persuasion and an innate sense of political timing. Each could sense what would play in Peoria and was capable of stealing a public issue from his opponents. Roosevelt took some of William Jennings Bryan's ideas and made them his own. Clinton has been clever in borrowing ideas from the congressional Republicans.

Both Roosevelt and Clinton were beset with political fund-raising scandals. Each took gobs of big money from rich industrialists and financiers. They found themselves to be conveniently ignorant of any messy details or knowledge.

Each took great pride in their skills as international mediators. Roosevelt played that role in the Kaiser-Algerras affair and the Russo-Japanese war, for which he won the Nobel Prize that will probably elude Clinton. Clinton is taking the same tack in the Arab-Israeli dispute and in Northern Ireland.

Both attempted to anoint a successor, Roosevelt successfully so with William Howard Taft and Clinton as yet to be determined with Al Gore.

Of course, there were colossal difference as well. Roosevelt was described as being "excessively moral with small interest in any form of wickedness." Then there is Clinton.

Smart as he was, Roosevelt made little attempt to grasp economic issues. He was satisfied, in times of crisis, to leave things to J.P. Morgan. Clinton is fascinated by economic matters and was continuously educated by Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin.

Tariffs and trade were big political issue in both presidencies. For the most part, Roosevelt was an evasive protectionist and Clinton a somewhat equivocal free trader.

More contrasting than anything else were their views on war. To Roosevelt warfare was always glorious: "Only cowards evade the cost of a just war, and war is usually just. I am not in the least sensitive about killing any number of men if there is adequate reason." Clinton is a reluctant, cautious warrior, taking great pride in not losing one American soldier in combat in Kosovo.

As to their lives after the White House, we shall have to wait until well into the next century to evaluate Clinton's. He might be advised to read up on the post-White House life of TR as a precedent not to be repeated. Having relished every moment of presidential power, Roosevelt could not pass gently into private life. As a restless, energetic egotist, he became increasingly frustrated out of the limelight.

Politics for Roosevelt was his true and only profession. So too with Clinton. There was nothing else for Roosevelt to do except hunt. Writing could take up some of his time but was not enough to challenge the endless energetic man who was 50 when he left the White House.

Over time, Roosevelt grew distant from his handpicked successor, Taft. He came to believe that he and he alone could pursue the dream of social democracy.

Roosevelt went on a speaking tour espousing a New Nationalism of great presidential power to further the public good. He denounced the judiciary. Human rights were to take precedence over private profit, which should be regulated "to whatever degree the public welfare may require it."

Over time, he alienated many of his closest friends such as Henry Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root and Nicholas Murray Butler.

Month by month, Roosevelt would swing further to the left as Taft slowly turned to the right. Ultimately Roosevelt split off from Taft to form his own Progressive Party, thereby ensuring the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

Roosevelt grew to despise and excoriate Woodrow Wilson. When the United States entered World War I, Roosevelt asked Wilson to allow him to rouse a Roosevelt Division to fight in France, but permission was denied. This was his final frustration.

By reason of the 22nd Amendment, Clinton cannot think of a return to the White House as Roosevelt sought. Can Clinton bring himself to live out a quiet life leaving the center of the political stage to others, possibly even his wife? Or will his restlessness, energy and relative youth engender the same frustrations and anxiety that befell Roosevelt? Both of these men climbed the heights so soon as to leave years and years for bitterness as exiles from the political arena. It is tough to serve as president. It may be even tougher for Bill Clinton to be ex-president.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.