An American Maverick – England’s Absolute Monarchs
Prof. Kumar David
Let’s take a break from the pandemonium of crossovers and filthy money-politics and enjoy the New Year. In any case I have had my final say when I argued for a “Principled Compromise” in Colombo Telegraph on New Year’s Day. The compromise was: OK back Sirisena and ensure he wins; but culturing a strong people’s movement and independent mass mobilisation demanding abolition of the Executive Presidency and no longer tolerating rotten rulers is the far more important long-term priority. I will leave it at that with no more interventions, including what follows below till after 8 January.
Today will be two yarns with odd symmetries to the present; one anecdotal, Teddy Roosevelt at the turn of the Twentieth Century; the other historical, reaching back to the century before the English Revolution. The Roosevelt story is charming. One of five great American Presidents alongside Washington, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and FDR; he was an accidental comet which appeared out of the blue but he did not renege on his pledges, unlike Maithripala Sirisena who did but seems headed for a big victory unless Rajapakse can cook up a pretext to call off elections.
In year 1900 Republican presidential nominee William McKinley chose New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt as running mate thanks to two quirks of fate. McKinely was running for his second term but his serving Vice-President Grant Hobart died of heart failure a year before and the slot was empty. The second reason, paradoxically, was Teddy’s tough stance against monopolies and big business. Mega-money wanted him out of NY State. The likes of J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller longed to see his back as no amount of cash or cajoling could budge his obstinacy to curb monopoly capital which ruled New York, read United States, those days. He believed that the people’s mandate belonged to the elected representatives, not big business. (Andrew Carnegie just after he sold Carnegie Steel to J. P. Morgan for $1.4 billion in 1901 was the richest man in the world, worth in equivalent money, more than the two richest billionaires of today combined).Read More
