Walk Softly and Carry a Big Stick

What part of Teddy Roosevelt's famous quote does Trump not get? Probably all of it. Then again, there is the Bad Cop Good Cop approach. Tillerson is the good cop being calm and rational while Trump is the bad cop talking about nuclear war. Tillerson says we just want to negotiate. Trump says we want to annihilate. Teddy Roosevelt knew that power backed by words was the answer. But not bragging backed by more bragging. If you have a Big Stick and speak softly then you probably wont have to use it. But if you shout and threaten and then don't use it, then everyone knows you are a bluffer.

Trump undoubtedly knows how to fight. He has done it all his life. From the schoolyard on where he would back down people with threats. When the justice department filed suit over a discrimination case Trump counter sued for millions. Punch and then counter punch. The folks at CNN are not used to this. They looked like they might puke as they contemplated nuclear war. Wolf Blitzer didn't look happy and Erin Burnett looked like she wanted to take her children and run for the hills. Trump has that affect on people.

But lets say Trump does get Teddy Roosevelt's famous edict. He knows he is backed up by a big stick and hes giving the guy with the bad haircut a little of his own. At a point a schoolyard bully is a schoolyard bully and you have to smack him back. It does take one to know one.

Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt

The Day Teddy Roosevelt's Wife and Mother Died

                                                                             
Theodore Roosevelt clutched the two telegrams, shifting uncomfortably in the train—leaning forward, tapping his foot, trying to hurry on the frustratingly slow steam engine. Roosevelt was a man with a beautiful wife, a new baby, a brilliant political career, and the patronage and wealth of an aristocratic family behind him. Now, all this seemed in danger. The young assemblyman from Albany was making his way 145 miles south to Manhattan, where his wife and his mother both lay dying. On a clear day the train ride from Albany to Manhattan took five hours, but a heavy fog had been hovering over New York for days, seeming to portend what lay ahead for him. Teddy Roosevelt tapped his foot impatiently and stared at the first telegram. You have a baby girl. Congratulations. The second telegram told a much different story. Come at once. Mother and Alice gravely ill. The light went out for Roosevelt that day as he ran for the train. The man who valued action above all else could now do nothing but wait to be delivered to destiny.

Roosevelt stared out the window. The fog reminded him of when he was a boy and he would sleep sitting straight up because his asthma squeezed his small chest. On such nights, his father would take him out in his carriage. They would ride like the wind through the streets of New York. “Open your mouth Teddy! Open your mouth!” his father instructed. “Let the air in!” And, as in a primitive oxygen ventilator, he would open his mouth and feel the cool air go down his throat and inflate his lungs. The image of a man frantically driving a black, rain-slicked carriage through the night streets of New York, and a boy hanging off the side with his mouth open to the heavens—it was all his father could do, after walking up and down the hallway with him all night. The rich man’s son could get no air, and his father could only admonish the boy to open his mouth while he sped the horses savagely along. “Faster! Faster! For my son must breathe!” 

Now the train was pulling into Grand Central Station. The young dandy ran for his home in a fog so thick he could only grope his way toward 57th Street, where the lordly Roosevelt mansion commanded the street. Finally, he ran up the stairs to where his young wife, Alice, lay in bed. She was dying of Bright’s disease, an affliction of the kidneys causing fever, vomiting, terrible back pain, and bloody urine. They had just married the year before, but now the love of his life was dying in his arms. 

Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt