Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era:
The Politics of Progressive Era Political Historiography

Robert D. Johnston¹
Yale University

When historians fight about Progressivism—and fight they do—they are not just arguing about events of a century ago.  They are also struggling over the basic meanings of American democracy.  If we could face this fact more directly, and begin to come to grips with the stakes involved, we would not only advance the study of the past but, even in some small and indirect ways, we might improve the practice of our current politics as well.	1
Politicians standing at the center of our nation's democratic dramas recognize, even if often without nuance, the value of reclaiming the Progressive Era.  Cheerfully blurring historical distinctions, Bill Clinton announced as he left office, "I always felt that the work we did the last eight years made us the heir of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson."  In turn, Al Gore's communications director saw his candidate's "message more in the tradition of progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt, who confronted powerful trusts, rather than the populists who railed broadly against elites of all stripes."  Several years earlier the vice-president's main Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, wrote, "I've always admired the progressives, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who enabled the private sector to flourish but in a way more responsive to national purpose."2	2
Nor has it been only Democrats who have laid claim to the legacy of Progressivism's dynamic duo.  As I write, John McCain, proclaiming himself a latter-day TR, is considering leaving the rightward-drifting Republican Party.  Conservatives seek the progressive mantle as well.  Irving Kristol commented toward the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency, "it is no accident that Ronald Reagan chose a noted biographer of Theodore Roosevelt to be the official historian of his Administration.  Clearly, he sees himself belonging, in some sense, to an activist Republican tradition, and one, moreover, whose Ôconservatism' is not wholly orthodox."  (No matter that Dutch didn't quite realize that he had gained such a vigorous partner in time travel when he hooked up with Edmund Morris.)3	3
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