Theodore Roosevelt

John McCain acts like he wants you to think he's the second coming of Theodore Roosevelt. The presumptive Republican nominee channels the 26th president -- his "ultimate hero" -- on the campaign trail, in his platform, even in an online ad in which images of the two are juxtaposed. "I am," he has said, "a Teddy Roosevelt Republican." Why does he make this analogy?

Like old generals, most presidents, when they leave office, slowly fade away. Such men as Washington and Jefferson retired to their estates and departed from the public scene. There were a few exceptions -- John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren served in Congress after they were evicted from the White House -- but on the whole, the presidency was the apex and the end of a long career. But Theodore Roosevelt was not like most presidents.

Presidential elections are a seamless web, especially now in the days of the "permanent campaign." Who doubts that the presidential campaign of 2004 began as soon as the Supreme Court selected George W. Bush as the winner in 2000? James Chace's "1912" chronicles the dramatic four-cornered contest that year among Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Eugene Debs, arguably the clearest choices in our history.

President Theodore Roosevelt may be long gone, but his words still pack a punch in Riverside County. The Anti-Defamation League and a Christian attorney from Temecula are locked in a legal fight over a Roosevelt quote carved into a mahogany wall of the historic County Courthouse. The passage -- "The true Christian is the true citizen" -- is one of four presidential quotes engraved on the walls of a courtroom primarily used to hear civil cases.

Shortly after he survived an assassination attempt in Milwaukee in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt said: "No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way." It was also an extraordinary life. Not only was he the 26th president of the United States -- and at 42 the youngest to ever hold the office -- Roosevelt was a true Renaissance man. He wrote 35 books, was a legislator, cowboy, war hero, father, husband, conservationist and scholar.

What kind of train makes people sneeze? A choo-choo. Bryant, 8 Eucalyptus Elementary, Hawthorne * Why didn't horses like Theodore Roosevelt? Because he was a Rough Rider. Olimpiamaria, 10 Rio San Gabriel Elementary, Downey

The Sioux call this bleak terrain mako shika, "land of no good." When Gen. Alfred Sully led an expedition through North Dakota's badlands in the 1860s, he dubbed the place "hell with the fires out." But in 1883, when a 24-year-old New Yorker named Teddy Roosevelt arrived on this frontier for the first time, he called the experience "the romance of my life." On a family vacation two years ago, I began to understand why.

Here's a tougher challenge than scaling Half Dome: Ring up the president of the United States and invite him to go camping in Yosemite -- with the sole intent of pestering him to protect the wilderness. That's pretty much what John Muir did in 1903, when he and Teddy Roosevelt took off on mules with only a packer and a cook on a four-day trip from Yosemite Valley to Glacier Point.

There is little dispute about the valor displayed on that steamy afternoon in the Cuban jungles 100 years ago this summer. Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt, in his tailored Brooks Brothers uniform, his slouch hat trailing an eye-popping polka-dotted scarf, first led his dismounted cavalry through withering fire from Spanish troops to the crest of Kettle Hill. "I waved my hat and went up with a rush," the "Bully" president later wrote.

Theodore Roosevelt so much embodied the United States at the last turn of the century that it is hard to separate the nation from the man. Both were ebullient and confident and pushing to stand on the world stage. Both were romantically addicted to the idea of war. Both were ardent believers in self-improvement. Yet both had dark periods of trouble and self-doubt.