U.S.
Office of Personnel Management
Speech by Director James B. King
Theodore Roosevelt Ceremony
February 7, 1995
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U.S.
Office of Personnel Management
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Thank you.
I want to welcome our distinguished guests, and to thank all of you for being here.
We've come to honor the great American for whom this building is named.
We have many wonderful photographs of Theodore Roosevelt throughout the building, and we've had his desk in the Pendleton Room, up on the 5th floor, but now we've reconstructed a room very much like TR's own office, with his desk and chairs and many of his books.
This exhibit will be accessible to our employees and guests and all the American people.
We hope it will help all of us remember and honor one of the most remarkable, versatile, and talented public figures our country has produced.
As a boy, Theodore Roosevelt was frail and asthmatic.
He set out to develop his body as well as his mind, and become a boxer, mountain-climber, rancher, big-game hunter, and the rough-riding hero of San Juan Hill, as well as a prolific writer and an extraordinary politician.
Obviously, to be a boxer, big-game hunter and soldier is excellent preparation for a career in politics.
TR, as he was known -- and he was the first national figure to be called by his initials -- was a student at Harvard when his father was nominated by President Hayes to be Collector of the Port of New York.
His father was a Republican, but from the reform wing of the party, and his nomination was blocked by the boss of the state's Republican political machine, which caused young TR to tell a friend that after graduation he might try to help the cause of better government.
In retrospect, blocking that appointment was the worst mistake the practicioners of the spoils system ever made.
In 1881, at the age of 25, Roosevelt was elected to the New York State Assembly. As a Republican, of course. That was the same year that the assassination of President Garfield inspired a national
movement for civil-service reform.
For the rest of his life, TR championed the merit system of government.
He was extremely honest and equally stubborn, and it outraged him that government jobs should be bought and sold or that qualified candidates -- like his own father -- should be passed over for purely political reasons.
He believed passionately that, as he once said, "government jobs belong to the American people, not to politicians, and should be filled only with regard to public service."
His enemies were the great political bosses of his day, who called TR "that damned cowboy" and watched with horror as he moved up the political ladder.
In 1889 President General Benjamin Harrison appointed TR to the Civil Service Commission.
The Commission was only a few years old and, quite frankly, until then had done more to defend the spoils system than to dismantle it.
TR was soon battling the Postmaster General and half the Cabinet over improper political appointments.
President Harrison later said that the only trouble he ever had with Theodore Roosevelt was that "he wanted to put an end to all the evil of the world between sunrise and sunset."
TR performed with such zeal and unquestioned honesty that when a Democrat, Grover Cleveland, won the Presidency in 1892, he asked him to continue on the Commission.
When TR completed his six years on the Commission, 26,000 jobs had been transferred from the patronage rolls to the competitive civil service, in a government that then numbered about 205,000.
Moreover, he left the Commission with a reputation for integrity that still endures. The Commission is, of course, the forerunner of OPM, and we are dedicated to carrying on and expanding the reforms he began a century ago.
TR's next job was as Police Commissioner in New York, where he proceeded to horrify much of the population by enforcing the laws that said saloons must close on Sundays.
Soon he was the hero of San Juan Hill, Governor of New York, Vice President, and then, following the assassination of President McKinley, President at age 42.
As President, he was, among other things, the father of the Panama Canal, and of the environmental movement and anti-trust legislation, and much else.
He was triumphantly reelected in 1904, by what remained a record margin of victory until his distant Democratic kinsman, Franklin Roosevelt, exceeded it in 1932.
As President, Theodore Roosevelt continued the job he began as Civil Service Commissioner.
During his two terms, 90,000 newly created jobs were placed in the competitive service, along with 35,000 jobs that had previously been under patronage.
The competitive service was thus increased by 125,000 jobs and from 41.5 percent to 64 percent of the entire civil service.
TR truly was the father of our merit system of government, and those of us who still work to protect and perfect it can take our inspiration from him, as we do, every day.
Let us hope that this exhibit will recall not only Theodore Roosevelt but the legacy of good government he left us.
Today, when some people are attacking civil servants with words, and madmen are attacking them with bombs, let us remember this great American who dedicated himself to honoring and empowering government employees.
Finally, let us remember the enduring truth that, as he once put it, "The government is us."
We must strive to be worthy of that trust.
Thank you.
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Web page created 26 July 1997.