p.

Then, every Republican in active politics who was anything but a rubber
stamp politician had a difficult problem to face. Should he support
Blaine, in whom he could have no confidence and for whom he could have
no respect, or should he "bolt"? A large group decided to bolt. They
organized the Mugwump party--the epithet was flung at them with no
friendly intent by Charles A. Dana of the New York Sun, but they made of
it an honorable title--under the leadership of George William Curtis and
Carl Schurz. Their announced purpose was to defeat the Republicans, from
whose ranks they had seceded, and in this attempt they were successful.

Roosevelt, however, made the opposite decision. Indeed, he had made the
decision before he entered the Convention. It was characteristic of him
not to wait until the choice was upon him but to look ahead and make
up his mind just which course he would take if and when a certain
contingency arose. I remember that once in the later days at Oyster Bay
he said to me, "They say I am impulsive. It isn't true. The fact is that
on all the important things that may come up for decision in my life, I
have thought the thing out in advance and know what I will do. So when
the moment comes, I don't have to stop to work it out then. My decision
is already made. I have only to put it into action. It looks like
impulsiveness. It is nothing of the sort."

So, in 1884, when Roosevelt met his first problem in national politics,
he already knew what he would do. He would support Blaine, for he was
a party man. The decision wounded many of his friends. But it was the
natural result of his political philosophy. He believed in political
parties as instruments for securing the translation into action of the
popular will. He perceived that the party system, as distinguished from
the group system of the continental peoples, was the Anglo-Saxon, the
American way of doing things. He wanted to get things done. There was
only one thing that he valued more than achievement and that was the
right. Therefore, until it became a clean issue between right and wrong,
he would stick to the instrument which seemed to him the most efficient
for getting things done. So he stuck to his party, in spite of his
distaste for its candidate, and saw it go down in defeat.

Roosevelt never changed his mind about this important matter. He was a
party man to the end. In 1912 he left his old party on what he believed
to be--and what was--