r mayor of New York and lost. He was appointed civil service commissioner in New York and, later, following a number of Washington appointments and serving in the Spanish-American War, ran for vice-president on the McKinley ticket. On McKinley's assassination, he became president. Roosevelt was not, when he became president, deeply committed to any particular course of action - though he had perceived himself as a reformer in New York. In his personal life Roosevelt, who had worked through boyhood illnesses, was an active sportsman and rancher. He became a famous soldier as well, when he served with his Rough Riders in the war. The main current in Roosevelt's intellectual life had been his interest in history. The subjects of his books, such as The Naval War of 1812 and the multivolume The Winning of the West, give an indication of where his interests lay. As president, the major issues Roosevelt faced were related to the re-positioning of the United States in relation to the international community, and the "response of government to the growth of big business" (Cooper 34).
Roosevelt was the first president to master the complexities of manipulating his image in the news media. His basic idea of himself, and he was a shrewd self-promoter, was that he was the man who would pr
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