Katie Hargrave / Surely it is this.
Theodore Roosevelt has a dual face in the imaginations of Americans. Alternately, he is monumental and forgotten.
Roosevelt is an unheroic American President. Schoolchildren do not learn of his smarts or good deeds like we do for Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and jet, he is given the place of honor on Mount Rushmore next to those archetypal presidents. He was not elected, instead inherited the presidency after an assassination. And his leisure activities on safari reflect the ways in which he responded to policy in the US: creating national parks, enacting conservation policies, and expanding territory.Roosevelt thought of himself, too, as unheroic, and his interests were not in gaining a space of revery in the hearts and minds of his constituents. Instead, he was proud of his unwavering decision making ability, for which he would not apologize.
In 1911, after his tenure as president had come to a close, Roosevelt's name was chosen to garnish one of the first water reclamation project he pushed through congress: Roosevelt Dam in Arizona. At the dedication, he stated:
"I do not know if it is of any consequence to a man whether he has a monument; I know it is of mighty little consequence whether he has a statue after he is dead. If there could be any monument which would appeal to any man, surely it is this."
Following his death in 1919, he is forgotten across the spaces that would matter to him: Roosevelt Dam is removed from the National Registry of Historic Places, and his birthplace is torn down. But he is remembered in other ways that he explicitly states he does not wish to be: Mount Rushmore is erected sporting his likeness and the Natural History Museum in New York City is decorated with an equestrian statue of him.