In a letter to his campaign manager, dated Oct. 26, 1904, Roosevelt said: “I must ask you to direct that the money be returned to them forthwith.” As Roosevelt saw it: “We cannot under any circumstances afford to take a contribution which can be even improperly construed as putting us under an improper obligation.”

That kind of thinking is long gone, from both parties. Barack Obama, as well as Senator McCain, has taken contributions from oil industry executives. But what is telling about this particular difference between Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain is that it is so illustrative of what Roosevelt was really about, and how fundamentally different that was from what Senator McCain and the latter-day Republican Party is about.

“The truth of the matter is that Roosevelt today would be on the left,” said Mr. Brinkley, who is writing a biography of the former president titled “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt’s and the Crusade for America.”

Roosevelt believed passionately in regulating industry and curbing the excesses of the great corporations. He favored the imposition of an inheritance tax and fought his party’s increasing tendency to cater to the very wealthy. And, of course, he was a ferocious protector of the environment.

Image Bob Herbert

Roosevelt was known as the “trust-buster,” but it was in the area of environmental conservation that he really made his mark. Mr. Brinkley, in a draft preface to the biography, tells how a number of bird species in the U.S. were headed for extinction as the 20th century approached, in large part because of the popularity of feathered hats for women.