Constitution Center speakers: Is Trump the new Teddy Roosevelt?

It took less than 27 minutes for Donald Trump's name to be spoken aloud during a program on the history of the presidential primary process Thursday afternoon at the National Constitution Center.

"In some ways, Donald Trump is talked about as the unfiltered candidate, the one who doesn't think about what he says before he says it, who doesn't rely on the consultants to craft every remark," said presidential historian David Greenberg, a professor of history, journalism, and media studies at Rutgers University.

"In another respect, with social media, especially Twitter, he was kind of light-years in front of the other candidates. Trump is out there firing away, and this has fired up the press corps."

That's why Trump has gotten all the "oxygen" in election coverage, said Greenberg, author of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency.

For the most part, Thursday's program, "Persuading the People: Presidential Primaries and Political Spin," focused on President Theodore Roosevelt and the populist appeal he used to challenge incumbent President William Howard Taft for the 1912 GOP nomination.

Roosevelt, speakers said, mastered the art of spin, working the press and trying to be a mirror of the people through new technologies, a tactic that was ultimately successful and often replicated but didn't quite lead to demagoguery.

Geoffrey Cowan, author of Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary, said Trump could think of Roosevelt as a "kindred spirit." News organizations of the day accused Roosevelt of being "unhinged," yet they still covered his every move, Cowan said.

"In [the] campaign [against Taft], T.R.'s language became totally inflammatory. People [were] furious with him, and he [was] being completely unfair. By the way, he [was] constantly changing his positions on things," said Cowan, a professor in the communications and journalism department at the University of Southern California. "People were afraid what he could do as president."

A century later, those same fears - in this case, about Trump - were articulated by some in the crowded audience at the Constitution Center's Kirby Center.

"He is an outlier. He has taken the bizarre position of simply verbally attacking his competition," said Morris Barron, 84. "He spends more time on that than actually discussing the facts or the issues. He's outspoken and certainly smart about it."

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