Cowboy Presidents: The Frontier Myth and U.S. Politics since 1990

Abstract

The intersection of myth, identity, and politics is at the heart of David A. Smith's Cowboy Presidents. He examines four twentieth-century presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush—and how they incorporated Turnerian concepts of individualism, self-reliance, liberty, and democracy during their time in office. He breaks them into two camps, one forward looking and the other more nostalgic, and uses this division to detail how the myth of the frontier changed in response to the social and political atmosphere of each era. Roosevelt and Johnson used the frontier myth to project a liberal/progressive agenda that focused on expanding democracy's reach both in the United States and abroad. Roosevelt set the tone, as Smith details how his experiences out west in the late nineteenth century and continued visitation to the region influenced and, in a way, determined, his actions while in the White House. Sending the...