To go into New York politics from 1880-1882 was, for a young man
of Roosevelt's place in life, just out of college, what most of
his friends and associates called "simply crazy." That young men
of good education no longer think it a crazy thing to do, but an
honorable and important one, is due to Theodore Roosevelt more
than to any other one man.

As he sat on the window-seat of his friend's room in Holworthy
Hall, that day, and said he was going to try to help the cause of
better government in New York, Mr. Thayer looked at him and
wondered if he were "the real thing." Thirty-nine years later Mr.
Thayer looked back over the career of his college mate, and knew
that he had talked that day with one of the great men of our
Republic, with one who, as another of his college friends says,
was never a "politician" in the bad sense, but was always trying
to advance the cause of better government

The reason why it seemed to many good people a crazy thing to go
into politics was that the work was hard and disagreeable much of
the time. Politics were in the hands of saloon-keepers, toughs,
drivers of street cars and other "low" people, as they put it. The
nice folk liked to sit at home, sigh, and say: "Politics are
rotten." Then they wondered why politics did not instantly become
pure. They demanded "reform" in politics, as Roosevelt said, as if
reform were something which could be handed round like slices of
cake. Their way of getting reform, if they tried any way at all,
was to write letters to the newspapers, complaining about the
"crooked politicians," and they always chose the newspapers which
those politicians never read and cared nothing about.