Coming through the telephone like an early talkie, the line crackly, the voice full of clip and bravado, Teddy Roosevelt has some definite thoughts on the shenanigans afoot in the 2012 election.

While The Union Leader hasn't managed to raise an ex-President from the dead, a dead-ringer for the President, historian and Teddy Roosevelt repriser Joe Wiegand, agreed to share Roosevelt's insights on politics then and now with the Sunday News.

Weigand will present a one-man theater show about Roosevelt tonight at The Fells estate in Newbury.

Q: Compare campaigning in your time to campaigning now.

A: The most obvious I think is how much larger and how much more populated a country the United States is. At the time that I was a candidate for national office, we numbered roughly 100 million in population.

And you'll recall, of course, there were two major impediments to suffrage. First, of course, women lacked the suffrage, we had not yet adopted the constitutional amendment of providing women with the right to vote. Something that was first advocated nationally in the 1912 Progressive Party platform that I represented as the candidate for the Bull Moose Party.

And of course in the South, the disenfranchisement of ... the African-American voter. Those were two factors that make the elections very, very different: the fact that the electorate was overwhelmingly white and universally male. You can imagine what a different sort of environment politics was with that sort of disenfranchisement.

Now with regard to the technicalities of elections, there were also the dominance of the national party organizations and what I often call the machine or the boss politician organization.

We have eventually through a system of primaries, and 1912 being a campaign that saw more primaries — I actually campaigned throughout the country in 1910 and 1911, for more states to adopt the primary nomination process for the nomination of presidential electors, which of course is something that places New Hampshire now in great prominence across the country.

Most delegates to the national conventions of the major parties were selected by state conventions, and those state conventions were very likely subject to the manipulations of the state and local forces of that party. Whereas now I think we would all say that almost without fail, the caucuses and primaries that are held during the presidential election season are much more open to small “d” democratic and small “r” republican in nature in the fact that they average and common citizen has the right to voice his or her opinion and cast his or her ballot for his or her preferred candidate.

Q: And now, how do you think — wait, did I interrupt you?

A: I could go on, I've been known to filibuster. I could spend an hour with each of your questions.

But of course (one more point) there's the mechanics. We of course have today television. When we talk about the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the major candidates, most of it is being spent on television.

In my day, not only did we not have television, we had no radio, we had no moving pictures. The newspaper and the distribution of printed materials were perhaps the greatest expense as well as travel by train for the candidate himself or herself. And of course, there were proxies — spokesmen — 12 men primarily throughout the country who would tour their own region or other regions where they might seem to have some influence and they would speak on behalf of the candidacies and speak on behalf of the ticket. So the mechanics is different.

Q: Talk to me a little bit about how the Republican Party has changed since your time.

A: Well, I still think the Republican Party is still the party of Lincoln. … I do still believe that it is still the party of the shopkeeper, of the mechanic, of the farmer, of the small business person on Main Street and the family that lives on Elm Street. That the values of the Republican Party still hold true to those that Lincoln espoused.

Now there were dynamics during my time where as President and governor of New York and other positions that I held, I found myself fighting members of my own party leadership and against members of special interests that sought to control the party leadership and the outcomes of public policy. These sorts of problems have always been with us. But I do still believe I would still identify myself with The Republican Party. …

Tonight at The Fells estate in Newbury, Wiegand will present a one-man theater show of adventure stories, personal exploits, political insights and humor of Roosevelt. A reception will follow. The cost is $60. To make reservations, call 763-4789 Ext. 3.