Norman Adler Quotes
The seventh year is always a big problem for [political] executives. Programs that were initiated with promise show they have been inadequate or failed. The majesty of the office is diminished by familiarity. People find out you're just like the other guys.
Norman Adler, Political Consultant, Quoted in New York Times, May 25, 1989
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Stimson had run for the New York Governor and had lost. Stimson had been offered by President Taft the job of Secretary of State, and asked TR’s advice as to whether to take it. Stimson became Secretary of State.
He had been awarded The Onassis Prize For Man and Mankind.
This quotation perhaps was the most critical in Roosevelt’s political career. After winning the presidential election in his own right, that evening at a press conference he called, he not only committed to serving only two terms—then a custom and not law as it would be after WWII—but he also committed that his first three and a half years where he was not elected but assumed the presidency upon McKinley’s assassination would count as a full elected term. He therefore in 1908 could not run again even though the public wanted him to, and he might have liked another term. More important historically was 1912. Roosevelt had chosen his close friend and colleague William Howard Taft to succeed him and with Roosevelt’s support he was elected in 1908. But Taft’s wife who had always been his closest political advisor and reviewer of all his policies and speeches, had a stroke shortly after Taft was elected. Taft’s performance as President was very disappointing to Roosevelt, and he ran against Taft in the 1912 Republican nominating campaign. The very conservative Republicans were against Roosevelt, but many of those who liked him were distressed that he was reneging on his pledge not to run for a 3rd term. Roosevelt lost, and famously started the Bull Moose Party and ran against Taft and Wilson. He outpolled Taft but with the split Republican vote, Woodrow Wilson won the Presidency. This pledge haunted Roosevelt for the rest of his life.
Norman Tenner Adler through his research, teaching, writing, and academic administration, made major contributions to the modern study of biological psychology and in American higher education, having helped develop the fields that are now labeled behavioral neurobiology and evolutionary psychology. One of Adler's prominent experiments included an in depth analysis of mating performance of male rats and its relation to fertilization in the female, which led him to observe how behaviour could affect reproduction in species. With his students and colleagues, he has worked at the interface between biology and behavior. They have stressed the importance of combining the study of physiological mechanisms controlling behavior with the functional/adaptive significance of behavior in an evolutionary context. He was influenced in this approach by his undergraduate teachers at Harvard, especially Paul Rozin, Jerry Hogan, and Gordon Bermant, and his student colleagues like Don Pfaff with whom he has maintained scientific relationships over the years. His research was also impacted by Daniel Lehrman, and he worked closely with Lehrman's student, Barry Komisaruk, on hormones and neural functioning. Adler is also a prominent figure in American higher education, especially the role of behavioral neuroscience in liberal arts education and religion in the college classroom. He participated in Phillip Zimbardo's PBS TV series Discovering Psychology, one of the first distance-learning courses in psychology.
