SOURCE: "Reversible Figure: Will Rogers and Politics," in Will Rogers: A Biography, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993, pp. 285-303.

In the following essay, Yagoda provides an explication of Rogers's political beliefs.

Politically, Will was a little hard to pin down. What was one to make of a columnist who, as occasion demanded, would praise Calvin Coolidge and Al Smith, Dwight Morrow and Robert La Follette Jr., William Borah and Franklin D. Roosevelt? The inconsistency, however, was more apparent than real; certainly Will was not unaware of the sizable differences among these men of affairs. It was just that as he developed as a commentator through the 1920s and into the 1930s, he was able to pick and choose his issues, never blindly casting his lot with any camp. One explanation for this catholic perspective is his childhood and youth in the Indian Territory, whose political parameters corresponded in no way...