On the same day Theodore Roosevelt narrowly survived an assassination attempt, his press secretary handed him a newspaper editorial from the Iron Ore, a small-town daily located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Its publisher, George Newett, had printed, "Roosevelt lies and curses in a most disgusting way; he gets drunk, too, and that not infrequently, and all his intimates know about it." Tired of having his boisterous personality equated with intoxication,...