The 1912 Election

For some people, politics and elections are an exercise in patience and endurance.  For these people, elections are a string of distorted facts, hyperbole and one boring candidate trying to talk over another.  Often, the major complaint of American political elections, particularly the presidential ones, is that they are made up of candidates not worthy of the office.  However, there was one election that would see not two but three men who spent a nearly combined twenty years in the Oval Office.  It is not spoken about often, but the 1912 election is one of the more interesting ones of the 20^th century.  

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-9) had some regrets in life but likely none more than the day he said, during the 1904 presidential campaign, that he would not seek a second elected term.  After his presidency, he grew increasingly disenchanted with his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, to continue his progressive policies to the point of throwing his hat into the ring once more for 1912.  President Taft (1909-13) was no Rough Rider but the corpulent chief executive was a good steward of progressive ideals though he had lost a key fight against the old guard Republicans over tariffs.  The Democrats, sensing a weakened Republican party, selected New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) to carry them to victory.  The former president of Princeton University made a career of smashing people’s misconceptions of the timid academic and proved more than capable in the rough and tumble world of New Jersey politics.     

The campaign would be remembered as one of the more lively ones in recent history.  All three were men were progressives, all believing that the government needed to take on a more expansive role.  However, that is where the togetherness ended.  Mr. Roosevelt was pushing a more radical version of his Square Deal, coined New Nationalism, with increased business regulations and social welfare.  Governor Wilson’s New Freedom sought to favor small entrepreneurship and the breakup of the large corporations.  President Taft, a lawyer who never wanted to be president, spent the beginning of the campaign questioning his options. 

From a sensational point of view, the campaign was known for two things.  In October, the former president was shot in the chest while in Milwaukee by a man upset about the idea of third terms.  He survived partly because the bullet hit his bulky, folded speech in his suit breast pocket.  It was still dangerous, however, because he insisted on given an hour and a half speech before going to the hospital.  Both President Taft and Governor Wilson suspended their campaigns and offered condolences but that was as magnanimous as it got.  Teddy Roosevelt resorted to attacking his former friend by calling him a “fat head.”  Formerly blasé President Taft struck back, calling his former mentor a “demagogue” and a “dangerous egotist.”   

Woodrow Wilson, a minister’s son, won the election easily against a divided Republican opposition.  He would lead the U.S. through World War One and tried to take an isolated nation into an internationalist role.  He signed into existence the Federal Reserve System as well as the Federal Trade Commission.  He was only the second Democrat to win the White House since the Civil War.  The Rough Rider retired to New York and spent much of his time attacking President Wilson’s lack of response to European aggression.  William Howard Taft left politics altogether and re-entered the legal profession, teaching at Yale for eight years.  Then, in 1921, President Warren Harding gave him his dream job when Professor Taft became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. 

Seldom has a presidential election seen such a tandem of candidates and likely, it will not happen again.  While, in many ways, Woodrow Wilson’s presidency is seen as a success, it marked an end to the progressive period and a re-commitment to isolationism and conservatism.  Though seldom discussed to the extent of its importance, the 1912 election was unique in its ramification for the future of the country and its direction.  It is worthy of further study and shows that politics is anything but a boring process filled with colorless characters.