Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Campaign | Why Wilson Wasn't Really a Progressive!
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- Опубліковано 24 сер 2020
- In this episode, we talk about Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 “Bull Moose” Progressive Party campaign and the three-way presidential contest over progressivism.
The 1912 election involved three candidates, Republican William Howard Taft, Progressive Party candidate Teddy Roosevelt, Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Taft was a former close adviser of Roosevelt who Roosevelt had handpicked as his successor in 1908 because he believed Taft a solid progressive who would continue his progressive legacy. Roosevelt was a progressive champion as president who was now running on an even stronger progressive agenda as the head of a new Progressive Party. Wilson, a Democrat with a Southern small-government Jeffersonian background who had only entered politics two year before, now also claimed to be a progressive too.
America had a three-way presidential race. All three candidates had a solid claim on progressivism.
This epic race brought the great debate William Jennings Bryan launched in 1896 to its conclusion. America had struggled over how to reform its institutions to adapt to a new industrial economy. The Republican Party’s progressive agenda to address that problem was now so popular every candidate in a three-way race wanted to identify as a progressive. The great debate of America’s Fourth Party System was essentially resolved.
We talk in this episode about how Roosevelt, facing forced retirement after finishing two presidential terms, picked his good friend Taft to carry on his legacy. How he became disappointed with Taft while sitting on the sidelines, as he desperately wanted to get back into the ring and win his old job back. And how we decided to launch a comeback seeking a third term-at the time only prohibited by tradition and not yet law-splitting the Republican Party and leading to him launching a new Progressive Party as a vehicle for his agenda.
We also talk about how Woodrow Wilson, despite embracing the progressive movement and enacting progressive reforms, wasn’t really philosophically progressive.
Roosevelt run in 1912 on his philosophically progressive New Nationalism program, which demanded a stronger government to supervise a more complex industrial economy with big national businesses. Wilson countered with a program he called the New Freedom, rejecting bigness in both government and industry. Wilson invented a new small-government version of progressivism. Instead of federal regulation and supervision, Wilson would have a small government selectively intervene to break up private power, allowing the market to do the rest. Roosevelt’s program involved a powerful active government supervising large businesses. Wilson’s involved a small government intervening to maintain small businesses-a program that philosophically sounds a lot more like Jeffersonian Bourbon Democrats than progressivism.
Through Wilson’s presidency, America tumbled into the First World War. Then came the Roaring Twenties. America was prosperous, people were happy, and the Populist and Progressive Era of national reform came to its end. Setting America up for another realignment and the start of its next political party system, our Fifth Party System of New Deal liberals and modern conservatives that still rules today.
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I’ve been a history lover for about 20 years now. Since I was 12. I’m always scouring UA-cam and the internet for fascinating content to read and watch. As far as American politics and American history goes, few people have been able to lay out the overall fundamentals and basics better than you in a substantive way, bravo there’s really a lot to be learned and remembered from your work on these subjects!
Great breakdown. So many parallels between politics and branding of companies.
Excellent analysis, thank you!
Great stuff…!
1912 was a 4 way race.
This video I can really see how a moralist middle class anglo/protestant progressive movement could evolve into the modern Republican party.
So is the 1920s going to be their own video or will they be grouped with the onset of the great depression?
Frank, you look like Michael Scott
Was waiting to hear about our entrance into the League of Nations. I guess that is a foreign policy issue and wasn't much of a campaign issue. I feel though the isolationist and internationalist debate ended rather quickly once the 20s got started.
7:30
Progressive form back then would sadly be seen as far right in today’s mesed up wolrd
No one cna maintain credibility with me in talking about politics when they start repeating the myth that Wilson believed in Limited Government. On Domestic policy Wilson was the heir of Bryan, Bryan was in his administration and approved of everything he did until the Lusitania was sunk, the War alone was the break between Wilson and Bryan.
It was good enough for George Washington, but not for FDR! 😅😉
Democrats small government?