and bringing new constituencies, especially women, into its tent. However, in becoming so closely associated with one leader, the Progressive Party—like other third-party efforts afterward—lost much of its steam when that leader was no longer at its helm.
In the fall of 1912, however, the Bull Moose was going strong. And his full-throated message of reform was irritating the heck out of Eugene V. Debs.
While Republicans imploded and Democrats battled, the Socialist Party had been steadily building support among working-class constituencies across the country. In the years since Debs had launched his first insurgent presidential campaign in 1904, the Socialists had moved from being seen as ultraradical to nearly respectable. In both 1904 and 1908 Debs had won close to half a million votes. By 1912, both Milwaukee and Syracuse had elected Socialist mayors. The Party had denounced the violent tactics of labor radicals and distanced itself from the anarchist fringe. One socialist paper proclaimed, “the American Socialist is no longer a creature of hoofs and horns.”31 While Socialism still operated on the margins of mainstream politics, and Eugene Debs had no illusions he would actually win the presidency, he sensed that 1912 could be the year his party could become a significant electoral force.32
When he formally kicked off his campaign in June with what a Socialist paper termed a “monster picnic” in Chicago, Debs expressed increasing confidence in the Socialists’ chances as the standard-bearing agent of true reform. “There is no longer even the pretense of difference between the so-called Republican and Democratic parties,” he told the crowd, “they are substantially one in what they stand for.” The infighting of the primary season showed that “both of these old capitalist class machines are going to pieces” and their destruction was imminent, and inevitable.33
Roosevelt’s breakaway from the Republicans challenged this formulation, but in Debs’s estimation TR was just as much a capitalist tool as ever. So Debs fumed when Roosevelt started saying things leftists had been saying for years. He steamed as Roosevelt brazenly stole the Socialist brand by making a red kerchief a symbol of his Bull Moose campaign. As the fall campaign neared, Debs dismissed the Progressive’s claims of true reform and reminded his working-class audiences that only the Socialists would fight for their interests. “The Republican, Democratic and Progressive conventions were composed in the main and controlled entirely by professional politicians in the service of the ruling class,” he raged in August. “Wage-slaves would not have been tolerated in their company.”34
The problem was that Debs was good at taking others down, and not so good at saying what he would do differently. His speeches were energetic, but skimpy on the policy details. Discontented voters might have turned to Socialism as a third-party alternative, but now the rise of the Progressive Party created another outlet for this voter frustration. Progressives had taken up some radical ideas, and in doing so they had left the true radicals behind.
Woodrow Wilson also saw TR as his chief rival as the fall campaign began. “The contest is between him and me,” he wrote Mary Hulbert, “not Taft and me.” Wilson worried about how he’d stack up. Roosevelt “appeals to their imagination; I do not,” he admitted. “He is a real, vivid person … I am a vague, conjectural personality.” With these concerns in mind, Wilson fired up the progressive rhetoric and the political theatrics as he hit the campaign trail.35
Wilson’s first major address of the fall campaign was on Labor Day in Buffalo to a large, largely working-class crowd. Denouncing corporate greed and worker injustices, he sounded similar themes to TR but drew stark contrasts between how he and his Progressive opponent would address these problems. Regulating business, as Roosevelt proposed to do, was not enough. Creating a large government bureaucracy to manage markets and institute things like the minimum wage would be even worse for the working class than the current order, Wilson argued. “Do you want to be taken care of by a combination of the government and the monopolies?” he asked his audience (a listener shouted out, “No!”).36
This message won Wilson key endorsements, most notably Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, as well as many of the populist Westerners who had once supported Bryan. This well-mannered, professorial candidate was taking on the issues and interests that most appealed to them and speaking eloquently about their individual rights and freedoms.
The notion of individual rights—and the idea that a large, central government threatened personal autonomy and opportunity—was a critical distinction between what Wilson called his “New Freedom” and Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism.” For Roosevelt, a strong and more muscular government in Washington could regulate a runaway capitalist system and ensure rights through expert and efficient public administration. Wilson had a states’-rights centered philosophy that argued that the only way to ensure the rights of all was to break up the large corporations and resist the creation of a large central bureaucracies. States and localities should be the loci of government activism. Washington should stay out of the way. This was the debate that had animated partisan politics since the days of Jefferson and Hamilton, updated for the modern industrial era.
At the end of the day, both men had the same goals—and thought political action was the way to achieve them. But they had different visions of how Washington should go about it. This distinction would have an important legacy on politics through the rest of the twentieth century.
The Home Stretch
By October, the election was all about Roosevelt and Wilson. Eugene Debs was off preaching to the Socialist faithful, but not winning many converts. His campaign schedule was highly unstrategic, planned according to where Debs had the largest numbers of supporters—not according to where the largest numbers of electoral votes were in play. As has happened other times in leftist politics, it was difficult to mobilize a disciplined, well-organized campaign led by people and groups whose political ideology was firmly anti-establishment and anti-hierarchical, and who strongly disdained central organization.
After his victory at the Republican Convention, nearly nothing could go right for William Howard Taft. Even by late July, he was already complaining, “there is no news from me except that I played golf.” By late September, he glumly wrote a friend, “I am already reconciled to defeat.” To add insult to injury, Taft’s vice president James Sherman died about a week before Election Day, forcing him to rustle up a last-minute replacement.37
By that point, no one seemed to notice or care. The Republican Party establishment had concluded that Taft was not going to win, yet the party bosses hated Roosevelt for his betrayal. Instead, they actively campaigned for Wilson. The GOP had imploded on itself, and Wilson was the beneficiary. Roosevelt’s weaknesses, too, were starting to lessen the momentum of the campaign over the fall months. His positions on regulation (rather than breaking up monopolies) as well as his failure to range too far from Republican orthodoxy on the tariff created weak spots Wilson exploited in his increasingly effervescent appearances on the stump.
Figure 8. “The Statesman’s Playtime—Hon. William H. Taft on the Golf Links, at Hot Springs, Virginia,” 1908. President Taft found it difficult to draw the attention of voters and reporters away from the electrifying race between Wilson and Roosevelt. Ignored by the media and isolated from old allies, the incumbent president complained as early as July that “there is no news from me except that I played golf.” Keystone View Company, Library of Congress.
There was still another twist yet to come in this pivotal campaign, however. By 14 October, Roosevelt had visited 32 states since his nomination. He had given over 150 speeches. His voice was hoarse, and despite his incredible strength and endurance, his energy was flagging. Although he’d canceled two speeches in the days before, Roosevelt insisted on speaking in Milwaukee—a Socialist stronghold and a great place to stake his
