United States

These Republicans, like a majority of Americans, demanded such reforms as tariff reductions, an income tax, the direct election of senators, and even stricter railroad and corporation regulations. Taft, who had strongly supported Roosevelt’s policies, thought of himself as a progressive. Actually he was temperamentally and philosophically a conservative; moreover, he lacked the qualities of a dynamic popular leader. In the circumstances, his ineptness, indecision, and failure to lead could only spell disaster for his party.

Taft’s troubles began when he called Congress into special session in 1909 to take up the first item on his agenda—tariff reform. The measure that emerged from Congress actually increased rates. Republican insurgents and a majority of Americans were outraged, but Taft signed the bill and called it the best tariff law the Republicans had ever enacted. Conflicts and misunderstandings over conservation and legislative procedure caused the rift between Taft Republicans and the insurgents to grow. By 1910 the Republican insurgents were clearly in the ascendancy in the Congress. Taking control of the president’s railroad-regulation measure, they added new provisions that greatly enlarged the ICC’s authority. The following year they bitterly opposed Taft’s measure for tariff reciprocity with Canada; it passed with Democratic support in Congress, only to go down to defeat at the hands of the Canadian electorate.

The 1912 election

Republican insurgents were determined to prevent Taft’s renomination in 1912. They found their leader in Roosevelt, who had become increasingly alienated from Taft and who made a whirlwind campaign for the presidential nomination in the winter and spring of 1912. Roosevelt swept the presidential primaries, even in Taft’s own state of Ohio, but Taft and conservative Republicans controlled the powerful state organizations and the Republican National Committee and were able to nominate Taft by a narrow margin. Convinced that the bosses had stolen the nomination from him, Roosevelt led his followers out of the Republican convention. In August they organized the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party and named Roosevelt to lead the third-party cause. Hiram Johnson, the reform Republican governor of California, became Roosevelt’s running mate.

Democrats had swept the 1910 congressional and gubernatorial elections, and, after the disruption of the Republican Party in the spring of 1912, it was obvious that almost any passable Democrat could win the presidency in that year. Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University, who had made a brilliant progressive record as governor of New Jersey, was nominated by the Democrats on the 46th ballot.

Taft’s single objective in the 1912 campaign was to defeat Roosevelt. The real contest was between Roosevelt and Wilson for control of the Progressive majority. Campaigning strenuously on a platform that he called the New Nationalism, Roosevelt demanded effective control of big business through a strong federal commission, radical tax reform, and a whole series of measures to put the federal government squarely into the business of social and economic reform. By contrast Wilson seemed conservative with a program he called the New Freedom; it envisaged a concerted effort to destroy monopoly and to open the doors of economic opportunity to small businessmen through drastic tariff reduction, banking reform, and severe tightening of the antitrust laws. Roosevelt outpolled Taft in the election, but he failed to win many Democratic Progressives away from Wilson, who won by a huge majority of electoral votes, though receiving only about 42 percent of the popular vote.

The New Freedom and its transformation

A trained political scientist and historian, Wilson believed that the president should be the leader of public opinion, the chief formulator of legislative policy, and virtually sovereign in the conduct of foreign relations. With the support of an aroused public opinion and a compliant Democratic majority, he was able to put his theories of leadership into effect with spectacular success.

Wilson, Woodrow and EdithU.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson and first lady Edith Wilson, 1919.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital photo no. 3b12597u)