Pros And Cons For The Election Of 1912

1912 was a crazy year as far as presidential elections go. For one, there were four candidates voters were forced to choose from, rather than the usual Democrat or Republican. The incumbent, William Howard Taft, was challenged by former president Theodore Roosevelt in the Republican primaries, but even after losing nine out of twelve state primary elections, he still received his party’s nomination. The slight motivated Roosevelt to break off from the Republicans and campaign under his own Progressive, or “Bull Moose,” Party. For the Democrats, Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University and Governor of New Jersey, was nominated after 46 contentious votes in their convention. Finally, there was Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist party

What makes these issues similar to the ones voters face in today’s United States? How does the election of 1912 compare to 2017’s election showdown between Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders? The United States Presidential Election of 1912 has gone into the history books as the “decisive battle of the Progressive era” (Kolasky, 2011, para. 1) that had Taft and Roosevelt splitting the Republican vote, allowing Woodrow Wilson to become the 28th President of the United States and to ultimately introduce legislation that still conjures debate in America

Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination” (Gould, 2008, p. 43). In 1909, William H. Taft won the presidency after Roosevelt hand-picked his good friend for the Republican nomination. Their relationship took a turn for the worse over the following four years. After leaving office, Roosevelt spent a year and a half traveling Europe and Africa, and just before returning to the U.S., he received a long letter from Taft detailing the “hard luck” that had plagued him since becoming president, particularly his wife’s stroke and the “storm of abuse” he had been receiving from journalists. Roosevelt was disgusted by Taft’s unmanly “whining” (Kolasky, 2011, para. 5). The Roosevelt/Taft schism widened in 1910 after the Republican Party lost control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and even more so in 1911 when Roosevelt was summoned to testify before the congressional Stanley Steel Investigating Committee to defend his approval of U.S Steel’s purchase of Tennessee Coal & Iron (Kolasky, 2011, para. 7). Taft, believing that Roosevelt testifying would demean the office of the president, asked him not to attend, but he was ignored. First, it was the Democratic majority of the Stanley committee that was largely critical of