Election of 1912: The Republican Breakup

A former president comes home, looks at his handpicked successor, and decides the country needs a completely different Constitution in practice. That’s the spark behind the Election of 1912, and we walk through why Theodore Roosevelt’s break with William Howard Taft becomes more than a party feud. It turns into a real argument about presidential power, federalism, separation of powers, and what “progressive” reform is allowed to look like in a constitutional system. 

We trace the lines between three smart contenders with three distinct governing visions: Roosevelt pushing an aggressive national government, Taft defending reform with constitutional restraint, and Woodrow Wilson trying to stake out a middle path while still promising tough antitrust action. We also get into the people around them who feel the pressure most, especially Elihu Root and Henry Cabot Lodge, allies who increasingly resist Roosevelt’s direction even when they admire him personally. 

And yes, the drama delivers: Alice Roosevelt campaigning in her husband’s district, Nicholas Longworth paying the price at the ballot box, and the strange electoral details like Arizona placing Taft behind Socialist Eugene Debs. If you like political history that treats leaders as real people while still taking ideas seriously, this one is for you. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the series.

Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum!

School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Transcript

Welcome And The 1912 Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Welcome back to Civics in a year. Today we're talking about the election of 1912. There are historic elections in American history that we have talked about, but this one I'm really excited about because it features Theodore Roosevelt, who is one of my favorite people to study. And Dr. Weinberg has alluded to some of the drama. So, Dr. Weinberg, we're in 1912. There is this election. Fill me in on some historical drama happening.

Taft’s Constitutional Line In The Sand

SPEAKER_01 1:18

So for those that didn't hear the last podcast, I'll give a very, very, very short political history of it, which sets which sets up the drama. So the short version is Theodore Roosevelt has departed the presidency. Weirdly speaking, weirdly, he sort of manages to get everybody to anoint William Howard Taft as his successor. Possibly he had considered a fellow named Elihu Root, who we'll come back to. Root had been his Secretary of War, Secretary of State, arguably his political right hand. So Roosevelt goes on safari. Something happens over there where he gets much more radical. He comes back, he's convinced Taft has become a sellout, and he challenges Taft for the presidency. And he adopts a new constitution or a new political and constitutional vision, which seeks a much more powerful federal government, a much more powerful presidency, and a much more aggressive role of the federal government in sort of acting as an overseer and supervisor of the American economy and society more broadly. So previous podcast focuses on the political economy stuff. The next one will talk about the constitutional stuff. But that's sort of Roosevelt's piece. William Howard Taft is defending a moderately progressive economic view, very aggressive antitrust, but constitutionally cautious in terms of caring about modescue and the separation of powers and federalism again. Woodrow Wilson basically is trying to kind of draft between them, be more conservative than Roosevelt, insofar as he says, like, I like federalism, hooray, and I'm just going to try to have new antitrust, and we'll be Jackson and break up big institutions. But I'm not calling for burning everything down. So that's the Wilson ends up as the Democratic Party nominee. He launches from being governor of New Jersey. Roosevelt makes a play for the Republican candidate, the Republican nomination again, and that sets up the real interesting sort of personal drama, which is what we've all been waiting for. So that's that's your backstory here. So Roosevelt is seeking the Republican presidential nomination to wrench it back from Taft. Now, Roosevelt, as I alluded to, is not the Theodore Roosevelt of 1907 and 1908. He has come back, he's much more radical. And so lots of this puts his friends and political allies in a bind because most of them view William Howard Taft as having been a basically faithful successor. He has, again, been aggressive on antitrust. He hasn't been sort of a stand patter on economic issues, but he cares about constitutionalism, which Roosevelt seems increasingly cavalier about. He says I'm following the Federalists, but he's really not by pretty much any reasonable account. So this puts Roosevelt's crew in a bind. So Roosevelt has so some folks who have some problems with this are one, Elohir Root, Roosevelt's basically possible alternative successor. Two, William Howard Taft, his actual successor, who had been part of his cabinet and inner circle before. And three, a character who's come up before and will come up again, Henry Cabot Lodge, who's this powerful senator from Massachusetts. Basically, he's becoming the leader of there's not formally a role of Senate majority leader, but he's basically the leader of the Senate. Now, these folks are all, again, would they each of them describe themselves as constitutional conservatives, policy progressives? So we like the square deal that Roosevelt has talked about, but we think we can do it faithfully to the founders' vision, faithfully to divided power, et cetera. But Roosevelt is not to be dissuaded. And so this puts them in a bind. And so Taft has to run against Roosevelt. And as I alluded to this in another podcast, but it's a story worth telling anyway. Taft had never really wanted to be president. Taft really actually doesn't want to stay as president. Taft becomes convinced. And Taft isn't stupid. In fact, if you read more of Taft's like his veto message of Arizona's statehood, if you realize he's pretty he's right, I think he's right on that. I think yanking judges for making a constitutionally necessary but unpopular decision is absolutely faithful to Federalist 78 and the design of the architecture of the Constitution.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Being able to As a side note, listeners, we do have Dr. Beyenberg and I did a very specific podcast set on Arizona. And I I just I do love the story. So I will put that in the show notes. Basically, William Howard Taft's vetoing our statehood and the state of Arizona doing I feel what the state of Arizona does best, and just figuring out a way to get it done.

Root And Lodge Work Against Roosevelt

SPEAKER_01 6:09

And mana and a and a middle finger to the feds while they're at yes. Another thing we're pretty good at. So, but but so Taft isn't naive. Taft knows he will not be president in 1913. He knows that. At best, they're gonna split the Republican Party and Wilson is gonna get elected. But Taft thinks it's really important to make sure the Republican Party does not end up endorsing Roosevelt's view of the Constitution. Like that is that is the thing to be stopped. He wants a platform that says we care about federalism and separation of powers and the rule of law and judicial review, et cetera, et cetera. Even if we're gonna, you know, agree to disagree on various pieces of economic policy. So Taft knows he's running basically like a political suicide mission that year. But he thinks he's got to do it. But it's personally painful for him. A journalist catches him at one point in tears on the campaign trail, and Taft bursts into tears and says, Roosevelt was my best friend, and like now I have to hammer him. My gosh. Lodge and Root will not openly campaign against Roosevelt, but they very clearly work against him. Lodge gives a speech in 1911 on the constitution, basically saying what I said before: look, you can support the square deal plus constitutional traditionalism, originalism, whatever you want to call it, that he clearly authorizes the Taft people to recirculate as sort of constitution good. Root chairs, and Root is at this point a senator yet? Yes, he is a senator by now. Root chairs the Republican National Committee. And this is back in the day when it actually mattered, and it isn't just like a row of speeches that are pre-arranged. Like you might lose, you might win, you're fighting on procedural stuff. And so Root chairs it and he gives, he gets elected and he gives a really charge speech, telling the delegates look, Republicans can agree to disagree on policy, but we cannot compromise on fidelity to the Constitution, which everybody knows is the dig at Roosevelt. Now, again, Root isn't that enthused about this personally. There's a great quote from him where he says, I care more for one button on Theodore Roosevelt's waistcoat than for Taft's whole body. Now, Taft, obviously being a big fellow, this is sort of backhanded dig. Another point, Elihu Root is an aside while we're on the fun one. Elihu Root hears that William Howard Taft has been riding a horse and they say, How's the president? And Root says, No, the question is how's the horse? So Taft actually does. We have a vision of him as this like super fat guy, but he actually, by the time when he gets on the Supreme Court later, is like really slimmed out.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

He lost he loses 80 pounds because, like you said, he didn't want to be president. And I think that the stress of it, you know, did that. And then he loses. And as a side note, everyone, if you want some more historical drama, his wife really, really pushed for it. And there's letters out there where Taft's wife, I mean, she was the one pushing for it.

Alice Roosevelt And Party Fallout

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Yeah, he was just wanting to be a judge, he just wanted to be a law nerd. He just wanted to be a law nerd. So, and then yeah, foreshadowing that a podcast will do next after he loses the presidency. Spoilers, he goes and becomes a Yale law professor and writes a constitutional treatise taking a dig at Roosevelt. So that's the next podcast of the constitutional stuff. But we got some more fun drama from 1912 here. So Roosevelt's inner circle of closest, his three closest allies have all turned on him. But another character who's in trouble is Nicholas Longworth. Do you know who that is? I don't. Nicholas Longworth is the speaker of the House in the 1920s. In the 1912, he is but a humble Republican backbencher from Massachusetts who is married to Alice Roosevelt. Alice Roosevelt is an infamous character. There's a quote, it might be apocryphal, from Roosevelt that says effectively, I can either control the country or control Alice. I can't control both at the same time. So Alice Roosevelt, so Nicholas Longworth is a protege of is a protege of uh of William Howard Taft. So he and he's again somebody who's in that sort of moderate policy, progressive, constitutional, conservative thing. So he stays in the Taft team. Alice does not. In fact, Alice is running around and campaigning for the Theodore Roosevelt ticket in Longworth's district. Longworth loses in this election. And apparently, this is not a source of marital bliss between them going forward. So that's that's slightly dicey. Longworth will get back into office in the next election or afterward, one or two afterward, and then he'll move back up to the ranks and become speaker in the 1920s. But one one final bit of kind of drama on this is well, I guess two more. One is Arizona specific. So as we talked about in the Arizona podcast, Taft loses in Arizona, no big surprise. It's a Democrat-leaning state. Roosevelt gets second in lots of like races, the best, most successful third-party candidate ever. But Taft also even loses to the socialist candidate, uh Eugene Debs. In Arizona. I don't think there's other states where that happens. But yeah, so Taft gets Taft gets thoroughly slapped down, which to our comments earlier, he's like quietly excited about this because he didn't want to be president. He accomplished his mission. Uh and Wilson at least has sort of pretended to be kind of moderately cautious on constitutional issues. But yeah, lots of Republican regulars are mad. Calvin Coolidge is mad when he's he's young at this point. You know, he's not anybody, he's like state, you know, like a mid-level, he might have turned around, he's a city council or a state senator. So not a big player, but he's grumbling. Like all the Republicans are voting for Wilson. But Longworth continues to stay sort of in the in the marital doghouse, such that Alice Roosevelt begins an affair shortly afterward with a guy who we will talk more about, William Borah. William Bora is the very powerful senator from Idaho, who is one of the leading progressive Republicans. He is one of the chief sort of skeptics of internationalism, like in the Treaty of Versailles era. He's close personally with Coolidge, actually, who is willing to make him vice presidential nominee because Borah is much more progressive, but again, cautious on constitutionalism and federalism. So Bora is very clear. Alice later writes in her diary that Borah is clear, everybody suspects this at the time, uh, is the father of Roosevelt's, uh, Alice Roosevelt's, and nominally Nicholas Longworth's daughter. And Alice apparently debates naming her Deborah, as in day Bora of Bora. So she she she's she's causing some consternation for the Republican regulars. But the 1912 election is hopefully you've been entertained by by the drama here, but it actually is one of the most important and one of the most ideologically interesting elections in American history, because you do really have between the constitutional issues and the policy issues, there's a little less, a little less difference. Again, as like we talked about in the last podcast, Wilson positioning himself a little more as a sort of decentralizer. He won't keep that, but he positions himself that way. But scholars of sort of American political thought love the 1912 election correctly because it really is very sophisticated debates. I mean, Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, these are all very smart people. I am sympathies for more than some of the others, but like they're all very smart people making the case for their positions. And yeah, it's and so if you want to read a really good article about the sort of constitutional piece with a little bit of the drama, William Shambra had a piece in national affairs maybe 15 years ago called Saviors of the Constitution, which was mostly focusing on Roosevelt's inner circle that had to sort of turn on him. A lot of my comments are sort of based on his in the podcast today, are sort of based on that article, which I really like. But yeah, it's a great election for politics, it's a great election for constitutionalism, and hopefully you've been persuaded it's a great election for drama.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

What's really interesting is you bring up Alice Roosevelt. Alice was actually my introduction to Teddy because I I love historical fiction. I absolutely just eat it up. And there was a book called The American Princess by Stephanie Marie Thornton about Alice Roosevelt. And I read it and then went on an absolute deep dive of Teddy Roosevelt because I just I found her such a fascinating character. And I I mean, I understand like it's historical fiction, but it's based off of you know the real Alice. And so being able to really dig into that, I'm so glad that you brought her out.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Does it have the Bora stuff in it?

Why 1912 Still Shapes Politics

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Yes. Very, very like goes through like the scandals and you know, her just kind of as a figure in Washington society that didn't necessarily fit the mold of what you would expect as the president's eldest daughter. So she was my introduction to Teddy, but I'm glad that you brought her up. And I'm glad that, you know, historical drama. I think sometimes we get caught in presentism, right? And saying, like, well, this last election was the, you know, the hardest election or the worst election, or you know, the most split election. But really being able to go back and look at this and you talk about Teddy Roosevelt as a third-party candidate. And we saw some 30 third party candidates in the latter part of the 21st century, but none as prevalent as Roosevelt and kind of his Bull News Party. And it does, I mean, I have sympathies for Taft. And when you say like he lost his best friend, I mean, that I mean it just shows the politics. And I'm now I'm like, I wonder if there is a book or an article about what happened to Teddy Roosevelt on his safari that just really shifted him as a politician.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

So he almost dies. That's part of it.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Doesn't he almost die a lot? I mean, he got shot while he was giving a speech. He was a sickly young man. This man has nine lives like a cat.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah. And earlier in life, I mean, as you doubtlessly know, uh, but for the the listeners, this is partly what launches him to sort of leave politics early in life and go into political exile. It's his mother and his daughter, mother and his wife like both die within like three days of each other or something.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

What's the what's the light has gone out of my life? I remember that from his diary. Oh my gosh. Yes, that I'm getting sad for him. I think it is his mother and his wife.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

It's in like within like three days or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

No, hours apart. They died on Valentine's Day, 1884, only hours apart. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

So these are still real people. Yes. We don't I don't I don't like reducing constitutional debates just to like political biography and horse race stuff like the media does. But you know, they're real people behind behind these these things, and they're trying to balance, you know, it and I think it's whether you think that Rose or you know, Taft and Root and you know, Longworth and them are right on constitutional grounds, I think they are, but I admire them being willing to like pay a real personal price to defend their vision of what they thought the constitution required of them.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Teddy Roosevelt, again, all of these characters that we're talking about are real people and they're very complicated and they have things, you know, happening within their lives. So I'm glad that we can also, you know, make them people. And I think that that is this is why I have a Teddy Roosevelt quote hanging in my house because a lot of what he says and a lot of what he went through, I mean, really shaped him as a person. So okay. We just keep going on tangents, but this is what makes it fun. Dr. Beinberg, thank you for going over the election of you know 1912. And like you said, our next podcast, we're gonna talk about the differences between Wilson, Roosevelt, and Taft. And we know their thoughts on presidential power. So make sure you join us for our next episode.