{"id":32427,"date":"2022-12-29T03:03:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-29T03:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=32427"},"modified":"2022-12-30T15:26:17","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T15:26:17","slug":"teddy-roosevelts-failed-bull-moose-campaign-may-portend-the-future-of-the-gop-and-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/teddy-roosevelts-failed-bull-moose-campaign-may-portend-the-future-of-the-gop-and-donald-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s failed Bull Moose campaign may portend the future of the GOP and Donald\u00a0Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jerald Podair<\/a>, Lawrence University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens when a former president decides he wants his old job back, regardless of what stands in his way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Donald Trump launches his third run<\/a> for the White House, it is useful to look back at another ex-president, Theodore Roosevelt<\/a>, whose campaign to regain the office from his successor, William Howard Taft<\/a>, divided the Republican Party and ensured the victory of Democrat Woodrow Wilson<\/a> in the presidential election of 1912.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my view<\/a> as a scholar of 20th-century American history, Roosevelt\u2019s sense of entitlement, moral narcissism and belief in his own indispensability led him to turn his back on his party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disastrous results may presage what awaits the GOP in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Roosevelt charm and ego<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There is little question that Roosevelt\u2019s presidency<\/a> from 1901 to 1909 was filled with successes \u2013 labor rights<\/a>, anti-monopoly initiatives<\/a>, the birth of environmentalism<\/a>, consumer protection<\/a>, democratic electoral reforms<\/a>, a modern navy<\/a>, even a Nobel Peace Prize<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the first modern president, Roosevelt was an activist, a nationalist and a celebrity. And it is this last quality that may have defined Theodore Roosevelt most of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He reveled in his notoriety and visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy father,\u201d his daughter Alice<\/a> remarked, \u201calways wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was exuberant, vociferous and a showman \u2013 a showoff, his critics complained \u2013 whose favorite exclamation, \u201cBully,\u201d expressed perfectly his almost childlike zest for life in the public eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou must always remember,\u201d one of his ambassadors ruefully observed, \u201cthat the president is 6 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bitter fight between two former friends<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It was thus wrenchingly difficult for Roosevelt, having made an impulsive promise not to run again<\/a>, to turn over his office to his hand-picked successor, Taft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regret set in almost immediately, and as soon as Roosevelt returned from a yearlong trip to Africa and Europe in June 1910, he began to pick arguments<\/a> with the cautious and uncharismatic Taft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two
Theodore Roosevelt, left, and William Howard Taft standing together on Jan. 1, 1912. Topical Press Agency\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some were imagined, others real, but they were essentially beside the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roosevelt wanted the limelight that went with the presidency again. In early 1912, he announced that he would run against the incumbent president<\/a> of his own party, a longtime close friend and colleague whose nomination he had engineered four years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Taft controlled the Republican Party machinery, Roosevelt\u2019s path to the nomination<\/a> ran through the new mechanism of state primaries, an early product of Progressive reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roosevelt took nine of the 12 that were contested, but most of the delegates to the Republican convention were selected by local bosses, and Taft won almost all of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the national convention in Chicago in June, Roosevelt broke with tradition and appeared in person. He challenged the credentials of Taft delegates, especially those from the South, which held a quarter of the total votes despite the Republican Party\u2019s moribund position<\/a> in the region at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When his objections failed and Taft was nominated on the first ballot, Roosevelt could have done what virtually every defeated candidate for a party nomination does: swallow his disappointment and, however grudgingly, offer his support to the winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that response was not in Roosevelt\u2019s DNA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"This
In this 1912 Harper\u2019s Weekly illustration, Theodore Roosevelt is seen campaigning as a Bull Moose Party candidate for president. Stock Montage\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Embarrassed and furious, he charged that Taft had stolen the nomination through fraud and announced the formation of a new party<\/a> as his personal vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unofficially called the Bull Moose Party<\/a>, the Progressive Party duly nominated Roosevelt<\/a> at a hastily organized August convention<\/a>, in an atmosphere replete with high moral dudgeon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The delegates adopted \u201cOnward, Christian Soldiers\u201d as their anthem and heard their leader describe the upcoming campaign as an \u201cArmageddon\u201d and a \u201cbattle for the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roosevelt spent a great deal of his time on the general election campaign trail, during which he barely survived an assassination attempt<\/a>, claiming that he had been cheated<\/a> of the Republican nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roosevelt also stooped to personal vitriol<\/a>, describing Taft as having \u201cbrains less than a guinea pig\u201d and appearance-shaming the 300-pound-plus president as a \u201cfathead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Teddy Roosevelt campaigning for president on the Bull Moose ticket. Bettmann\/GettyImages<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Taft was deeply hurt by the rift with his former friend. He ran a less than energetic campaign<\/a> and was resigned to losing the general election almost as soon as he won the nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike Roosevelt, Taft\u2019s career ambition was not to be president but chief justice of the Supreme Court, one that he achieved<\/a> in 1921.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does history repeat itself?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The result in November, as Roosevelt knew it would be, was a landslide victory for Wilson<\/a>, who carried 40 of the then 48 states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But between them, Roosevelt and Taft had taken over half the popular vote, a stark reminder of the importance of intraparty unity and of accepting defeat with grace and dignity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Woodrow Wilson speaks at his presidential inauguration in 1913. At right is outgoing president William Howard Taft. Library of Congress\/Corbis\/VCG via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While unintended, Roosevelt\u2019s self-aggrandizement had another consequence that still burdens his legacy with the weight of historical responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson, a product of the antebellum South, carried the racial attitudes<\/a> of his region and class into the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He segregated parts of the federal civil service, offered praise to the racist film \u201cBirth of a Nation<\/a>\u201d when it appeared in 1915, insulted and demeaned Black civil rights leaders<\/a> on the rare occasions when he deigned to meet with them at all, and even refused to offer Black Southerners the federal jobs<\/a> they had negotiated under Republican administrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Roosevelt\u2019s racial animosities<\/a> were not as deeply held as those of Wilson<\/a>, he nonetheless helped usher in an era of greater racial discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Twain once said<\/a> that \u201cHistory never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As today\u2019s sharply divided GOP<\/a> looks to the 2024 election, Roosevelt\u2019s promotion of his own ego and vanity over the institutional well-being of the political party through which he had become New York governor, vice president and president provides an ominous example of the tendency of history to rhyme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as it was in 1912, the Republican Party is being held hostage<\/a> to the whims of a former president who has shown that he will storm away<\/a> from a game he loses, petulantly overturning the board as he leaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Trump does so, I believe the continued existence of the Republican Party will be in jeopardy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The GOP survived 1912.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may not be as fortunate next time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jerald Podair<\/a>, Professor of History, Lawrence University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerald Podair, Lawrence University What happens when a former president decides he wants his old job back, regardless of what stands in his way? As Donald Trump launches his third run for the White House, it is useful to look back at another ex-president, Theodore Roosevelt, whose campaign to regain the office from his successor, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":32428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[529,479,13228,530,5841,13230,13229,4147],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32427"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32430,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32427\/revisions\/32430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}