MM#339--Pivotal Tuesdays: 1912 Election

0:07 Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser. Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute and to another episode in our series of Pivotal Tuesdays which we introduced last week. These Pivotal Tuesdays we set up as a framework and a series we said we were going to cover the pivotal elections in the 20th century.

0:51 Namely, those elections are the election of 1912, 1932, 1968, and 1980. So over the next several Tuesdays we will be digging deep into these four pivotal elections and their legacies and how they have shaped our American Republic. We'll conduct an episode for each election and last week we covered this whole series as an overview. So if you missed that episode, be sure to check it out, as it gives us gives you, as we, as I said a overview of what we're doing here.

1:34 But this week we are going to cover the 1912 election in detail. And here's a twist, our twist, to the whole series, to make this absolutely worth your time. This will not be a conventional liberal reading of history. This will not be a regular high school, your regular high school reading of history. If you went to public schools you probably got the humdrum, regular conventional liberal reading of history. God knows, we have been brainwashed and indoctrinated to that type of thinking and history.

2:19 So to make it worth your time, we will compare the conventional liberal take on each of these elections and their after effects, as well as the conservative take, politically incorrect, book of the president's, part two, which we will cite from and reference from, liberally, the old school definition of that word, to offer a real comparison between the conventional storyline and the conservative narrative.

3:00 Hayward is the author of numerous books, namely his monumental two-volume biographical history of Ronald Reagan titled the Age of Reagan. Part two has the subtitle the Fall of the Old Liberal Order, and volume two, or part two, is the Conservative Counter-Revolution, and a counter-revolution it certainly was. These books are overwhelmingly fantastic. It certainly was. These books are overwhelmingly fantastic. And this book that we will cite from today, the Politically Incorrect Book of the Presidents, part Two, is equally fantastic. We give our wholehearted endorsement to it Again. Now, this is not the history that we all got from our government classrooms.

3:41 Well, if you went to public school, at least that's what you got. I went to public school. So this is we will get an alternative reading. I was not taught this in my high school history class. Now, this took effort and self-study to find out what the real history of the United States is a balanced history, if you will. So, with that set up for our first Weekly Pivotal Tuesday series, let's now begin our journey with this question what happened in the 1912 election? And so to answer that question, what happened in the 1912 election?

4:42 We're going to say this it was a significant and, more importantly, a very complex event. It was marked by the presence of three major candidates and one notable minor candidate, which can't be forgotten. Let's go through the major candidates now. Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic Party. Now Wilson was the governor of New Jersey. He was nominated on the 46th ballot of the Democrat National Convention, largely due to the support of William Jennings. Bryan emphasized tariff reduction, banking reform and antitrust regulation aimed at dismantling monopolies and promoting small businesses.

5:32 Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party. Former President Roosevelt. Dissatisfied with the conservative policies of his successor, william Howard Taft, formed the Progressive Party, also known as the Bull Moose Party, after failing to secure the Republican nomination. Roosevelt's new nationalism platform advocated for social insurance programs, an eight-hour workday and strong federal regulation on the economy. William Howard Taft, the Republican Party. The incumbent President Taft was re-nominated by the Republican Party despite significant opposition from the progressive wing led by Teddy Roosevelt.

6:17 Taft's platform focused on progressive conservatism, but his campaign was relatively subdued compared to his rivals. This is a very important nugget to understand. Taft wouldn't run a robust campaign because of Teddy Roosevelt running against him. And finally we have Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party. Debs, a perennial candidate, ran on the platform that criticized all the three major candidates for being finalists. Interest this campaign sought to gain support from socialist policies advocating for labor rights and social reforms.

7:00 This is another important nugget. Now let's cover the key events of the campaign and how it all unfolded into the general election and then the election results as a good overview. Election and then the election results as a good overview. The Republican Party was deeply divided between the conservative faction supporting Taft and the progressive faction supporting Roosevelt. Roosevelt won most of the primaries but lost the nomination at the Republican National Convention, leading him to form the Progressive Party. Roosevelt essentially played spoiler, and boy did he spoil a lot of things. On the Democratic side, the Democrat National Convention was contentious, with Wilson securing the nomination on the 46th ballot.

7:49 His victory was facilitated by progressive Democrats and influential support of William Jennings Bryan. Like we had said before Now, the general election campaign was marked by intense competition, especially between Wilson and Roosevelt, who both sought to appeal to progressive voters. Roosevelt's vigorous campaign, including proposals for direct democracy and social reforms, while Wilson's more traditional I guess you would call that approach, focused on economic reforms and states' rights. Now the election was pivotal because Woodrow Wilson won a decisive victory in the Electoral College, securing 435 votes.

8:35 Roosevelt received 88 votes and Taft only eight, marking the worst performance by an incumbent seeking re-election. Now the popular vote was a little bit different. Wilson won approximately 42% of the popular vote. Roosevelt, at 27 and Taft at 23, essentially split that strong Republican vote, and Debs, the socialist candidate, secured 6%. Now, despite winning more combined votes than Wilson, roosevelt and Taft did split the Republican vote, which enabled Wilson's victory. Now the election marked the peak of the progressive era in American politics.

9:21 It was the last time a third party candidate, roosevelt, finished second in the popular vote in the electoral college. The split in the Republican vote allowed Wilson to become this is important the first Southern born president since the Civil War and the only Democratic president between 1892 and 1932, some 40 years Now. The platforms of both Wilson and Roosevelt had lasting impacts on American politics, with many of their proposed reforms eventually being implemented in the subsequent years. Now, the 1912 election is indeed a pivotal election in US history.

10:03 It was characterized by three significant elements the split the significant split in the Republican Party, the rise and this is the high watermark of progressive politics. And the election of Woodrow Wilson as president. Now you might know or you might not know, rather you might not know that this that had a significant story of what happened during the 1912 campaign. Teddy Roosevelt was shot while he was campaigning in the 1912 presidential election, or presidential campaign. The incident occurred, of all places, in Milwaukee, wisconsin, where the Republican convention is happening right now this week as we speak.

10:52 It happened on October 14th 1912. Week as we speak, it happened on October 14th 1912. Roosevelt was campaigning as, like we talked about, the progressive party candidate. The would-be assassin, a John Fleming Schrank, fired a bullet that struck Roosevelt in the chest. Remarkably, the bullet was slowed by a steel eyeglass case and thick manuscript of Roosevelt's speech Some say the speech was 50 pages long which he was carrying in his jacket pocket. Despite the injury, roosevelt insisted on delivering his scheduled speech before seeking medical attention. He famously began his address by telling the audience friends, I shall ask you to be quiet as possible.

11:39 I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose. Roosevelt then spoke for roughly 90 minutes, displaying his characteristic resilience and determination. After the speech, roosevelt was taken to the hospital, where doctors determined that the bullet had lodged in his chest had not reached any vital organs. They decided it was safer to leave the bullet in place rather than attempt to remove it. Schrank was apprehended immediately after the shooting and later declared insane, spending the rest of his life in a mental institution.

12:22 Now, just like last week, margaret O'Mara and her book Pivotal Tuesdays will be our guide in the conventional liberal take of the election of 1912 and its legacy. So what is that conventional legacy of the election of 1912 and its legacy? So what is that conventional legacy of the election of Woodrow Wilson as our president of the United States? Let's go to the liberal historian and to the conventional wisdom in Margaret O'Meara's book Pivotal Tuesdays. Not only did Wilson win the White House, but the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress.

13:02 This meant passage of quite a number of reformist policies that owed a big debt to Teddy Roosevelt's insurgent progressive campaign. Ironically, although he campaigned against bigger government. Ironically, although he campaigned against bigger government, president Wilson presided over a steady increase in central government authority over his two terms. During his term in office, the United States established the Federal Reserve System to reform and regulate banking and a host of other deep, centralized government agencies. So let's stop there. Did you catch the first part?

13:43 Let me restate that again. Ironically, although he campaigned against big government, president Wilson presided over a steady increase in central government authority over his two terms. It's a key nugget of wisdom, remember it? Going back to the book, a federal income tax imposed limits on the great fortunes of America's wealthy. Supportive labor unions, aid for education and agriculture and other progressive initiatives brought the country closer to other industrialized nations in its social policy programs. The size and influence of the central government jumped even further after the formal US entry into World War I in 1917, which created a wartime economy driven by military spending and regulated by federal price controls.

14:36 Driven by military spending and regulated by federal price controls. By the time Wilson left office, the Democratic Party in many ways had moved away from its 19th century agrarian and regionalist past and towards a modern, technocratic future. Despite the continued prominence of segregationist and agrarian Southern interests. The Democratic Party had begun to exhibit recognizable contours of modern liberalism that William Jennings Bryan had laid out in his 1896 speech and to which Wilson had given political legitimacy with his win 16 years later, in 1912, it was unclear which party would become the party of progressive reform.

15:24 By 1920, at the end of Wilson's term, it was becoming clear that the Democrats would be that party. Okay, quick time out here. We will have more to say about this incredible increase in federal power and the centralizing of federal government later on, largely regional Southern interest party that the democratic party was to now they are. They have an extreme power grab on centralized government, mostly influenced by what was happening in Europe.

16:11 Going back to the book, the election of 1912 was the moment the American political system had its first major reckoning with the challenges of industrial capitalism, and we can draw three important lessons from this. First, the reckoning changed the major two parties, but it didn't destroy them. This was a moment when either the Democrats or the Republicans could have become the progressive party and the title went to the Democrats, while the conservatives consolidated their power in the GOP. Although Wilson, here we go again. Although Wilson campaigned on small government, it was the Republicans who went forth in the 20th century as the party of small government, of unfettered markets, of fiscal conservatism.

16:59 Again, you heard it here Although Wilson campaigned on small government, it was the Republicans who went forth in the 20th century as the party of small government, unfettered markets and fiscal conservatism. Now Margaret O'Mara goes on as our liberal guide to the legacy of what the 1912 election provided. This election redefined the role of government in industrial America after 50 years of incredible change. It introduced ideas that were under debate a century later. The 1912 election was one where a consensus emerged that a government should do more than deliver the mail and have a standing army.

17:46 It should protect workers and regulate markets and ensure basic freedoms. Politicians then and politicians now generally agree on this basic principle but differ on a way to get there. Is the United States a nation that has an activist central government where markets are strongly regulated? Should government spend big? Should it raise taxes? Or should America be a nation that has less interference in individual lives? Should it deregulate business and cut taxes? Now, it wasn't as if everything changed or stayed that way after 1912. The political road is rarely straight, but it changes over time.

18:30 While Wilson and the Democratic-led Congress ushered in a remarkable amount of reform. The progressive and activist momentum slowed in the 1920s. A world war, anti-immigrant settlement and rising prosperity for many Americans tamped down the urge for change. Even women winning the right to vote did not, to the surprise of many, alter the general political temperament of the American public. Parties adapted to the modern styles of campaigning and to the reformed media-driven political system. They regained some of their power. So in some respects things seemed to go quiet in the 1920s.

19:15 As the 1930s would show, however, the progressive impulse was dormant, not dead. So there you go, a conventional reading of history that we've all learned from our government classrooms, if you were so inclined to be exposed to government classrooms. And she's saying things would go quiet in the 1920s. The reason she's saying it would go quiet is because the American people overwhelmingly blistered the Woodrow Wilson administration and his extreme power grab by electing Warren G Harding and Calvin Coolidge in the election of 1920.

20:01 It was a complete rebuttal to the vast overreach and power grab led by this first of the power-hungry Democrat Party, democrat Party. So now let's share with the other side of that American story. Let's hear from. Let's hear about the 1912 election from a conservative historian, stephen Hayward, in his book the Politically Incorrect History of the Presidents, part Two. How does he describe the legacy of the 1912 election?

20:41 Go on to the book. Woodrow Wilson is usually counted among America's greatest or near greatest presidents, but he should be regarded as one of America's worst. Wilson's conventional reputation chiefly reflects the quote opportunity for greatness afforded to presidents who happen to preside in times of large events, especially wars, and the prevailing bias of historians who prefer presidents of quote vision who expand the size of the presidency and the scope of government. In the absence of World War I, wilson would likely be remembered as a domestic reformer who brought us the federal income tax and the direct election of senators through the 16th and 17th Amendments though both constitutional amendments had been proposed before Wilson took office the Federal Reserve Bank and the ill-conceived Federal Trade Commission hardly a legacy many Americans admire.

21:41 He might not have won re-election in 1916. As it was. Wilson barely won re-election on the slogan he can keep us out of the war. Even that accomplishment didn't last long. America entered World War I in 1917, and although Wilson did preside over a war effort that helped end the fighting on the European battlefield, he bequeathed to the American political thought, a doctrine quote Wilsonian idealism, or sometimes just called Wilsonianism, that has inspired the interventionist wings of both political parties.

22:23 But Wilson's reputation for big-hearted idealism is at odds with many of his actions in office, which can support the judgment that he comes closer to deserving the title of dictator than any other president. His political ideology continues to inform the so-called progressives of today, though most contemporary progressives do not even know it, though most contemporary progressives do not even know it. Wow. So that sounds a little bit different than the conventional reading and the liberal reading we get from Margaret Amera and her telling of the American story, isn't it? You see, for too long Americans have been told the American story from what I call the crazy uncle side.

23:10 You know, we all have a crazy uncle or crazy aunt who retells our family stories at our family reunions every so many years. When we all get together, you get back in the car with your mom or your dad and you ask those questions about this or that story, and then, hopefully, your mom and your dad are balanced and fair in their understanding of what the crazy uncle or the crazy aunt was trying to talk about and where the actual truth lies in those family histories, and so it is with our US family story, our land of opportunity. For too long we have been hearing from our crazy uncle about our American story.

23:54 For a reference point, our crazy uncle is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, the most widely accepted textbook used in US high schools these days and has been for the last 20 plus years. This is absurd. It's crazy. Zinn himself is a crazy socialist, an anarchist in his words, not mine. So to correct all of this, let's get back to our conservative historian, stephen Hayward, and how he continues to describe the Wilsonian president and his legacy. Going back to the book, some historians make Wilson out to be a conservative of sorts, in part because of his Presbyterian faith and his Christian rhetoric, but also because he was a vicious racist and a segregationist who supported states' rights and opposed child labor laws.

24:52 Wilson screened the infamous movie Birth of a Nation glorifying the Ku Klux Klan in the White House and recommended that it be widely viewed. He supported legislation Southern Democrats sponsored to make interracial marriage illegal in the District of Columbia and he reintroduced segregation into many parts of the federal government, including the post office and the military. When Blacks objected, wilson said quote segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit and ought to be regarded so by you, gentlemen. But Wilson's racial views were based on liberal ground called Darwinian evolution, and his attachment to states' rights did not arise from any constitutional scruples about federalism, but out of convenience.

25:50 State's rights were a bulwark against national legislation that Republicans were sponsoring to break down Southern discrimination against blacks. So you can see how extremist Woodrow Wilson is and how, when you reveal his actual record on what he did, his radical measures come into better focus. He screened the birth of a nation in the White House, an absolutely horrific movie, and he opposes he opposes child labor laws just some 100 years ago.

26:37 Hard to believe. Then he goes on to support legislation which Southern Democrats were sponsoring to make interracial marriage illegal in the district. He reintroduces segregation After segregating the federal government. Coming out of the Civil War time period reconstruction, we finally get segregation into the federal government. He reintroduces it most especially in the post office and the military. Blacks absolutely were right to object and he didn't even have the courage to stand behind his policies.

27:18 He hides behind states' rights, not because of those constitutional scruples about federalism, but out of convenience. Let's keep going back to the book, if not great, in the older and more meaningful sense of the term. Wilson was among the most consequential presidents in our history, though not in a good way. He was the principal architect of the modern quote heroic president, even more so than his great rival Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson's ambition transcended Theodore Roosevelt's merely personal egotism and ironically prepared the way for the second Roosevelt, franklin Roosevelt.

28:05 Wilson was more responsible than any other political figure for changing how many Americans came to think about the Constitution, in large part because he was the first American president to repudiate the American founding and to hold the Constitution in disdain. Did you catch that? The first American president to repudiate the American founding and to hold the Constitution in disdain? Wilson compared the American people's reverence for the Constitution to the old doctrine of divine right of kings. Quote the divine right of kings never ran a more preposterous course than it did than did this unquestioned prerogative of the constitution to receive universal homage.

28:55 How about that quote the divine right of kings never ran a more preposterous course than did this unquestioned prerogative of the Constitution to receive universal homage. Do you think he likes the Constitution? No, woodrow Wilson hated the American founding and its notion of individual liberty. He was just a very bad president. Constitutional grade should be an F.

29:38 Mark Levin's book. The Democratic Party Hates America started in the Civil War but continued on and got a huge boost with Woodrow Wilson. Let's go to another key nugget, going back to the book, madison had written in the Federalist Papers that the people's reverence for the Constitution was one of the chief objects of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, because, quote without reverence the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability.

30:19 But Wilson criticized the American people's blind worship of the Constitution and doubted whether a nation could survive shackled by the limits imposed upon government power by the founders. In 1876, on the occasion of our nation's centennial, wilson wrote the American public will, in my opinion, never celebrate another centennial, at least under the present Constitution and laws. Wilson thought the political philosophy of the American founding, especially Thomas Jefferson's language about individual rights and the Declaration of Independence derived from John Locke and other English sources, was obsolete and should be discarded.

31:06 He believed the logic of the Constitution, the thought of its framers, including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was equally defective and should be replaced. But Wilson was originally enamored of the British constitutional tradition, especially the thought of Edmund Burke and the great British constitutional historian Walter Batchot. In time he turned to German philosophy founders. Wilson wanted to substitute the state-worshipping ideas of the German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the evolutionary doctrines of Charles Darwin.

31:50 How absolutely crazy A US president wanting to substitute the state-worshipping ideas of German philosopher Hegel, which was a nutso. So many historians over the past hundred years have wanted to paint Woodrow Wilson as this progressive reformer, and our country needed to have these updates. In the 20th century. That's the rubbish you get in every government classroom. But let's be clear Woodrow Wilson was a radical racist. His so-called reforms were deep slashes into the American Republic which wounded her on so many fronts, could finally take back their country from this radical racist and correct the direction of America.

32:48 And they did just that. The Republican candidate in 1920 was Warren G Harding. He won a smashing, smashing victory. Complete repudiation how big do you say? He won with over 60% of the popular vote. It was the first time in American history that any presidential candidate had crossed over the 60% mark. And wow did it speak volumes? The nation was finally self-correcting and going a radically different direction. Now to summarize this awful period in American history under Woodrow Wilson, let's go back to the book and Stephen Hayward.

33:28 Four key ideas underlie Wilson's subversion of the America's Constitution. They are his philosophy of progress, his novel understanding of individual liberty, and then his idiosyncratic view of the role of the president, his views on the nature of modern bureaucratic government. All four have become substantial cornerstones of modern American liberalism. Substantial cornerstones of modern American liberalism.

34:11 Well said, stephen Hayward. So in today's Mojo Minute, these Pivotal Tuesday episodes will be crucial to relearn what liberal historians have been shoving down our throats for many, many decades. Our American story is a great story when it is told truthfully, and the legacy of the 1912 election and its after effects we're still dealing with some 100 years later. We will do well to learn about its harmful effects with our own self-study. Two books to begin such a study is Land of Hope by Wilford MacLeay, an invitation to the great American story that we've referenced many times here, and the Jazz Age, president Defending Warren G Harding.

34:54 Both books will enlighten you on how the US pivoted away from Wilson's absolute radicalism. Now, in a broader sense, if you want to learn about this 100-year war from liberal and even radical historians on our American education system we covered this in depth in a two-part series, the 16,000-Hour War I'll put a link in the show notes so you can enjoy both part one and part two of that. So I hope you enjoyed this first in our series of Pivotal Tuesdays, where we will see you next week for another installment of Pivotal Tuesday.

35:34 1932 election and its legacy and aftermath. That's where things turn ugly again, but then for a long time. For now, keep fighting the good fight, keep living the flourishing life. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.