Last week we took
a brief look at the Republican and Progressive candidates during the presidential
campaign of 1912. After all, when it was
first formed the Progressive Party was simply an offshoot of the Republican
Party, whatever it has become in the century since its founding. Today we look at the Democrat and Socialist
candidates . . . which also used to be somewhat more differentiated than they
have become over the past century or so.
The Candidates: Wilson and Bryan
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| William Jennings Bryan, "the Great Commoner." |
The populist William
Jennings Bryan had been the acknowledged leader of the Democratic Party ever
since the presidential campaign of 1896. As the party had not managed to gain
the presidency in that time, a change was clearly needed. The party chose New
Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University.
They could not
have picked anyone who less epitomized either populist or progressive ideals.
Wilson was an elitist, a capitalist of the old school. His philosophy of
government was taken directly from Walter Bagehot, as Wilson’s 1885 doctoral
dissertation, Congressional Government,
demonstrates.[1]
 |
| Wilson, student of Bagehot |
Bagehot, who
despised America and its institutions, greatly admired the totalitarian
philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Perhaps not surprisingly, Keynesian economics, in
development at this time, also relied heavily on Bagehot’s elitist political
economy and complete dependence on past savings to finance new capital
formation — which mandates concentrated ownership of capital.[2]
Wilson’s record
as a leader left much to be desired. As president of Princeton he had, after an
initial period of some success, instigated controversies that devastated the
university, leaving “a deep scar on the University that did not heal for many
years.”[3]
Wilson had tried to centralize all power at the university directly under his
control, claiming, “he was fighting for democracy.”[4]
As the historian Arthur S. Link (1920-1998), an authority on Wilson, commented,
[The
controversies] highlighted grave defects in Wilson’s character and quality of
leadership — for example, his unfailing habit of converting differences over
issues into bitter personal quarrels, his proud and unyielding stubbornness,
and his inability to work with the opposition.[5]
 |
| Bagehot, student of Hobbes |
Wilson’s claims to
be supporting democracy were not necessarily hypocritical. His understanding,
and possibly his definition of the term, derived from that of Bagehot. As we
will see later, Bagehot’s concept of “democracy” was that the financial and
economic elite should rule for the benefit of the “lower” orders, which
presumably are inherently incapable of taking care of themselves.
Fortunately for
the Democratic Party, the principal capitalists were all Republicans of the
Aldrich stripe. Wilson’s original campaign plan seems to have been to attack
the Old Guard as Republicans, rather than as capitalists. This allowed the
party to disavow Bryan’s rather soft socialism,[6]
Wilson being a harsh critic of Byron’s brand of populism.[7]
A harsh critic,
that is, until it became increasingly clear that popular sentiment demanded
reform, and the standard conservative line of either party was unacceptable.
Wilson had begun by speaking in generalities and vaguely of the need for
reform, concentrating on the tariff.[8]
This made Wilson as unelectable as Taft, whom many assumed (quite rightly) to
be sitting in Aldrich’s pocket.
At all cost
Wilson’s strategy and image had to change (his tactics and personality
continued to leave people cold), or the progressive Democrats and the populists
would desert their party as the progressive Republicans had split from theirs.
All three groups would go to Roosevelt, handing the Colonel a landslide
victory. Fortunately for Wilson’s campaign, “His political convictions . . .
were never as fixed as his ambition.”[9]
 |
| Roosevelt, the man to beat. |
In other words,
Wilson was driven by the desire for power, and could easily adjust his public
position to whatever was required to attain it. Wilson continued to talk about
the tariff (a moribund issue), but had the charismatic Bryan do his campaigning
for him in the Midwest, where Roosevelt had been gaining a large measure of
support.[10]
The Candidates: Eugene V. Debs
Including Debs,
the Socialist Party of America’s choice, among the list of major candidates in
the 1912 campaign, might come across as something of an afterthought or a
footnote. That is unfortunate, for Debs’s participation in the campaign is
notable on two counts.
One, it was the first — and last (until
we see what happens with Bernie Sanders) — time that an avowed socialist candidate
managed to gain so large a share of the vote. While finishing a distant fourth
behind Taft, Debs garnered nearly a million popular votes, although no
electoral votes.
Two, the fact that a socialist could do
so well in the presidential election demonstrates as nothing else could the
dire situation of the country. Most Americans despised outright socialism as
un-American. They had, however, come to accept a large part of the socialist
platform under different names, especially since the Panic of 1893, and the
effective end of “free” land under the Homestead Act. This meant that capital
ownership would in the future as a rule be reserved to those rich enough to
save, or lucky or skillful enough to manipulate the system to their own
advantage — and the socialists were quick to capitalize on the resentment this
caused.
#30#
[1]
Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive
Era, op. cit., 8.
[2] John
Maynard Keynes, “The Works of Bagehot,” The Economic Journal,
25:369–375 (1915).
[3]
Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive
Era, op. cit., 9.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid. Oddly, Link later goes into
raptures about Wilson’s leadership.
[6] Ibid., 7.
[7] Ibid., 8.
[8] Ibid., 11.
[9] Ibid., 10.
[10]
Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of
William Jennings Bryan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, 185-192.
