In the previous
posting on this subject, we discovered that the Republican Party had split into
reactionary and progressive factions.
The reactionary faction, the “Old Guard” Republicans, were the social
and economic élite who had come into
the Grand Old Party following the Civil War when it was the only game in town,
the Democratic Party having been discredited.
Those who styled
themselves “Lincoln Republicans” who did not turn Democrat (as did, for
example, the agrarian socialist Henry George, the former
Catholic-turned-spiritualist/New Age guru Ignatius Loyola Donnelly, and
others), tended to favor the progressive cause as embodying the spirit of a
government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
As for the
Democrats and others. . . .
The Candidates: Wilson and Bryan
 |
| Woodrow Wilson |
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.
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. (John Maynard
Keynes, “The Works of Bagehot,” The Economic Journal, 25:369–375
(1915).)
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.” Wilson had tried to centralize all power at the university directly
under his control, claiming, “he was fighting for democracy.” 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.
 |
| William Jennings Bryan |
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, Wilson being a harsh critic of
Byron’s brand of populism.
. . . 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. 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.”
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.
The Candidates: Eugene V. Debs
 |
| 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 — 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.
The Candidates: Eugene W. Chafin
 |
| Eugene W. Chafin |
Eugene W. Chafin
(1852-1920), the Prohibition Party candidate, was born in East
Troy, Wisconsin and worked as a lawyer in Waukesha,
Wisconsin from 1876 to 1900. He was the Prohibition Party candidate for
Congress (Wisconsin) in 1882 and (Chicago) in 1902, for Attorney-General of
Wisconsin in 1886 and 1900, for Governor of Wisconsin in 1898, and for
Attorney-General of Illinois in 1904. In 1908 he was appointed to the bar of
the Supreme Court of the United States and in the following year moved to
Arizona. While in Arizona he ran for
that state's United States Senate Seat.
Chafin was the
Prohibition Party candidate for President of the United States in
the 1908 election and 1912 election
receiving 253,840 and 207,972 votes, respectively, approximately 1.5% each
time. He also ran as the Prohibition Party candidate in the U.S.
Senate election in Arizona in 1914.
The Candidates: Arthur E. Reimer
 |
| Arthur E. Reimer |
Arthur E. Reimer
(1882-1969), the Socialist Labor Party candidate, was born in Boston,
Massachusetts. He earned his law degree
at Northeastern University in Boston in 1912.
He had been a member of the Socialist Labor Party of America since
1898. In 1905 he joined the International
Workers of the World (“the Wobblies”) but left in 1908 to form the Workers
International Industrial Union (WIIU).
He was the
Socialist Labor Party’s presidential candidate for the 1912 election. His
running mate was August Gillhaus of New York, who had been the SLP’s candidate
for President in the previous election, that of 1908. Riemer criticized Debs for Debs’s piecemeal approach
to reform and declared a need for revolutionary change. Reimer and Gillhaus received 33,070 votes in
the 1912 campaign. In 1913 and again in
1914, Reimer ran for Governor of Massachusetts on the SLP ticket. Reimer was again named the SLP's Presidential
candidate in the 1916 election, his running mate being Caleb Harrison.
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