Frank DiStefano: 'Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Campaign, Why Wilson Wasn't Really a Progressive!'

Source:Frank DiStefano talking about Theodore Roosevelt & Woodrow Wilson.

"In this episode, we talk about Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 “Bull Moose” Progressive Party campaign and the three-way presidential contest over progressivism.

The 1912 election involved three candidates, Republican William Howard Taft, Progressive Party candidate Teddy Roosevelt, Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Taft was a former close adviser of  Roosevelt who Roosevelt had handpicked as his successor in 1908 because he believed Taft a solid progressive who would continue his progressive legacy. Roosevelt was a progressive champion as president who was now running on an even stronger progressive agenda as the head of a new Progressive Party. Wilson, a Democrat with a Southern small-government Jeffersonian background  who had only entered politics two year before, now also claimed to be a progressive too.

America had a three-way presidential race. All three candidates had a solid claim on progressivism.

This epic race brought the great debate William Jennings Bryan launched in 1896 to its conclusion. America had struggled over how to reform its institutions to adapt to a new industrial economy. The Republican Party’s progressive agenda to address that problem was now so popular every candidate in a three-way race wanted to identify as a progressive. The great debate of America’s Fourth Party System was essentially resolved.

We talk in this episode about how Roosevelt, facing forced retirement after finishing two presidential terms, picked his good friend Taft to carry on his legacy. How he became disappointed with Taft while sitting on the sidelines, as he desperately wanted to get back into the ring and win his old job back. And how we decided to launch a comeback seeking a third term—at the time only prohibited by tradition and not yet law—splitting the Republican Party and leading to him launching a new Progressive Party as a vehicle for his agenda.

We also talk about how Woodrow Wilson, despite embracing the progressive movement and enacting progressive reforms, wasn’t really philosophically progressive. 

Roosevelt run in 1912 on his philosophically progressive New Nationalism program, which demanded a stronger government to supervise a more complex industrial economy with big national businesses. Wilson countered with a program he called the New Freedom, rejecting bigness in both government and industry. Wilson invented a new small-government version of progressivism. Instead of federal regulation and supervision, Wilson would have a small government selectively intervene to break up private power, allowing the market to do the rest. Roosevelt’s program involved a powerful active government supervising large businesses. Wilson’s involved a small government intervening to maintain small businesses—a program that philosophically sounds a lot more like Jeffersonian Bourbon Democrats than progressivism.

Through Wilson’s presidency, America tumbled into the First World War. Then came the Roaring Twenties. America was prosperous, people were happy, and the Populist and Progressive Era of national reform came to its end.  Setting America up for another realignment and the start of its next political party system, our Fifth Party System of New Deal liberals and modern conservatives that still rules today." 

From Frank DiStefano 

"The term “Progressive” was broadly defined, encompassing a wide array of policies and ideologies – often in contradiction with one another – which sought to mitigate social and economic inequalities at the turn-of-the-20th century.  The era witnessed the rapid expansion and overcrowding of cities, inadequate housing, unregulated labor, poor public health, farmer indebtedness and sharecropping – especially for southern Blacks, child labor, and the emergence of a wealth gap in which 1% of Americans owned nearly 90% of the nation’s wealth. While their solutions differed and often conflicted, Progressives shared the view that a proactive, expanded government was necessary to fix society’s ills.  

Progressives in both the Republican and Democratic Parties (including, but not limited to, socialists, populists, and anarchists) sought solutions in the form of child labor laws, women’s suffrage, unionization, public health services, Black civil rights, and economic regulation and taxes AS WELL AS immigration restriction, segregation, and the prohibition of alcohol. All of these ideologies could fall within the “Progressive” umbrella.

Woodrow Wilson claimed his place within the Progressive movement with his economic reform package, "the New Freedom." This agenda, which passed congress at the end of 1913, included tariff, banking, and labor reforms and introduced the income tax. Wilson also expanded the executive branch with the creation of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Internal Revenue Service. His emphasis on efficiency and bureaucracy fit him squarely within the Progressive movement. 

During Wilson’s terms, Congress passed two constitutional amendments: prohibition (18th); and women's suffrage (19th)—both Progressive agendas. Another amendment was ratified while Wilson was President:  direct election of Senators (17th) on April 8th 1913. (The 16th amendment, which concerns income tax, was ratified in February 1913, after Wilson was elected but before he took office. The ratification was proclaimed by Taft’s Secretary of State, Philander Knox). 

Wilson’s Progressive legacy was also solidified through the appointment of his close friend Justice Louis Brandies to the Supreme Court as the first Jewish American to sit on the nation’s highest court. Justice Brandeis was a staunch proponent of the right to free speech and the right to privacy while he supported the regulation of business and anti-monopoly legislation championed by Wilson’s economic plan.

Wilson also embraced and encouraged new technology. He opened the Panama Canal, started airmail service, endorsed the creation of an interstate highway system, appeared in one of the first filmed campaign advertisements, used a microphone for the amplification of his voice, and witnessed the birth of radio.

These accomplishments, however, were all too often achieved at the expense of African Americans, women, immigrants, and Native Americans. Legal scholars have revealed the ways in which the income tax codes and banking policies often disadvantaged African American families. What is more, Wilson couched his embrace of segregation as part of his Progressive commitment to efficiency, arguing (insincerely) that segregation reduced friction among federal workers and increased productivity. And though Wilson vetoed the 1917 Immigration Law which established the Asiatic Barred Zone and a Literacy Test for entry, along with other restrictive measures, he nonetheless voices support for much of the law and his veto was ultimately overridden." 

From the Woodrow Wilson House

As I mentioned yesterday on The New Democrat, Theodore Roosevelt was a true Progressive. Which means means he wasn't a Socialist or some other type of leftist (democratic or otherwise) who just calls himself a Progressive, because Socialist and even Democratic Socialist, and especially Communist, is simply not viable for them politically, for all sorts of reasons. The Woodrow Wilson House has an excellent definition of Progressive: 

"The term “Progressive” was broadly defined, encompassing a wide array of policies and ideologies – often in contradiction with one another – which sought to mitigate social and economic inequalities at the turn-of-the-20th century." 

I call myself a Liberal (or Classical Liberal if you prefer) because even though I believe in limited government, property rights, (both economic and personal) personal and economic freedom, I'm not a Libertarian because I'm not antigovernment. Which is basically what Libertarians are today. And because I believe in moving forward, like a true Progressive. That's what I like and respect most about the progressive ideology (if you want to call it an ideology) because it's about moving forward and making things better and using a limited government to help create that progress. 

Today's definition of Progressive, is basically about how mush one believes in government, especially the national government. The more government, especially national government that you believe in, the more Progressive you're supposed to be, even if all that government and spending doesn't actually lead to progress and actually leads to regression. Like clamp downs on property rights, prohibiting language or personal activities that might be offensive to others, or comes with real risks.

As far as Woodrow Wilson, I don't think you can define either as a Progressive, Liberal, or Conservative, even though he had things in common with all 3 of those political factions. 

Woodrow was progressive on economic policy like with new regulations to help workers and calls for Unemployment Insurance for workers when they lose their jobs, the women's right to vote happened on his watch. 

Woodrow was liberal when it came foreign policy when it came to his push for the League of Nations, which was 30 years before its time and push for America to work with its allies to prevent dictators from coming to power in Europe. 

But Woodrow Wilson is basically the father of Jim Crow, at least at the Federal level, with his push to segregate by race the Federal agencies and those policies got pushed to the state level as well.

I hate to say this as a Democrat, but Woodrow Wilson's allies today, if he was a politician a 100 years later, would be part of the MAGA Nationalist movement, at least the alt-right, militant wing of that movement. That movement would rip up the civil rights laws, if they got the chance and seriously weaken the Equal Protection Clause and our Right to Privacy, probably weaken the free press in this country, and try to consolidate the American presidency and make our Federal departments and agencies a lot of independent of The White House. 

But Teddy Roosevelt, was a true Progressive and a great Progressive and represented perhaps half of the Republican Party when it was the Grand Ole Party, that had two, strong, center-right factions in it: the TR Progressive wing and a conservative wing, that was led by people like Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater and later Ronald Reagan.

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