Reform and the Election of 1912

The election of 1912 was a presidential campaign in which four strong personalities vied for the helm of American politics. The nominees up for election included William H. Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Eugene V. Debs. Taft, the then-president, ran under Republican endorsement on a platform supporting little or no change in American politics and economics: "Taft had become an apostle of the status quo, urging the 'negative virtue' of reelecting a Republican Party that promised to take 'no step to interfere with the coming of prosperity and the comfort of the people'" (221-222). By contrast, Theodore Roosevelt led the Republican split into the "Progressive party"-a reform-minded group that advocated trust and tariff regulation to lessen the extreme power wielded by corporations. Fighting for election on the Democratic ticket was Woodrow Wilson, and though he was nominated for his first office (governor) by machine politics (a corrupt form of democratic election), once nominated for president he firmly stood against such corruption and, similar to Roosevelt, vowed to eliminate large trusts and monopolies. Debs, the socialist candidate for 1912, stressed the power of unions and wanted to enact socialism, putting the control of industry in the hands of the people instead of large corporations, on industrial America. These four men fought-fought hard-to put their respective party's message into legislation and either keep America on the road down which she had been heading or change the face of American policy forever, which the man to win, Woodrow Wilson, managed to do, though his means weren't as noble as Roosevelt's in achieving the office of president.