I don’t know whether Teddy Roosevelt was as good a President as some people think. His ego was so big that he made Donald Trump seem like a shy wallflower. His arrogance handed the White House to Woodrow Wilson 1. But there’s no doubt that he was one tough, manly sumbitch.
“Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. 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.
— Teddy Roosevelt decided to finish his speech in 1912 AFTER being shot in the chest with a Colt .38. The bullet remained in his chest for the rest of his life.
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1. This refers to the famous 1912 election, which pitted three American presidents against each other – one current (Taft), one former (Roosevelt) and one future (Wilson). Taft and Roosevelt combined to win almost exactly the same number of votes Taft had received in 1908, which was in turn almost the same amount Roosevelt had received in 1904. (In all three cases, approximately 7.6 million votes.) Either Roosevelt or Taft could have won the 1912 election, but by splitting the vote, they had no chance, thus giving Wilson the White House, despite Wilson’s actually having received fewer votes than his Democratic predecessor, William Jennings Bryan, got in 1908, when Taft beat him like a red-headed stepchild. (Bryan had also run for the presidency in 1896 and 1900, and in each of those unsuccessful campaigns had received more votes than Wilson did in 1912.) Thanks to Roosevelt, Wilson was the only Democrat to win a presidential election between 1892 and 1932.
The first past the post system is just so fucking terrible
The author of that list appears to believe that waging war is the most manly thing possible.
Well, fighting against overwhelming odds, placing one’s life at risk to defeat evil, standing up for honor and freedom and family- that does seem pretty fucking manly. But it’s important to note that opinion comes from a cowardly guy who knows all the words to So Long, Farewell from the Sound of Music, so I may not be the proper arbiter of machismo.
It’s not by a ‘merican, but I think you’ll like it. I personally do, even if it doesn’t fully match my views.
“We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.” – Oswald Spengler.
He’s certainly had a way with words. He also basically predicted the turn towards (now worldwide lol) demographic doom/”sterility.”
“According to Spengler, the West will spend the next and last several hundred years of its existence in a state of Caesarian socialism, when all humans will be synergized into a harmonious and happy totality by a dictator, like an orchestra is synergized into a harmonious totality by its conductor.”
It once seemed that his view of the evolution of the West into various fiefdoms of extra-constitutional imperial executives was doomed to irrelevance … until about ten years ago, when the tumblers started clicking into place.
Tbh, I think what’s basically ensured it were the events in the past few years. Blm, covid, etc, among people left and right I’ve interacted w/, the general sentiment has mostly been “There’s a need for someone much, much stronger than Trump.”
Fun fact: I showed the “peaceful protests” to my family, and it basically flipped their views on how they saw ‘merican social issues.
What the heck constitutes being “stronger” than Trump? Doubling down on all the racism, hatred of sexual minorites, and mindless stupidity that was Trump at his Trumpiest? Somebody who would end democracy and empower the American oligarchy even faster?
Oh, and your family sounds racist. The race riots of the 1960’s gave a lot of racists a chance to vent their hatreds too.
It does seem that the extremes of both sides increasingly want an imperial executive who will give them everything they want now, without compromise, even if that means trampling on the Constitution. Trump himself said that the 2020 election, “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
At the time he said that, he couldn’t enlist enough subscribers to that position. The center held. I’m wondering if that has changed, and Yeats has been affirmed.
Never has that quotation seemed more relevant to America than it does now.
@Scoop Yeah, though I don’t really Trump has it in him. Just look at his previous admin. And not to mention he’s a billionaire, more or less aligned with their interests. But the sentiment among people is certainly there. Tbh, I think that’s one of the reasons why Bernie was treated the way he was in 2016.
@Roger I’m not ‘merican. I don’t really care what people think of me or my family, and -isms don’t really work on me.
It’s also not that hard to see what I meant: policy-wise, rather than meaningless rhetoric. Trump is great at the latter, but the former is absent. You’re right, however, that 60s weren’t much different (including endless $$ damage), the main difference is that people were far less aware of it as internet & social media wasn’t a thing. Now everyone, worldwide, has access, whether it’s photos, videos, live streams, etc, or for that matter, what media tries to sell vs reality, so people have become far more aware. It’s same with international conflict (see Israel/Palestine, and part of the reason why Biden went after TikTok, same thing Trump tried to do, & is working w/ social media to censor things).
P.S.: Just my two cents, but you can’t really end something that doesn’t exist. Pretty much every country is an oligarchy, America included. There’s also studies showing this, not that you need them.
The Roman who died at his post at Pompei because he was not relieved sounds like a dope. If he had left his post, he could have tried to help others escape the disaster. That would have been better than doing nothing, which is what he did. Since when has robotic obedience been a great virtue? Dedication to duty, sure, if it serves a purpose. Being the human equivalent of a tree stump, not so much.
Less is more …
CNN did a decent program on the 1912 election as part of their series on historical elections. (I forget what it was called or if its available.) Anyway, as was the case until 1972 there were primaries but they didn’t really matter. We’ve discussed previously whether or not Hubert Humphrey had the 1968 Democratic nomination already locked up (Humphrey claimed that he had) but that was definitely what happened here. TDR handily defeated Taft in every primary, but the party bosses chose nearly all the delegates so Taft won the convention handily.
I forget if TDR had threatened that he would run in the Presidential election to try to force the party bosses to hand him the nomination given that he was the clearly more popular choice, but he certainly left the convention angry with the situation.
Anyway, also according to the episode, it was really Taft who was intransigent. Even though there was no scientific polling at this time, Taft knew he was trailing badly and would come in third place and considered whether to drop out, but his wife convinced him that it wouldn’t look manly (she said something that a sitting President should not concede the race.)
That kind of glides over one of the major aspects of that convention – the struggle for the chairmanship of the convention. La Follette and Roosevelt between them could have combined to break Taft’s hold on the convention if they had concerned themselves with their shared progressive values rather than stoking their monumental egos. La Follette’s group nominated the obscure Francis McGovern to hold the gavel. Against the powerful forces of Taft and Roosevelt, the nomination was just an acknowledgement of McGovern’s contributions to La Follette. (They were the kingpins of Wisconsin politics.) Theoretically, McGovern could have had no chance to win, but Roosevelt’s team, sensing a chance to break the Taft stranglehold, suddenly came out in support of the previously unknown McGovern. La Follette was shocked to see that his throwaway nominee might actually win, and thus throw the disputed delegates Roosevelt’s way. He had his campaign chairman take the floor to announce that La Follete did not support McGovern!
Historian Louis Gould picks up the story:
If Roosevelt and La Follette had been willing to talk to one another to reach a compromise, things might have been different. But they were so petty, and had developed so much bad blood between them, that their common goals for a more progressive America became less important than their personal egos. Their failure to compromise ended up throwing the nomination to Taft, and thence the presidency to Wilson.
Honestly, Donald Trump has made me nostalgic for the bad old days when party bosses could make or break candidates. Donald Trump might have played a spoiler as a third-party candidate, but he would have been blocked from the nomination because he would have been seen as a particularly weak candidate. In fact, if the Democrats had chosen anyone but Hillary, Trump almost certainly would have lost.
When I was in school, I was taught that Woodrow Wilson was one of our greatest presidents. I was taught he was a great statesman who guided the United States through a world war. But in reality, he was an unrepentant racist who had his most vociferous critics arrested. He brought segregation to the District of Columbia. When D.W. Griffith screened Birth of a Nation at the White House, Wilson said, “It’s like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” For those unaware, Birth of a Nation was a movie about the creation of the Klu Klux Klan, in which the Klan members are the heroes. In fact, that movie was so popular with Southern racists that it caused the Klan to be revived. The Federal government had previously succeeded in eliminating it. As for being a great statesman, he had many fine aspirations, but he was far too naive. The problem with the League of Nations then and the United Nations today is that undemocratic nations have the same number of votes as democratic ones, and nations generally vote only for what is in their interest. Has the United Nations protected Ukraine from Russia?
Of all the American presidents, Woodrow Wilson’s reputation has suffered the most from the intense scrutiny of historical research in the past fifty years. Like you, I learned in school that he was a great man, and like you, I have subsequently learned that he was a generally terrible human being who considered civil rights and individual liberties to be expendable.
After his stroke, his wife was somewhat better as our nation’s first female President. As historian Howard Markel has written, she “was, essentially, the nation’s chief executive until her husband’s second term concluded in March of 1921”
A great deal of the recent scrutiny into Woodrow Wilson came after Jonah Goldberg’s first book, Liberal Fascism was published. He detests Wilson. On his Remnant podcast, whenever anyone mentions Wilson, they play the Isengard theme from Lord of the Rings. Personally, I think it is perfectly appropriate theme music for Old Woody.
I was not aware of that with the 1912 Republican Convention. The CNN series was called ‘Race for the White House.’ I suspect the reason they did not mention that is because they weren’t aware of it either.
Woodrow Wilson was a progressive on most issues and signed a great deal of progressive legislation. Even his racism was rooted in progressivism and supported by many conservatives as well as part of eugenics. It was horrible science and a complete misunderstanding of biology, but they were common views for the day. Not trying to justify them in the slightest. However, even today there are still conservative academics like Charles Murray who try to promote what I believe is called ‘scientific racism.’
Wilson’s biggest problem was that he was a principled absolutist. A terrible trait for any President who has to deal with scarce resources leading to the need to compromise. In addition to being a virulent racist, he was at least partly if indirectly responsible for World War II. Common to the belief that France wanted to punish Germany through the Treaty of Versailles, France was willing to go easier, but they had enormous debts to the United States that they demanded Germany pay for. Wilson also regarded the Treaty of Versailles as punitive against Germany, but when asked by the French if they would be willing to knock off some of the French debt to the U.S so that France could reduce its demands on Germany, Wilson responded by saying something like “those debts were entered into in good faith, and they must be paid in full.”
A total sanctimonious prick.
I forgot to mention this. According to Jeff Greenfield anyway (who I’m not a big fan of either, for what that’s worth) the 1916 Republican nominee, Charles Hughes was also fairly progressive, but was not racist and was far more practical than Woodrow Wilson. Charles Hughes also was undermined by Republican divisions according to Greenfield, but I forget the details. I’m sure Greenfield’s article is easy to find.
Anyway, the Republicans certainly benefited in 1920 from both the unhappiness with World War I and the perceptions of the excesses of progressivism (whatever they were) but the progressive movement did have a decent run of just about 20 years from Roosevelt assuming the White House in 1901 to the end of Wilson’s second term, although I understand that Wilson’s wife if not Wilson before him had largely abandoned any further progressive legislation by the U.S entry into World War I by the latest.
Regarding Wilson, maybe some of the recent scrutiny did, though I find it hard to believe most historians or other academics take Jonah Goldberg seriously. I took a college class on modern American history in 1988 (post 1890 modern history) and we had a discussion on Wilson and many of the comments from the students were along the lines of ‘he was an impractical idealist who was so unwilling to compromise his beliefs that he ended up preferring to get nothing.’
I can prove this was back in 1988 because our instructor Bob Fuhr was so much into American history and politics that he even knew, as a Canadian, how to write to American political candidates (and this was with actual letters) to receive things in return, and he knew that many political candidates, at least for Congress and the Presidency would send people stuff if they asked, even people not in the United States.
So, we used the 1988 Presidential election as a backdrop to the class. Anyway, I won some game in the class and received a George (H.W) Bush Presidential kit which contained a number of items including Barbara Bush’s oatmeal chocolate cookie recipe (they’re very nice.) I gave away the rest of the kit over time but I still have the recipe. I have that in a storage locker but I posted the recipe on another message board a few months ago.
The last thing is that Bob Fuhr at that time was a young instructor who was still in university himself as he had to write his dissertation to get his masters, as he explained to us. Normally it goes (at least in Canada) school teachers: degrees, including a teaching degree, college instructors: masters, and professors: PhDs. However, he was so enthusiastic and so obsessed with American history, especially its political history, that he was hired. I saw him occasionally after that because he’s taught there for at least 30 years and he told me that he ended up getting involved in the faculty union and never wrote the masters’ dissertation.
Wikipedia covers Wilson’s racism in depth.
Key summary:
This is the article by Jeff Greenfield
Somebody (maybe Teddy Roosevelt) referred to Charles Evan Hughes, the 1916 Republican nominee as “a professional Prohibitionist”. A nickname for him was “Chilly Charlie, the Human Icicle”. Apparently he lacked the gift of human warmth. I thought I would also mention Virginie Ledoyen in this comment, so that if anyone ever Googles both Charles Evan Hughes AND Virginie Ledoyen, they will get at least one hit.
At least eight people have already gamed that!
You have to love SEO tricks.