34 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging but superficial history of the 1912 election, August 25, 2004
Though ostensibly about the 1912 presidential election, James Chace's book is really about the contest between two of the candidates in that race - Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson - and the ideologies that they espoused. This focus is understandable, given how these two major figures dominate the political history of the period, but it stints the forces represented in the candidacies of William Howard Taft and Eugene Debs, both of whom (Taft especially) get short shrift by comparison.
This in itself may not have been a problem had Chace provided a thoughtful analysis of the campaign. Instead, he has written a familiar, if engaging, narrative of events. All of the standard anecdotes are here, with little explanation of what they might reveal about the people mentioned. Worse, there is no sense of the broader background beyond a few vague statements about the progressive movement. Nor has Chace undertaken any original research, preferring instead to rely on the many books that have already been written about this memorable cast of characters.
The result is disappointing. The author has done little to show how the 1912 election was, as the subtitle states, "the election that changed the country." While a readable account of the events of a remarkable campaign (one that saw the near-assassination of Roosevelt and the death of a vice president), it provides no deeper examination of the candidates or the nation and offers nothing that hasn't been written elsewhere already. In the end, while the book makes for entertaining reading it is not the thoughtful analysis this momentous contest deserves.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If Teddy and Bill Had Stayed Friends, October 14, 2005
Despite the apocalyptic title, the fact is that for all of the candidates for the presidency the nominations and subsequent campaign of 1912 could not come fast enough. For everything claimed about the 1912 election being a benchmark of later twentieth century electoral trends, the candidates themselves were men running on empty or close to it. Where the four candidates themselves [three, realistically, at any rate] were concerned, the prize of the White House was a reprieve from decline, oblivion, or in Debs' case, jail.
One can argue whether Eugene Debs deserves the attention he commands in this work. On election day he tallied about what one would expect from the least known candidate in a four man race, and there is no reading of the results that suggests Debs' share of the vote seriously affected the outcome. But the Socialist candidate is a charming fellow in his own way, an Adlai Stevenson in coveralls or a cheap suit, and James Chace gives him extended exposure to a current generation that has forgotten the struggles of American Labor.
Debs was a combination of things: laborer, philosopher, public office holder, labor leader, and perennial presidential candidate. The 1912 election would be his fourth run for the White House, though even Debs realized that his presidential campaigns were more about exposure on the bully pulpit than the prize itself. Chace provides a biography that briefly chronicles not just the colorful career of Debs but a thumbnail sketch of the labor-management problems coming to a boil in mainstream electoral politics.
Unfortunately for Debs in 1912, the issue of populism was now becoming semi-respectable, and others with more name recognition were willing to take the banner that Debs had manfully carried alone in past elections. Robert LaFollette appeared to be the front-runner until a physical and mental breakdown led reform-minded Republican governors in the West to coax, if that be the right word, Theodore Roosevelt out of retirement. If the reader winces at the juxtaposition of "coax" and "Roosevelt," that is probably understandable. Yet Roosevelt's third party candidacy was not an inevitability.
The popular wisdom has held that Roosevelt was literally panting to get back into the limelight, that four years of retirement had been a torment. This is only partly true. Roosevelt, for all his faults, was no fool. He knew he would be running against an incumbent of his own party, albeit a weak one, a crossing of the Rubicon if ever there was one. Unfortunately for Roosevelt, this was also an incumbent he had hand picked and groomed, a man once seen by Roosevelt as something of a younger brother. The rupture of Roosevelt's relationship with William Howard Taft was tragic, public, and unbearably cruel, and its impact was that of a two-edged sword in this campaign. Moreover, Roosevelt's sense of two-party order was strong; his positioning as a potential third-party reformer would put him in close proximity with people and causes he considered dangerously close to anarchy.
But still he ran for president, in part to tackle the trusts and other reform causes he had espoused in the White House and which he accused Taft of ignoring. For all his popularity Roosevelt had never won over the Republican Party machinery, which of course defeated him at the Chicago nominating convention. Such things happen in politics, but rules committee chicanery would be taken very personally by Roosevelt, who in his momentary disgust uncharacteristically took up a third party progressive banner. Naturally, his rage became all the more personified against Taft and brought out the worst in the Rough Rider's last presidential campaign.
The great mystery not unraveled in this study is why Taft felt compelled to run for reelection at all. By all accounts he was an unhappy president, possibly best remembered for his weight problem. He was self-effacing and rather atypical for a politician. It is not at all certain that Roosevelt's philosophy unduly concerned him. In fact, Taft's own trust-busting cost him much support within his own party. One can imagine him declining to run in 1912 and returning to the practice of law. All things considered, personal liabilities and the like, his might have been the most respectable third place finish in the history of presidential elections, though one wonders why he went to all the trouble.
Woodrow Wilson may have been a fresh face in the presidential arena, but in fact he had barely survived two major political upheavals, mostly of his own making, in smaller arenas prior to the campaign of 1912. As President of Princeton University his radical reform of traditional campus life, not to mention his style of implementation, made a run for the New Jersey state house a graceful escape. His tenure as chief executive of the Garden State was a stormy one; attacks on both sides-from machine Democrats and Republicans alike-brought out the intractability of the former college professor. From a distance, however, Wilson was a refreshing new reform face, particularly when the national Democratic Convention bogged down to a slugfest between career politicians long in the tooth. Wilson, who could be as priestly as the pope when the occasion arose, was the one contender who could wear William Jennings Bryan's vestments of reform and progressivism in a manner that Democratic pols did not mind going to church.
How much the election of 1912 changed the country is still an open question. In truth, the more pertinent question is how this election impacted World War I. Only Roosevelt, of the four candidates, seemed to have an inkling of a possible world war, though even his admiring biographers have reservations about Roosevelt as a wartime president. What can be safely said is this: a united Republican Party, i.e., with both Roosevelt and the bosses under the tent, would have probably defeated Wilson. The reader can make of that as he wishes.
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