While reading _Others: Volume III_ I had an insight: Viewing American history through a third-party lens tells the REAL story, for it showcases the dissenters and apostates along the way who objected to the bipartisan consensus that transformed America from republic to Empire. Darcy G. Richardson's series of books not only tell the history of underdog parties and independent political candidates, they tell the long-suppressed true story of American history that we don't learn in government-controlled public schools.
One cannot appreciate the evolution of minor-party politics without putting the parties' electoral struggles in the context of the day. Thus, the Democratic and Republican candidates of the 1912 and 1916 presidential elections, the period this volume covers, are intimately detailed as well. The big parties rarely offered the voters any real choice, and reading a mainstream history volume will leave you feeling that Americans were uniform in their consent to the dominant national policy -- but boy, would you be wrong: The voices on the left and "right" (both sides were vehemently pro-big government) were much more hostile and less polite than they are today.
One of the highlights of _Others: Volume III_ is its coverage of the presidential election of 1912 -- the most unique in our nation's history. After all, the sitting president, Republican William H. Taft, finished THIRD in the race, forcing the GOP to revert back to its original third-party status, if only for one election cycle. What a different place America was in 1912, as the "progressives" certainly had a stranglehold on the nation. There was little difference between Theodore Roosevelt -- the nominee of the new Progressive Party, technically a third party -- and Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who was almost assured victory by Roosevelt's entry into the race. Taft, it seems, represented Old America. He was a throwback, though imperfect, to the age of Grover Cleveland; an electoral relic whose time had passed -- quite unfortunately, in my opinion.
And of course, there were more than three candidates of note in that race. Socialist Eugene V. Debs garnered nearly 6% of the popular vote, and led the Socialist Party to unprecedented success that year and the off-year that followed. Most people with an interest in politics are familiar with Debs, but there was also a fifth candidate that year -- Prohibitionist Eugene Chafin, who also tallied an impressive vote total.
The leading "third" parties of this era continued to be the short-lived Progressives -- who were sunk by the ego-maniacal Roosevelt in 1916 -- and the Socialists and Prohibitionists. All three are detailed extensively in this volume. The latter two parties had a great deal of success, particularly the Socialists, in electing mayors, city councilmen, etc. The Prohibitionists also (sort of) elected a governor in Florida.
Of course, the Prohibition Party was largely killed by its own success. With the passage of the 18th amendment banning alcohol, the party lost its key issue. The Socialists were largely done in by internecine strife, which this book intimately details in its final two chapters. The dispute between radicals (known as "militants") and moderates makes today's LP internal warfare seem like a tea party (no pun intended). Ultimately, the Socialist Party purged itself into virtually obsolescence, and the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party were formed on the "left" of the SP.
For libertarians, this was a bleak era -- undoubtedly the bleakest in the nation's history. Not only were anti-war protesters jailed -- as another author has said, Woodrow Wilson makes George W. Bush look like a pro-bono lawyer for the ACLU -- but there were no real champions of liberty during a time when the lesser of several evils, from a libertarian perspective, may have actually been Debs's Socialist Party! There were plenty of courageous anti-war figures, including some in the GOP, who also championed ridiculous labor laws, welfare, centralism, and of course, the dreaded Prohibition. It's also interesting to see how closely linked left-progressivism was with the banning of alcohol, since this is seen as an extreme right-wing fixation now. At least a few Socialists briefly covered in this volume were also segregationists, as were many others on the "progressive" left. This, of course, is very "inconvenient" for today's leftists to admit.
_The Others: Volume III_ is now only the best of the series (so far), it is also the best book on the history of the era I've ever read. After reading Volume IV, I'm going to go back and read Volumes I and II again so I can give them more thorough reviews at Amazon. These are truly astonishing works of history, and every lover of third-party politics -- or simply American history -- should own them.
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