How Strong Do You Feel?

I've written a lot about the two-party system. In a variation on that theme, I will do a series of posts on four 20th century presidential elections in which third parties made a strong showing. In a sense, those third-party movements are the exceptions that prove the rule that a two-party system is the persistent norm of American electoral politics. None of these third-party movements survived for very long and posed any serious threat to the two-party system.

The first is Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 attempt to return to the White House under the Progressive Party banner. At one point, Roosevelt proclaimed that he felt as strong as a bull moose, which resulted in his movement being nicknamed the Bull Moose ticket.

Some background: after Roosevelt was elected to a full term in 1904 (he had been McKinley's running mate in 1900 and had become president when McKinley was assassinated in 1901) he pledged not to run again in 1908. He saw that as complying with the spirit of the two-term tradition that George Washington had begun by declining to seek re-election to a third term in 1796. In Roosevelt's time, that limit was merely customary; it would not be written into the Constitution until 1951.

Roosevelt quickly regretted that pledge, in that it made him a lame duck from the beginning of that term, and thereby limited his effectiveness. But he stuck to his pledge, and anointed William Howard Taft as his successor. The electorate agreed, and Taft took office in 1909.

Roosevelt became disenchanted with Taft. Roosevelt represented the Progressive faction within the Republican Party, with policy positions such as greater federal regulation of business, and expansion of the national park system as part of a more general advocacy of conservation measures regarding western lands. Taft was part of a more conservative Republican faction.

Roosevelt unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination against Taft in 1912. He then launched his third-party candidacy. The obvious result was that, with the Republican vote split between Taft and Roosevelt, Democrat Woodrow Wilson won with an electoral vote landslide of 435, to 88 for Roosevelt and 8 for Taft. Wilson, however, received only 41.84% of the popular vote. It was the only time a Republican presidential candidate finished third in the entire history of that party.

I wrote here about the end of the Roosevelt story.

I'm writing this largely from memory, and I'm sure most of my recollections come from Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris.