Election of 1912

             William Howard Taft has received less attention than other progressive era politicians and especially those involved in the election of 1912. Historians typically see him as a blunderer whose mistakes and inactivity split the Republican party in 1912. Taft was inherently legalistic and conservative. He was not party politician by training or temperament, but a lawyer and judge. He believed the challenges of the evolving corporate economy should be adjudicated according to existing law a precedent in order to maintain the social order, not as unsolved social issues that needed trailblazing legislative solutions. He did not see his role as providing creative or courageous leadership for congress, the business community, or the American people, instead he tried to follow as faithfully as possible the precedents he inherited. Taft saw corporate power as primarily an economic issue. He also believed that the problems of cooperate concentration could be solved by using existing laws, because of this he looked askance at the political innovations of the age. Taft did not fear corporate political dominance and saw little need for innovative direct democracy. He alone defended the existing political parties, and argued that they were crucial to the success of American democracy. He denigrated the new direct democratic machinery, focusing on the irrationality of majoritarian democracy and the need to protect private property. Taft had unavoidable conflict with his opponents, at it's roots the disagreement was over ideology, economics, and social policy, not personality.
             Theodore Roosevelt stood at the center of the campaign. Not only did he struggle for the Republican nomination come down to a question of weather he would enter the race, but his proposal for a strong federal commission to control the new corporate enterprises was hotly debated. Roosevelt stood out in 1912 because he alone believed that the rise of the new large scale business organizations was natural, inevitable, and if properly managed, beneficial for the American people as a whole.