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Another Democratic governor who became a presidential candidate
in 1912 was Judson Harmon of Ohio. As attorney general
(1995-1897) under President Cleveland, Harmon filed two major
antitrust suits. Afterward, he returned to private
practice and became a respected party elder. He was
elected governor in 1908 and won reelection two years later,
defeating Republican Warren G. Harding (the future president) by
100,000 votes. In office, Harmon eliminated government
waste, exposed corruption in the management of state money,
centralized the state’s charitable and penal facilities, and
signed laws for an income tax and employers’ liability.
Under his watch the legislature passed laws for the direct
election of the state’s U.S. senators and for ballot initiative
and referendum at the municipal level. His presidential
candidacy stalled, however, when he announced in February 1912
that he opposed such direct-democracy reforms like the
initiative and referendum. He went to the convention as
Ohio’s favorite-son candidate, with support from some party
conservatives. The
frontrunner was Speaker of the House James Beauchamp “Champ”
Clark of Missouri. A supporter of tariff reform, a more
flexible currency, an income tax, and the direct election of
U.S. senators, he won favor from Western Democrats formerly
aligned with Bryan, but he also received the endorsement of
maverick publisher
William Randolph Hearst . However, Clark had a
penchant for making impolitic statements and was considered by
some to be a political lightweight. Even though the
Nebraska delegation endorsed Clark, Bryan worried that he could
not withstand pressure from the conservative wing of the party.
At the end of the primary season, the House speaker had the
largest number of pledged delegates (over 400), but lacked the
necessary two-thirds majority for nomination.
The Democratic National
Convention met in Baltimore on June 25-July 2. On its eve,
Clark made a tactical error by supporting the choice of party
conservatives and Tammany Hall, Alton B. Parker, as the
temporary chairman. Bryan tried to sway delegates to
reject Parker, and Wilson followed the Great Commoner’s lead,
but their efforts were narrowly defeated. The incident
reinforced Bryan’s fear that the House Speaker would capitulate
to the party’s right wing. Some observers believed that
the Nebraskan was trying to deadlock the convention so that
delegates would turn to him for a fourth nomination.
Whatever his intent, a stalemate among the candidates quickly
developed. Clark led on the first ballot with 440½ votes,
followed by Wilson with 324, Harmon with 148, Underwood with
117½, and scattered votes for favorite-son candidates.
The result varied little until the 10th
ballot when New York switched from Harmon to Clark, giving him a
total of 556. Wilson initially released his delegates, but
reversed himself when other states failed to follow the New York
lead. Convinced that Clark was in cahoots with Tammany
Hall, Bryan announced on the 14th ballot that he and
the Nebraska delegation were switching to Wilson. Although
an important endorsement, the change did not produce a turning
point, and balloting continued past the 40th round.
The break came from behind-the-scenes negotiations between
Wilson’s campaign managers and various state party bosses.
On the 28th ballot, boss Thomas Taggart switched
Indiana’s 29 votes from Clark to Wilson in return for the
promise that his state’s favorite son candidate, Governor Thomas
R. Marshall, would get the vice-presidential nod. With
other deals, enough states came into the Wilson column so that
he finally won on the 46th ballot, and then Marshall
was duly nominated.
The Republican Campaign
Although he went
on a speaking tour during the primary season, after his
nomination Taft abided by the tradition of incumbent presidents
not openly campaigning for reelection. His political
activities were limited to writing a few public letters on the
issues. Republicans relied heavily on advertising, and
even showed a movie reel about their nominee in 1,200 theaters.
In contrast to the primaries, Taft refused to demean the
character of his rivals. Privately, though, he disparaged
the Progressive Party and Roosevelt as “a religious cult with a
fakir at the head of it.” As the post-convention campaign
began, Taft remarked to a friend, “I have no part to play but
that of a conservative.” Therefore, he defended the status quo
against the policy proposals of his opponents. He stood
fast for the traditional Republican commitment to protective
tariffs, warning that Wilson and the Democrats were free traders
who threatened the nation’s economic prosperity. He
considered the Progressive Party agenda as even more ominous.
Referring to it in his acceptance speech, Taft spoke of radical
ideas that would undermine “our present constitutional form of
representative government and our independent judiciary.”
Most of
the professional politicians stayed loyal to Taft when Roosevelt
and the Progressives split from the Republican Party.
Nevertheless, the president’s campaign organization suffered
from a lack of money. The GOP treasury collected about $1
million dollars ($18.3 million in 2002 dollars), only about half
the usual total, since the major donors were reluctant to
contribute to what they considered a losing cause. Even
the candidate had privately concluded that he would not be
reelected. The Republican ticket experienced an unexpected loss
when Vice President James S. Sherman became ill after delivering
his acceptance speech in August and was unable to campaign.
He died on October 30, six days before the election. The
Republican National Committee chose Nicholas Murray Butler,
president of Columbia University (New York), to receive the
party’s vice-presidential ballots when they were formally
counted in January 1913.
The Democratic Campaign
The Republican
breakup into two warring camps boosted the likelihood that the
Democrats would regain the White House; they just needed to hold
their base. Wilson moved swiftly to harmonize the party
after the long, divided convention by reaching out to Champ
Clark and William Jennings Bryan. It also helped the cause
that the nominee could appeal to different constituencies.
Wilson was an intellectual who often used populist rhetoric, a
Southerner by birth and a Northerner by adoption, a conservative
in some of his views with a record of progressive reform, and
the beneficiary of political machines who shunned pressure from
the bosses once in office. For once, the Democratic
campaign was sufficiently funded and well organized.
Although
reluctant to campaign actively, the austere Wilson realized the
tactic was becoming necessary under the new rules of the
political game. He complained about speaking from the back
of trains, but became more comfortable with the process as the
campaign progressed. He engaged in speaking tours
throughout the North, the Border States, and the Plains States,
leaving the South as secure, and the Far West to Bryan, who
enthusiastically campaigned for him. Wilson avoided
attacking his rivals personally, and had an amiable meeting with
Taft after learning that he and the president was staying at the
same hotel.
Wilson dedicated
nearly half of his acceptance speech of August 7 to arguing that
protective tariffs favored special business interests to the
detriment of the national economy. Lowering the tariff was
one of his few campaign promises. On the issue of business
regulation, he pledged that he was not seeking to destroy any
legitimate business, nor did he consider the large size of
corporations inherently bad. Rather, he explained that
trusts were created by special privileges bestowed by the
government, and he called for strengthening antitrust laws.
In September, lawyer Louis Brandeis, a key advisor, helped
clarify his thinking on the antitrust issue. Calling
monopoly “indefensible and intolerable,” Wilson distinguished
his assertion that trusts thwarted economic competition from
Roosevelt’s position that trusts were natural and should be
regulated by the government.
Wilson’s “New
Freedom” agenda was promoted as a plan to reinvigorate popular
democracy, but it exhibited skepticism of excessive government
intervention. In his acceptance speech, the Democratic
nominee insisted that federal aid to those who “cannot protect
themselves” was not “class legislation,” but he did not discuss
most of the progressive reforms in the party’s platform, such as
the income tax, direct election of U.S. senators, and labor
laws. Wilson remained mum on several issues throughout the
campaign, refusing, for example, to take a public stance on the
women’s suffrage, which he said was a state issue. He
never mentioned labor unions because he viewed them in a
negative fashion similar to his opinion of business trusts, as a
monopolistic combination that interfered with free enterprise.
In a Labor Day speech, he opposed a federal minimum wage, which
the Progressive Party had endorsed, and told workers not to
become government “wards,” but to remain “independent men.”
In many ways, his economic views harkened back to the simpler
times of pre-industrial America.
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