This is a history lesson – about the most “successful” third party Presidential run in modern American history.
American Success
Mark Hanna was the Republican “Boss” of Ohio in the 1890’s. He was an American success story, a boy born in Northeastern Ohio in Lisbon, the son of a grocery store owner. They moved to Cleveland and opened a store there, and by fifteen Mark was the manager. Like most men his age, he went to the Civil War, then came home to marry the daughter of a coal magnate. Ultimately, he ran that company and added iron as well. By forty, he was a millionaire.
He then turned his sights to American politics. He was a “behind the scenes” actor, one of the players in the “smoke filled backrooms” of national Republican politics. Ohio was the pivotal state. In the lates 1800’s, the Buckeye State was the political stepping-stone to the Presidency. James Garfield (Cleveland) and Rutherford B. Hayes (Delaware) gained the Presidency, and Senator John Sherman (Lancaster, younger brother of Civil War General Sherman) was a political power and frequent candidate for the Republican nomination for decades. Hanna was a “Sherman Man”, but when Sherman’s Presidential ambitions ended, he shifted to Canton’s William McKinley, a Civil War Veteran and a former Congressman. Hanna helped McKinley become Governor of Ohio.
King-Maker
In 1896 Hanna ran McKinley’s successful campaign for President against Nebraska’s Democratic Populist William Jennings Bryan. McKinley’s running mate was Garrett Hobart, a lawyer and political insider from New Jersey, who died in office in 1899. After his death, Republicans needed an “Eastern” replacement for McKinley, and also wanted to reduce the power of the “Progressive” wing of the Republican Party, dedicated to ending America’s industrial monopolies.
McKinley chose Teddy Roosevelt as candidate for Vice President. Roosevelt was a Progressive, forty-two year old newly elected Governor of New York. He made national news in 1898 as the newspaper hero of the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba. McKinley’s choice hoped to keep Roosevelt and his Progressivism under wraps as Vice President, but Hanna was no fan. He privately said “[T]here’s only one life, between that madman and the Presidency.” The Republican ticker was elected in 1900, and took office in March of 1901.
That Damn Cowboy
McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz while shaking hands at the Buffalo, New York, International Exhibition in September of 1901. While McKinley lingered for a week, he ultimately succumbed to the wound. Roosevelt was sworn in as the new President.
Mark Hanna said it best: “Now that damn cowboy is President”.
Teddy Roosevelt was forty-two years old, the youngest man ever to serve as President. He was athletic, often hiking the countryside that still surrounded Washington DC (including swimming across the Potomac River), or boxing on the front lawn of the White House. His athletic lifestyle exemplified his political views. He wanted an active government. Roosevelt led the way to intervene against the monopolies that were throttling the American economy, beginning the process that would ultimately break up US Steel, Standard Oil, American Sugar and other monopolies.
Roosevelt took a much larger view of American influence in the world, building the “Great White Fleet” that toured the globe to show America’s Naval might. He also began the Panama Canal project, to allow American shipping, and particularly the US Navy, to have a quicker route from East Coast to West. And, Roosevelt personally intervened in the Russo-Japanese War, gaining the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
Taft
His personal energy seemed to energize the United States as a whole, leading us into the “Gilded Age”of American life before the First World War. He served the remaining three years of McKinley’s term, then ran for re-election in 1904. Mark Hanna unexpectedly died before the convention, but Ohio still had “power”.
Roosevelt appointed Cincinnati’s Williams Howard Taft (forty-eight) as his Secretary of War. While Roosevelt was the first “media” President, Taft was the ultimate insider, the Solicitor General of the United States at thirty-two, a Federal Judge at thirty-four, and the Governor of the newly US occupied Philippines at forty-three. He served Roosevelt as the ultimate problem-solver.
By 1908, Roosevelt grew frustrated with the pace of change in America. His own Republicans in Congress were slowing many of the economic changes that Roosevelt wanted to implement. And the President also felt some pressure to honor the precedent set by Washington of not serving more than eight years. So he decided not to run, and threw his support to Taft as his successor. Taft faced McKinley’s 1896 Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan again, and won decisively.
The image contrast of Roosevelt and Taft was stark. The athletic Roosevelt, now fifty, went on safari to Africa, and then toured Europe. Taft, a large man at three hundred-fifty pounds, was true to his “insider” image. While he continued to dismantle America’s monopolies and trusts, he was a more mainstream Republican, and soon ran into Roosevelt’s Progressivism.
Bull Moose
As the 1912 election approached, Roosevelt decided to run for the Republican nomination for President against his former friend and the incumbent Taft. While Roosevelt won the open primary delegates, most of the nominating delegates were selected by the leadership of the Party, in the “smoke-filled” room. So while Roosevelt had a large lead of popular votes going into the convention, Taft had a majority of the delegates, and won the Republican nomination.
The Democratic Party selected New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson as their candidate (the last Democrat to win the Presidency was two decades before). Roosevelt determined to continue his candidacy as a third-party candidate, creating and accepting the nomination from the “Bull Moose Party”.
And Roosevelt continued to live up to his media image, even giving a ninety-minute speech immediately after an assassination attempt. He was shot in the chest, and he began the speech by saying; “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Luckily the lengthy text of the speech, fifty-pages, absorbed much of the bullet’s energy as it passed through the document folded in his jacket pocket.
Final Result
Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party was the most successful third party candidacy in modern history. He gained 88 electoral votes and received 27% of the popular vote. Taft’s Republican Party gained only 8 electoral votes, and 23% of the popular vote. Add those popular votes together, and a unified Republican candidate would have won. Instead, Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats got 42% of the popular vote but an overwhelming 435 electoral votes.
In the final analysis, even the presence of Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t enough to overcome the momentum of the two-party system. But “Bull Moose” Roosevelt did determine who the next President of the United States would be – Democrat Woodrow Wilson. As Roosevelt wrote three years later – “What a dreadful creature Wilson is! I cannot believe our people have grown so yellow as to stand for him.”
Joe Manchin, Joe Liberman, Jon Huntsman, Larry Hogan and the other “No Labels” politicians should take note. If Teddy Roosevelt couldn’t win from a third party, how will they? And what’s the likely outcome if they try?
