The Election of 1912

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Last week, Kenneth Walsh wrote, in his U.S. News & World Report series on consequential elections, about Theodore Roosevelt's sweeping triumph of 1904.

I wrote, in this blog, that I was never under the impression that Roosevelt's victory was ever in doubt in 1904 — and that I thought the most consequential presidential election in which Roosevelt was involved was the election of 1912, when Roosevelt broke with his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, and the Republican Party to serve as the nominee of the Progressive (or "Bull Moose") Party.

The Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, benefited from the GOP's disarray and won the election. Four years later, in one of the closest presidential elections in our history, Wilson became only the second Democrat to win two consecutive terms in the White House.

(In case you're wondering, there have been five Democrats who were elected to two terms — or more — as president — Wilson, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. Cleveland is the only one who did not serve his terms consecutively.)

Last week, I expressed the hope that the election of 1912 would be examined in the series before it concludes at the end of this month.

Well, perhaps Mr. Walsh reads my blog because the election of 1912, which I mentioned last week, is the subject of Walsh's article in this week's U.S. News & World Report.

I'm gratified, of course. I think the 1912 election has a lot to teach us about the evolution of modern presidential politics.

But, in a few hours, Sarah Palin will become the second woman to officially accept a spot on a major party's national ticket.

I guess I was hoping that Walsh would take this opportunity to write about the 1984 election and Geraldine Ferraro's role in it.

Of course, I don't know if Walsh considers the 1984 election one of the most consequential in our nation's history. Ferraro and the Democrats lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan and the Republicans that year, but as I established last week, it is clear that an election doesn't need to be a cliffhanger to be considered consequential.

The election Walsh wrote about last week — 1904 — was, in virtually every way, a landslide. Margin apparently plays no role in whether an election qualifies for Walsh's series.

So, if the 1984 election is included in Walsh's series — and I'm inclined to think that the election featuring the first female nominee for vice president was, indeed, consequential, even if it was a landslide — I think it could have been helpful and informative to reflect on the impact of the first female vice presidential candidate's acceptance speech on the night that the second female vice presidential candidate gives her acceptance speech.

It was an opportunity to examine what has changed in this country in 24 years — and what still needs to be changed.

But that's only a modest complaint.

My father's father was a college professor, and he was a great admirer of Wilson.

Wilson, I believe, was the only U.S. president who was ever president of a college or university (he was the president of Princeton University).

My grandfather was a very young man when Wilson was elected president, and he was inspired by Wilson's example. With his devotion to education, I have no trouble understanding how my grandfather would be inspired by the candidacy of an intellectual like Wilson.

"Wilson was one of the most brilliant and cerebral of America's presidents," Walsh writes. "He was also one of the most inflexible, which in the end kept him from achieving his most ambitious goal — the creation of the League of Nations."

I was only 6 years old when my grandfather died, and I have no memory of anything he ever said about Wilson. But my grandmother spoke of his admiration for Wilson often. So has my father.

I suspect, from what I've heard, that it was a great disappointment to my grandfather and many of Wilson's admirers — just as it was a disappointment to Wilson himself — that the League of Nations never lived up to the promise he believed it held — perhaps because it lacked the support from the United States' Congress that the League's successor, the United Nations, enjoyed three decades later.

As president, Wilson could not overrule the Congress, although he campaigned hard for the support of the American people in this matter — so hard, in fact, that the stress may have brought on the stroke that seriously debilitated him for the rest of his presidency and life.

And I suppose that's the legacy of Woodrow Wilson.

He sacrificed himself for a cause he believed in, as surely as the young men who died fighting the "war to end all wars."