A Bull Moose in Office

[dmg86]

And their was a saying that a southerner couldn't be elected President and before anyone says Wilson was from the south he spent most of his adult life in the north or in former slave states that stayied loyal.

 

[SsgtC]

No genuine conservative had any chance to get the Democratic nomination in 1912. If it isn't Wilson, it will probably be Clark, who, despite Bryan's grumbling, was an effective and progressive legislator.

The two "conservatives" most often mentioned--Judson Harmon and Oscar W. Underwood--were vehemently opposed by Bryan, and had very little chance of getting the nomination. Yet even they were not reactionaries. (No doubt Bryan had a grudge against Harmon for his failure to support Bryan in 1896, when Harmon was Cleveland's Attorney General. This was also true of Wilson, of course, but to Bryan the cases were different: one was "a trained officer in the Democratic army," the other "a scholarly recluse." https://books.google.com/books?id=wKAeAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA66) On Harmon's record in Ohio, David Sarasohn writes in The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era, pp. 112-13:

"Just as La Follette's Wisconsin served as the insurgent ideal, Ohio became the Democratic reform showcase. Governor Judson Harmon, despite Bryan's constant attacks on him as a reactionary, signed a sizable amount of progressive legislation. Johnsonian Democrats [i.e., followers of Tom L. Johnson, reform mayor of Cleveland] in the legislature may have fought harder for the bills than did the management-minded governor, but Harmon supported their efforts, and appeared before the party caucus to remind it of its obligations to the platform. In his first term Ohio reorganized its tax structure, raising the valuation of railroad property from $166 million to $580 million. In his second term, a more Democratic legislature set up a Public Utilities Commission and passed a strong corrupt practices act, a ten-hour maximum workday and a fifty-four-hour workweek for women workers, and an optional worker's compensation bill. The latter, and other labor legislation, was introduced by William Green, a Democratic state senator from the coal districts who would later succeed Gompers as the head of the AFL. 'It would be unfair to Judson Harmon,' argued his successor [James Cox], 'to assert that he was not a constructive liberal.'"

As for Underwood, Sarasohn writes (p. 99) that he "had come to Congress in 1895 as a strong supporter of labor, free silver, and an income tax and rapidly rose to leadership positions. If his later marriage to a Birmingham steel heiress seemed to have taken the edge off his reformism, he was still far from a standpatter and closely followed the party line on most issues." In any event, Underwood was almost purely a regional candidate, with very little support outside the South.

Oh I agree! That's why it's such a huge "if."

 

[Rorke]

April 1st, 1910
En Route to Split, Austria-Hungary
Adriatic Sea

Theodore Roosevelt stretched his legs as he stood on the prow of the mighty steamship, taking in the view of the lesser-known sea. He breathed in the salty air and pondered what exactly he would discuss with Franz Joseph. He sighed and shrugged, resolving to let the meeting progress naturally. He was glad to be out in the world away from that damned Taft. He greatly regretted supporting that man for office and wished he had run for a third term. He shrugged again.

"Thus is life."

"What was that?" Kermit said as he passed by.

"Nothing, son."

Roosevelt stared off into the sea. There was an election coming up. Maybe he could run again? He grinned wickedly and resolved to leave his internal deliberation for when his mind was clear.