alternatehistory.com

Champ Clark of Missouri almost defeated Woodrow Wilson for the Democratic nomination for president in 1912. Indeed, Clark for a while had a majority of the delegates, and only the "two-thirds" requirement stopped him from getting the nomination. Had he been nominated, he would probably have won the general election, with the normal Republican vote being split between Taft and Teddy Roosevelt.

Clark has been dismissed as a small-town buffoon - "the statesman from Pike County" as one historian sneeringly called him. Almost all the accounts of his campaign gleefully quote from his campaign song, "You Gotta Quit Kickin' My Dawg Around." Yet he was in fact an experienced Missouri politician, a successful Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a much more consistent progressive than Woodrow Wilson (who had been a conservative Grover Cleveland/Alton Parker-type Democrat, and didn't really move leftward until 1910-1912).

What if Clark had been nominated and elected? Probably the same "New Freedom" measures enacted under Wilson would have been enacted, but they might have been a little more radical. More important is his stance toward the Great War - he came from an area where Bryanite pacifism, and a belief that wars would only benefit the eastern "money power", were prevalent. Another question is whether he could have won re-election in 1916. One reason that the 1916 race was so close is that many normally Democratic Irish- and German-Americans believed that Wilson had been too pro-British.

(The revolt of these voters would have been even more serious had Hughes not been handicapped by TR's support.) Had Clark pursued a more "even-handed" policy, he coulf have retained most of these votes. He would no doubt have done worse than Wilson among "Anglo-Saxon" voters in the Northeast - but after all, Wilson lost almost the entire Northeast anyway.

The POD is that William Jennings Bryan dies of an heart attack on June 24th, 1912. Clark appeared to have the nomination in the bag until Bryan pledged all of his votes to Woodrow Wilson. After a suitable pause for mourning, Congressman Champ Clark is nominated for President by the Democratic Party on June 30th, 1912 on the fourth ballot at the convention in Baltimore. As is the custom of the era, the convention rather than the candidate picks the Vice-President, and the Veepee is none other then…

Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey.

Clark promised James Michael Curley, a first generation Irish Amerian who was raised on the horrors of the Irish Potato Famine and the stories of British oppression, the position of Secretary of State if Clark was nominated and won the election. Curley was a progressive and urban populist, a champion of a lower tariff, the end to treaties with Jew-hating Russia, a federal child labor act, judicial recall, the mandatory arbitration of labor disputes, more ships for the US Navy and continued unrestricted immigration to the United States.

When the Great War breaks out, I can see the US, under Clark, staying far more neutral then OTL. Probably no financiel support for the Entente which could lead to Central Powers victory in…1917? I also can’t see Clark introducing segregation into some federal departments. However, what would Clark do with Pancho Villa?
Top