Theodore Roosevelt: A Progressive Third Term

For the longest time I've been fascinated with the legacy left by President Woodrow Wilson in how he addressed the Great War, and have entertained scenarios where other figures might have been more central in determining the final resolution.

The most likely figure to rally the U.S. into war in the European theater would be former President Theodore Roosevelt, who had ran against Wilson in 1912 and held a political grudge ever since. If not for contracting malaria in South America between '13 and '14, he might have lived long enough to return to the presidency.

Has anyone else considered this scenario? What seems like the most justifiable POD to get him into that position?

I've been reading letters and speeches from Roosevelt during the President Wilson administration to determine how he might have handled the war, peace negotiations, and League of Nations.

Considering President Wilson within our reality was not strong on any of those fronts, I can only imagine that a President Roosevelt might have proven more effective; but at what cost?
 
For the longest time I've been fascinated with the legacy left by President Woodrow Wilson in how he addressed the Great War, and have entertained scenarios where other figures might have been more central in determining the final resolution.

The most likely figure to rally the U.S. into war in the European theater would be former President Theodore Roosevelt, who had ran against Wilson in 1912 and held a political grudge ever since. If not for contracting malaria in South America between '13 and '14, he might have lived long enough to return to the presidency.


Could you clarify what you mean?

From what I can see, in 1917/18 the Wilson Administration rallied the country only too well - indeed not so much rallied it as whipped it up into hysteria. It was a hellishly dangerous time to be a German-American, or to express any kind of dissent. So I don't quite see how TR, or anyone else, could have "achieved" any more in that respect. You can't wet a river.



Has anyone else considered this scenario? What seems like the most justifiable POD to get him into that position?
It's come up only too often, though most of the scenarios are far from plausible.

It's just conceivable that he could have wrested the 1912 nomination from Taft, but the party was so deeply divided that it's unlikely any Republican could have won in November. He might have stood a chance in 1916 had he stayed loyal to the ticket in 1912 and campaigned for Taft (who would still have lost), but even then, the party regulars would have preferred someone more conservative, and his bellicosity over the European War would probably have made his nomination impossible.



I've been reading letters and speeches from Roosevelt during the President Wilson administration to determine how he might have handled the war, peace negotiations, and League of Nations.

Considering President Wilson within our reality was not strong on any of those fronts, I can only imagine that a President Roosevelt might have proven more effective; but at what cost?
TR ranted on about "unconditional surrender" but regarded the OTL armistice terms as in practice amounting to that, which indeed they did. As to the LoN, he didn't oppose it in principle, but was dead against any diminution of American sovereignty, so his ToV would have included reservations not hugely different from those of Lodge. This might have made it possible for the Treaty to get through the Senate, but it's not clear this would have mattered much in the long run. TR's preferred recipe for peace was an Anglo-American alliance, which Congress would never have bought. In the end, probably not much change from OTL.

Had TR lived longer, by avoiding that trip to S America, he'd have been well placed to return to the White house in 1920, as the Republicans' 1912 feuds were by now ancient history. However, his chances of getting any Progressive measures through Congress would be pretty remote, as most Republicans wouldn't want to know, and the general public showed little interest. Like the final year of his OTL presidency, it would have been a distinctly frustrating experience. A vivacious personality isn't enough to get things done, unless the national mood is receptive
 
Champ Clark is nominated and runs a campaign almost as bad as Davis in '24, gets 31.8% of the vote. If 3/4ths of that 10% goes to T.R., and 1/4th to Taft, then T.R. wins by a nose.

 
I felt like Roosevelt couldn't get elected under the Progressive ticket in 1912 or 1916 without major changes, since it would pretty much guarantee a Democratic victory. His best chance with the Progressives would have been in 1920 surely. If Roosevelt had never gone to the Amazon and health permitting it's possible he could have gotten another term.
 
I felt like Roosevelt couldn't get elected under the Progressive ticket in 1912 or 1916 without major changes, since it would pretty much guarantee a Democratic victory. His best chance with the Progressives would have been in 1920 surely. If Roosevelt had never gone to the Amazon and health permitting it's possible he could have gotten another term.

But in 1920 he was considered a front runner for the REPUBLICAN nomination.
 
Could women's suffrage have been introduced earlier under a Progressive administration? After all, they had Suffragettes like Jane Addams among their ranks
 
Champ Clark is nominated and runs a campaign almost as bad as Davis in '24, gets 31.8% of the vote. If 3/4ths of that 10% goes to T.R., and 1/4th to Taft, then T.R. wins by a nose.

What if you leave William Taft with his 8 Electoral Votes, the fewest ever for an incumbent President, but have Oscar Underwood, House Majority Leader from Alabama as the Democratic nomination.

This leaves the north voting for the Progressive Party and the South voting Democratic.

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Champ Clark is nominated and runs a campaign almost as bad as Davis in '24, gets 31.8% of the vote. If 3/4ths of that 10% goes to T.R., and 1/4th to Taft, then T.R. wins by a nose.




Why should Clark do any worse than Wilson? He was politically somewhat to Wilson's left, so probably somewhat more appealing to Bryan voters than an "Establishment" type like the ex-President of Princeton. He doesn't have to be anything special as a campaigner to win comfortably in this situation.

Anyway, why do you assume he would campaign badly? In the Democratic primaries, he creamed Wilson in CA by almost three to one, so will probably do better than Wilson in getting the Democratic vote out there. Given that TR edged out Wilson OTL by less than 200 votes (out of 600,000 cast) that almost certainly means that Clark will carry the state. He also won by about two to one in IL and MA, which sounds as if he can count on at least the core Democratic vote in the east and Midwest too.

You've also given TR New York, where OTL Taft drove him into third place by a comfortable margin, AZ (where Wilson got more votes than TR and Taft combined) and NE, CO, and NV all of which went Democratic in a straight fight four years earlier, so are shoo-ins for any Democrat in a three way race. Ditto for OK which you've given to Taft.

Also, even if Clark did somehow mess up his campaign, why do you assume that TR would be the beneficiary? If anything Debs, as an ex-Dem who had supported Bryan in '96, would seem a likelier choice, while if the defectors are conservative Dems who see Clark as having too much essence of Bryan in him, their natural destination would be Taft rather than TR.

Finally, of course, there is always the option of ignoring the Presidential contest altogether, and just voting for the HoR and other offices. Even OTL, about a fourth of those who voted chose this course, so that some 19.5 million votes were cast for Congress, against a bare 15 million for the Presidency. If Clark were really as lacking in appeal as you suggest, isn't abstention more likely than a vote for a Republican?

Sorry but I just don't see how these figures add up.
 
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What if you leave William Taft with his 8 Electoral Votes, the fewest ever for an incumbent President, but have Oscar Underwood, House Majority Leader from Alabama as the Democratic nomination.

This leaves the north voting for the Progressive Party and the South voting Democratic.


Why?

Wilson's Southern origins don't seem to have harmed him much, so why should Underwood's? If it's because he is seen as too conservative, then any losses to TR (or to Debs) are likely to be made up for by gains at the expense of Taft. Also, Underwood is a Kentuckian by birth, so there's not the slightest reason why he should lose the Border States. Indeed, with the Republican vote split, it's all but ASB for any Democrat to lose them. Ditto for IN and quite a few other Northern Sttaes.
 
How would he rally the people into war? How could he change so many minds?

Well, the Wilson Administration managed to rally the country - or at least the vocal part of it - into a state of wild hysteria, so I daresay that if TR were POTUS in 1917 he could have done the same. But as I said before, you can't wet a river, so I'm not sure he could whip up the bloodlust any more than happened OTL.
 
Well, the Wilson Administration managed to rally the country - or at least the vocal part of it - into a state of wild hysteria, so I daresay that if TR were POTUS in 1917 he could have done the same. But as I said before, you can't wet a river, so I'm not sure he could whip up the bloodlust any more than happened OTL.

1917 yes, I thought you were talking about 1913-1917. I don't credit Wilson with rallying the people towards war. I think the Germans did that with unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram.
 
Could you clarify what you mean?

From what I can see, in 1917/18 the Wilson Administration rallied the country only too well - indeed not so much rallied it as whipped it up into hysteria. It was a hellishly dangerous time to be a German-American, or to express any kind of dissent. So I don't quite see how TR, or anyone else, could have "achieved" any more in that respect. You can't wet a river.
Throughout President Wilson's term, much of the U.S. was predominately isolationist. They didn't want to fight in a foreign war for foreign interests. Remember that America was still very much a frontier nation with a "rugged individualist" attitude.

Wilson--who desired peace at any price--tolerated and downplayed German war crimes, despite rising sentiment against the Empire. Even when it cost American lives, Wilson only wagged his finger at Germany and told them to keep us out of it.

Wilson had actually only won re-election by a narrow margin; both houses of Congress were lost to the Republican Party. It had long been obvious that our intervention was inevitable, but by the time Wilson was finally cajoled by Congress itself to declare war, we were woefully unprepared.

Wilson spent months arguing with the Republicans on budget legislation for the war, and his Selective Service Act mobilized less than half of the men planned.

This is in contrast to Roosevelt, who had even during President Wilson's first term that the U.S. must A.) build up its navy, and B.) enact a Swiss-style universal military service program in high schools and colleges to prepare Americans for the impending conflict.

Roosevelt also personally knew much of the European powers from his prior administration. Wilson was a stranger on the national stage, and a naive one walked all over upon.

I think that Roosevelt would have been better prepared and more effective.

TR ranted on about "unconditional surrender" but regarded the OTL armistice terms as in practice amounting to that, which indeed they did.
Roosevelt also pushed for a full invasion of Germany to crush its imperial spirit, since he rightly realized that only economic sanctions would not be enough to redefine the German people. In fact, it became a huge factor in World War II that the German Imperial forces had not "technically" lost the Great War, but were overthrown by a new government that negotiated a horrible peace.

Had Roosevelt enforced his "unconditional surrender," I believe it would have taken a much different form. In fact, I think his terms for American entry into the League of Nations would have resulted in a complete avoidance of the nationalist rise in the '30s. He was disgusted with the Armenian Genocide and other atrocities of the war, so believed that the peace terms should destroy national identities rather than subjugate them.
 
I think that Roosevelt would have been better prepared and more effective.

How? He can propose anything he likes, but there's no likelihood of Congress actually passing any more measures than OTL. The "bully pulpit" only works when the audience is in a receptive mood, and America pre-1917 was very far from receptive to anything that hinted at war.


Roosevelt also pushed for a full invasion of Germany to crush its imperial spirit,
Could you give me a cite for that?

I have just been looking through his letters in late 1918, but all I can find is vague references to "unconditional surrender" which never spell out what that should involve on the ground.

Nor can I find any criticism of the OTL armistice terms. Indeed, in a letter of Nov 19 to Arthur Hamilton Lee, he expresses smug satisfaction at the contrast between "Foch's twenty-three points" and Wilson's Fourteen ones. Afaics, the actual armistice terms amounted to an "unconditional surrender" as TR understood it, since they made it impossible for Germany to renew the war.

Not that it really matters since neither Foch nor Petain advocated going further than the Rhine, while Haig didn't even want to go that far. So no way was there ever going to be any march on Berlin, unless the Germans themselves forced it by refusing to sign the armistice.
 
1917 yes, I thought you were talking about 1913-1917. I don't credit Wilson with rallying the people towards war. I think the Germans did that with unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram.

Well, nothing was ever going to "rally the American people toward war" absent USW and the ZT. They (and Congress) simply didn't want to know. It wouldn't have greatly mattered who was POTUS prior to Feb 1917.
 
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