Sunday, June 14, 2015

Presidential Losers #29: Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Eugene Debs


Teddy Roosevelt
The race began to get interesting when Teddy Roosevelt decided to enter the fray as a Bull Moose Candidate.  His mission was to defeat his own former VP, William Howard Taft, who'd proven to be a big disappointment in the White House. 1  The gist of it was that he felt Taft was far too conservative and hadn't followed the more liberal and progressive agenda he'd laid out.  (Liberal?  Progressive?  Weren't these guys the Republicans?) 

William Howard Taft
Then, just for grins, the Socialist Party nominated Eugene Debs.  (You may think that's a funny name, but study his picture closely and tell me what else you could name him.)  

 Debs ran into tough going because unlike today, Socialism wasn't a very popular concept back then, and he had to explain that he wasn't a Wobbly trying to overthrow capitalism, although some of those admittedly were in the party, and he wasn't one of these airie-fairie Fabian Socialists like George Bernard Shaw, although those were fine folks, too, and nor was he a "Gas-and-Water-Socialist" whatever the hell that was, but, well... and by the time he'd gotten that far, his listener had gone off to get a sandwich.  
Eugene Debs

 In spite of this, the Socialists got a whopping 6% of the popular vote.  During a rally in New York, Debs' running mate Emil Seidel bragged that only four years ago people were throwing rotten vegetables and eggs at them, and now they weren't.  2 

 This was the high point for Debs, though.  Wilson sent him to prison for treason for his opposition to World War I.  Debs ran for president again, but being in a penitentiary in Atlanta somewhat hampered his campaign, and he made a negligible showing.  He served four years of a ten-year prison sentence before Harding commuted his sentence so he could be home in time for Christmas and then die.  

 Highlights of the '12 campaign included Taft's running mate dropping dead on the campaign trail, and John Flammang Schrank's attempted assassination of Teddy Roosevelt.  The bullet was stopped by a ninety-page speech in his pocket. 3

Result

Woodrow Wilson: 435
Teddy Roosevelt: 88
William Howard Taft: 8
Eugene Debs: 0

 1. How big was he?
2. Eggs were too expensive.
3. 90 pages!  Did Schrank want to kill him or just shut him up?