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THE BULL MOOSE CAMPAIGN OF 1912

© John S. Cooper

In 1912, the American electorate was treated to the spectacle of an incumbent (current) president, a past president, and a future president running against each other in a three-way race for the White House. It was one of the most exciting and unusual campaigns in our history.

On election night 1904, Teddy Roosevelt promised not to run for a third term, a decision he later regretted. At the end of his second term, he wanted his faithful Secretary of War William Howard Taft to run for president. After a dinner party one evening, Teddy and the Tafts went into the library, and Teddy sat down in a big chair, closed his eyes and said, "I am the seventh son of a seventh daughter. I have clairvoyant powers. I see a man standing before me weighing about 350 pounds. There is something hanging over his head. I cannot make out what it is...At one time it looks like the Presidency---then again it looks like the Chief Justiceship." Mrs. Taft cried, "Make it the Presidency!" William Howard Taft declared, "Make it the Chief Justiceship!" In the end, Teddy and Mrs. Taft talked William Howard Taft into running for the White House. He was no Teddy Roosevelt.

By the end of his term, Taft had compromised with the conservatives so often that Teddy felt that Taft had betrayed the progressive principles he was supposed to uphold. For that reason, or because he missed being the center of things, he decided to run against Taft for the Republican nomination. Taft did not want to be president again, but did not want TR to get back in the White House.

TR defeated Taft in nine out of ten primaries, including Taft's own home state of Ohio. But the other states held conventions that nominated delegates favoring Taft. At the Republican national convention, Taft's renomination was a sure thing. The chairman of the convention gaveled down so many Roosevelt motions that one delegate raised a point of order stating that the steamroller was exceeding the speed limit. After that, whenever the chairman spoke, the Roosevelt delegates would toot whistles and rub sandpaper together to imitate the sounds of a steam roller.

When Taft was finally nominated, Roosevelt and the progressive wing of the party walked out and met later to form the Progressive Party, which of course nominated Teddy for President. Teddy declared that his "hat was in the ring" and that he was stripped to the buff and feeling fit as a bull moose, and the party symbol was born (as well as the nickname for the entire campaign).