I wonder if we did enough historical/psychological research on what produced Teddy Roosevelt, we could figure out where to look for him (or even her)...
http://riseofthecenter.com/2011/11/25/we-need-a-modern-day-teddy-roosevelt-and-bull-moose-party/ We Need a Modern Day Teddy Roosevelt and Bull Moose Party Nov 25, 2011 Posted by Jake Ellsworth | 2 comments One of the major issues of the 1912 Presidential election centered on the perception that capitalism had run amok – industries used tactics that stifled competition and inflated prices for basic necessities. Antitrust laws had no teeth or simply weren’t enforced. Figuring out how to deal with Trusts was a critical question of the time. The Trusts allowed the rich trust owners to get richer and richer at the expense of common Americans. As a result, the call for reform was so great that members of both major parties realized that some action was needed to suppress the greed, but disagreed on the best ways to address the problem. The Republican Party fractured. The conservatives within the GOP supported the incumbent William H. Taft while “progressive” Republicans sought to return Theodore Roosevelt to the White House. The Republican Party leadership sided with Taft in spite of Roosevelt’s popularity with voters. Following Taft’s anointment as the Republican nominee, Roosevelt and his followers quickly split from the Republicans and ran under the banner of the Progressive Party – better known as the Bull Moose Party – with Roosevelt as its candidate. Meanwhile, the Democrats were dealing with ideological differences as well and ultimately nominated Woodrow Wilson as a compromise. The Progressive Roosevelt easily outpolled Taft but the Republican held onto enough Republican base votes to give Wilson the victory. This was the last time that a candidate other than a Democratic or Republican nominee finished second in a Presidential election. Fast forward 100 years. Some things have changed; some things have not. At a glance, the world appears much different. In 1912, news of the Titanic’s sinking traveled at the speed of Morse code – the 1912 equivalent of Twitter. Campaign advertising arrived via posters, pamphlets, and newspapers in 1912. In 2012, television and the internet will be the outlets of choice. Not everything has changed. We are still facing issues caused by greed. Those with financial leverage still shamelessly wield this power for personal gain at the expense of the “99%” (to borrow a term from the Occupy movement). Their methods are more nuanced, but the objective is the same: more for them, less for the workers. Today’s tools of choice often involve outsourcing work to foreign low-wage countries or “right-sizing”. “Corporate America” paints these choices as patriotic – as in, “We’re doing this so that we can keep prices low.” The more honest explanation would be, “We’re doing this so that we can GROW our profits even higher.” “Unless the majority of our people share to a certain extent in the prosperity, then the success and the prosperity amount to very little.” – Theodore Roosevelt, March 1911. As corrupted as we perceive current politics to be, it is not nearly as corrupt now as it was then. In 1912, delegates to party conventions were regularly paid for their support of specific candidates and the Party leadership would rig the whole process to guarantee that their favored candidate received the nomination. State primaries were just beginning to emerge as a method for selecting delegates. The nomination process had little to do with a candidate’s worthiness in the eyes of voters. What 2012 America needs is a set of wealthy and selfless benefactors willing to finance a true “reform” candidate – a charismatic fiscal conservative with a progressive streak and who is more about “pragmatic ideas” than kowtowing to any political agenda – who will tell retiring Baby Boomers (whose aging will bankrupt Medicare and Social Security) that they should not be exempt from austerity measures and simultaneously call out the “1%” (really the 0.25%, but “We are the ninety-nine percent!” is so much easier to chant than “We are the ninety-nine and three-quarters percent!”) as greedy and self-serving. We need a Teddy Roosevelt for the twenty-first century! Where is our Bull Moose? We need a strong leader to compel the Republicans and Democrats to work together for the good of the nation rather than the special interests that support them financially. In the face of a well-financed challenge, the Democrats and Republicans would be forced to move off rigid positions or risk losing their stranglehold on the political realm. Can Americans Elect (or some other group) deliver such a candidate? As tired as most Americans are with the political gridlock that seems to get worse with each election cycle, wouldn’t it be refreshing to see something new instead of the same old talking points? 2 Responses to “We Need a Modern Day Teddy Roosevelt and Bull Moose Party” Leave a Reply -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
