Former President Theodore Roosevelt a dodged a (fatal) bullet
105 years ago today. Running as a third-party
candidate he was shot point blank outside a Milwaukee hotel en route to a campaign
speech. Fortunately, the bullet fired
into his right rib by a deranged saloonkeeper was minimized by a sheaf of paper
and an eyeglasses case. Roosevelt was
bleeding but went on to deliver his speech, telling his audience that “it takes
more than that to kill a Bull Moose”; the Bull Moose was the symbol of his new
Progressive Party. He was later taken to
the hospital, but the bullet was never removed.
This was only one of the dramatic developments of the wild
1912 presidential election in which there were four notable candidates: incumbent president William Howard Taft, the
Republican; Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, the Democrat; Roosevelt; and
Eugene V. Debs, the radical union leader running on the Socialist Party ticket. Wilson won and Taft secured a dismal
third-place finish. TR came in second
with eighty-eight electoral votes and amassed twenty-seven percent of the
popular vote. It was a strong third-party
showing yet a disappointment for a former president who at age fifty-four still
had a political agenda.
The election created a split between the progressive and
conservative wings of the Republican Party which essentially lasted for a
century. The platform of the party,
identified as “A Contract with the People,” was a blueprint for progressive
policies, many of which would be enacted during the administration of Franklin
Roosevelt.
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