What if: Theodore Roosevelt president in 1912

What if: Theodore Roosevelt president in 1912



Roosevelt’s challenge to Taft was successful in the first batch of party primaries, but the GOP establishment still held the power, and they made sure that the conservative Taft was nominated over the progressive Roosevelt. The Taft-Roosevelt political war was at full swing in 1912, fatally splitting the Republicans and ensuring that Democrat Woodrow Wilson would be easily elected in an Electoral College landslide. Wilson garnered 435 Electoral Votes from 40 of the then-48 states, with Roosevelt, running under the banner of the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party, taking 88 Electoral Votes from six states, and the incumbent Taft winning only eight Electoral Votes from two states.

So let us ask the question: what if Roosevelt had been able to win the Republican nomination from Taft?

In order for Roosevelt to even get the nomination, Taft would have likely had to make campaign errors so severe, that his credibility among the GOP establishment would have vanished, giving Roosevelt at least a fighting chance at the convention. Keeping in mind that the South was solidly Democratic at the time, the Republicans needed a united party to continue their all-but-unbroken dominance of the White House that had been in place since 1861; in that time only Andrew Johnson and Grover Cleveland represented the Democrats there, with Cleveland the only Democrat to win an election.

Roosevelt’s natural charisma and ability to draw support would have been assets against a bumbling Taft, and if he had given a speech at the convention, perhaps enough delegates would have broken with the pro-Taft establishment and demanded Roosevelt be nominated. If they would have succeeded, then Taft would have been the first incumbent President denied re-nomination since Chester Arthur in 1884, and the first elected President denied re-nomination since Franklin Pierce in 1856.

Perhaps, for the good of the party, Roosevelt’s political wars with Taft and Robert La Follette, the future Progressive Party nominee in 1924, would have been put aside. Perhaps La Follette might have been won over by the promise of a Cabinet post, as the first Secretary of Labor after the department’s split from Commerce.

A Roosevelt nomination would have put the Progressives at the head of the party, meaning that the platform would have been tailored to their interests rather than those of the establishment. It would not be a stretch to have Hiram Johnson, Roosevelt’s running mate on the real-life Progressive ticket in 1912, to join the former President on the Republican ticket. The New Nationalism pushed by Roosevelt would form the basis of the Republican campaign against Wilson’s New Freedom agenda, with the former more reliant on government activism than the latter.

By combining the popular vote totals won by Roosevelt and Taft in the real 1912 election, a united Republican ticket would have won election. Said popular vote total would be 7,608,546 compared to the 6,294,284 won by Wilson. In terms of Electoral Votes, Roosevelt-Johnson would have won 379 Electoral Votes from 34 states, with Wilson-Marshall winning 152 Electoral Votes from 14 states: the 11 former Confederate states plus Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona.

Roosevelt would have continued the Progressive agenda upon his return to office as the 28th President, akin to what Wilson actually did but through a Republican governing perspective—speaking of which, the Republicans, not split in this scenario, would have likely kept control of Congress. Perhaps women’s suffrage would have come about earlier than in real life, this being the largest difference on the domestic front.

In foreign affairs, Roosevelt bringing the United States into World War I sooner; I doubt Roosevelt would have let the German sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 go without a response and the following might happen:


President Roosevelt reviews tanks from 1st Armored “Rough Riders” battalion heading to France.

- World War I ends two years sooner.

It takes almost a year to build the ships, arm the troops, train them, and land them in France. By late 1915, though, the American Expeditionary Force of 10 million soldiers is fighting alongside the French and English armies on the Western Front. Even with the wasteful tactics of the European generals, which sometimes wipe out thousands of soldiers in hours, the Allies put enough pressure on the Germans to crack their defenses. The Kaiser’s army falls back, across France, into Germany, with the Allies in pursuit. As winter begins in 1916, the Germans are asking for peace terms.

- The Communists never gain power in Russia.

Although the Russian army suffers a paralyzing defeat on the Eastern Front, it is mostly intact when the war ends and the troops march home. The German government is too busy saving itself in 1917 to send the exiled Lenin back into Russia. Without their charismatic leader, the Bolsheviks of Moscow make little progress stirring up revolution. Russian veterans happily round up the loudest revolutionaries and ship them off to Siberia. By November, when the Bolsheviks would have seized the government, they have disappeared underground.

Roosevelt may also have been able to push for a limited-scale League of Nations, which would likely have also failed as it did in real life. But he would have been a presence at the peace negotiations, perhaps influencing some border changes from real life, especially with regards to Europe and the Middle East. But the post-war political and economic climate may have been defined by severe recession and labor unrest, giving the Democrats control of Congress in 1918. The stress from the post-war situation would have been too much for Roosevelt, and he would have likely died on or before January 6, 1919, leaving Hiram Johnson at the helm to deal with the nation’s economic woes.