Wilson Becomes President

Wilson's presidency was dominated by WorldWarI (1914-18), a fact that he himself found ironic given his preference for domestic affairs. Early on he stressed U.S. nonintervention and sought to mediate the conflict, but his efforts were rebuffed by both sides. After taking the United States into the war in 1917, he raised an army of more than four million people and a powerful navy. He sought a just peace at the conference table after the war, but was frustrated when his high ideals came up against the hard reality of international diplomacy and politics and his plans, as well as his health, collapsed. Domestically, Wilson expanded the scope and reach of the federal government more than any president since Abraham Lincoln, instituting the Federal Reserve Board, the first peacetime income tax, and other progressive legislative initiatives.

The Campaign of 1912

Wilson was one of the strongest candidates for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party as the 1912 campaign season opened. For one of the few times since the American Civil War (1861-65), the party's prospects in the November election appeared bright. The Republicans were bitterly divided between their Progressive leader, former president Theodore Roosevelt, and the conservative leader, President William Howard Taft.

Wilson's major opponents for the Democratic nomination were House Speaker James Beauchamp "Champ" Clark of Missouri, who had the backing of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst; House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Oscar Underwood of Alabama, a proponent of lowering tariffs who had a sizable following; and Governor Judson Harmon of Ohio, who was a favorite of the conservative faction. William Jennings Bryan, who had been the unsuccessful candidate of the Democrats in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 elections, also had many loyal supporters.

The June 1912 convention in Baltimore, Maryland, was dominated by Clark, who initially had Bryan's support. Clark held a majority of delegates in the early going, but two-thirds were needed for nomination. Wilson, back home in New Jersey, wanted to withdraw from the contest. But William G. McAdoo and Alexander McCombs, Wilson's managers, thought the contest winnable and refused to follow orders. Bryan eventually shifted his support to Wilson, and others began to follow suit. On the 46th ballot Wilson won the necessary two-thirds and received the nomination. Governor Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana was chosen as the vice presidential nominee.

The Election

In the fall campaign Wilson realized his actual opponent was Roosevelt and his "Bull Moose" Progressive Party, as opposed to the colorless and fading Republican candidate Taft. The two men disagreed most obviously on the tariff, which was then the government's primary source of revenue, with Wilson favoring sharp reduction and Roosevelt favoring only minor changes. Both men favored banking and currency reform, with relatively little disagreement on how that should be achieved. Another major point of contention was over what to do about the "trusts," or large industrial combines that dominated entire industries, such as oil, steel, and tobacco.

Theodore Roosevelt proposed fighting bad behavior by the trusts, rather than their mere size. He favored strict enforcement of safety rules, child labor laws, and workmen's compensation for on-the-job injuries. Above all, he urged the creation of a "national industrial commission" with the power to regulate and control the activities of the trusts. The commission would be similar to the regulation the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was supposed to accomplish with the railroads. Wilson took a somewhat different approach. Believing that the trusts would eventually get control of any regulatory body, the only realistic approach was to ban the practices that enabled trusts to come together in the first place, and break up existing monopolies. Early in October Wilson almost offhandedly coined a campaign slogan for this policy, "The New Freedom," which came to stand for his entire domestic program.

The campaign was thrown temporarily into confusion when an insane saloon keeper attempted to assassinate Roosevelt in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 14. The bullet was stopped by the former president's eyeglass case and the copy of the speech he was about to give. He talked for an hour before seeking medical attention. The wound proved superficial, however, and after a brief flurry of excitement, the race returned to the pre-attack pattern.

In the elections Wilson scored an impressive victory in the electoral college. Wilson had 435 electoral votes from 40 states, compared to 88 from six states for Roosevelt, and eight votes from two states for Taft. Democrats also managed to win a majority in both houses of Congress. These victories were due in no small part to the divisions within the Republican Party. Wilson's 42 percent of the popular vote was the lowest percentage for any successful presidential nominee since Abraham Lincoln's 39 percent in 1860, and was less than the 50 percent of the votes that went to Roosevelt (27 percent) and Taft (23 percent). Eugene V. Debs and the Socialist Party also had a significant showing, with 6 percent of the votes.

The Campaign of 1916

The campaign of 1916 centered dramatically on the Great War, or WorldWarI (1914-18), then raging in Europe, and the issue of whether or not the United States should get involved. There was no question that Wilson would be the Democratic nominee. The Republican nomination went to Charles Evans Hughes, a Progressive former governor of New York who resigned his seat on the Supreme Court to run for president.

As U.S.war fever mounted, Wilson insisted on continuing his policy of neutrality, though he beefed up the armed forces in response to demands for "preparedness" from, among others, Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson's initial plan was to campaign on this theme of "preparedness," but delegates at the convention reacted so wildly to pacifist statements from the platform by the likes of William Jennings Bryan that Wilson's fall theme was switched to "He Kept Us Out of War." Wilson also sought to win over Republican Progressives with domestic legislation such as a bill mandating an eight-hour day for railroad workers, federal loans for farmers, a federal child-labor bill, heavy new income taxes on the rich, and the first estate tax in U.S. history. The Democratic platform also endorsed women's suffrage, or the right to vote.

Although the Republicans were united again and Roosevelt campaigned actively for Hughes, they could not find a way to dent Wilson's popular "He Kept Us Out of War" slogan. The Republican platform was evasive on the issue of intervention, and Roosevelt's angry attacks on the administration's neutrality policy played into Wilson's hands. Hughes's dull and legalistic oratory failed to excite the public.

Even so, the election was extremely close. Every eastern state north of the Potomac River, except Maryland and New Hampshire, went for Hughes, as did the whole Midwest except for Ohio. Wilson dominated the South and the West, however, and won 277 electoral college votes to Hughes's 254. Without the electoral votes of California, which went to Wilson by only four thousand votes, he would have lost the election.

Source Citation:"The Woodrow Wilson Administrations." Presidential Administration Profiles for Students. Online Edition. Gale Group, 2002. StudentResourceCenter. Thomson Gale. 31 August 2006 <