CHAPTER XIV. THE GLORIOUS FAILURE
The third act in the drama of the Progressive party was filled with the campaign for the Presidency. It was a three-cornered fight. Taft stood for Republican conservatism and clung to the old things. Roosevelt fought for the progressive rewriting of Republican principles with added emphasis on popular government and social justice as defined in the New Nationalism. The Democratic party under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson espoused with more or less enthusiasm the old Democratic principles freshly interpreted and revivified in the declaration they called the New Freedom. The campaign marked the definite entrance of the nation upon a new era. One thing was clear from the beginning: the day of conservatism and reaction was over; the people of the United States had definitely crossed their Rubicon and had committed themselves to spiritual and moral progress.
The campaign had one dramatic incident. On the 14th of October, just before entering the Auditorium at Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot by a fanatic. His immediate action was above everything characteristic. Some time later in reply to a remark that he had been foolhardy in going on with his speech just after the attack, Roosevelt said, "Why, you know, I didn't think I had been mortally wounded. If I had been mortally wounded, I would have bled from the lungs. When I got into the motor I coughed hard three times, and put my hand up to my mouth; as I did not find any blood, I thought that I was not seriously hurt, and went on with my speech."
The opening words of the speech which followed were equally typical:
"Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.... The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.... First of all, I want to say this about myself; I have altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death; and now I cannot speak insincerely to you within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way. I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do, and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I cannot understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to be occupied with the absorbing desire to do his duty."
There was a great deal of self-revelation in these words. Even the critic accustomed to ascribe to Roosevelt egotism and love of gallery applause must concede the courage, will-power, and self-forgetfulness disclosed by the incident.
The election was a debacle for reaction, a victory for Democracy, a triumph in defeat for the Progressive party. Taft carried two States, Utah and Vermont, with eight electoral votes; Woodrow Wilson carried forty States, with 435 electoral votes; and Roosevelt carried five States, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Washington, and eleven out of the thirteen votes of California, giving him 88 electoral votes. Taft's popular vote was 3,484,956; Wilson's was 6,293,019; while Roosevelt's was 4,119,507. The fact that Wilson was elected by a minority popular vote is not the significant thing, for it is far beyond the capability of any political observer to declare what would have been the result if there had been but two parties in the field. The triumph for the Progressive party lay in the certainty that its emergence had compelled the election of a President whose face was toward the future. If the Roosevelt delegates at Chicago in June had acquiesced in the result of the steam-roller Convention, it is highly probable that Woodrow Wilson would not have been the choice of the Democratic Convention that met later at Baltimore.
During the succeeding four years the Progressive party, as a national organization, continued steadily to "dwindle, peak, and pine." More and more of its members and supporters slipped or stepped boldly back to the Republican party. Its quondam Democratic members had largely returned to their former allegiance with Wilson, either at the election or after it. Roosevelt once more withdrew from active participation in public life, until the Great War, with its gradually increasing intrusions upon American interests and American rights, aroused him to vigorous and aggressive utterance on American responsibility and American duty. He became a vigorous critic of the Administration.
Once more a demand began to spring up for his nomination for the Presidency; the Progressive party began to show signs of reviving consciousness. There had persisted through the years a little band of irreconcilables who were Progressives or nothing. They wanted a new party of radical ideas regardless of anything in the way of reformation and progress that the old parties might achieve. There were others who preferred to go back to the Republican party rather than to keep up the Progressive party as a mere minority party of protest, but who hoped in going back to be able to influence their old party along the lines of progress. There were those who were Rooseveltians pure and simple and who would follow him wherever he led.
All these groups wanted Roosevelt as President. They united to hold a convention of the Progressive party at Chicago in 1916 on the same days on which the Republican Convention met there. Each convention opened with a calculating eye upon the activities of the other. But both watched with even more anxious surmise for some sign of intention from the Progressive leader back at Oyster Bay. He held in his single hand the power of life and death for the Progressive party. His decision as to cooperative action with the Republicans or individual action as a Progressive would be the most important single factor in the campaign against Woodrow Wilson, who was certain of renomination. Three questions confronted and puzzled the two bodies of delegates: Would the Republicans nominate Roosevelt or another? If another, what would Roosevelt do? If another, what would the Progressives do?