At the centennial of the 1912 election, pundits and politicos tell us, we again
confront a constitutional moment. For the Right, the existential choice is between entrepreneurialism or social democracy, America or Europe. For the Left, it is between the 99 and 1 percent or, in President Obama’s less unhinged version, between a common future that’s “built to last” and unbridled, destructive capitalism. In a much-noted speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “New Nationalism” speech, Mr. Obama explicitly identified his program with Roosevelt’s agenda of progress and control over corporate power, and the coming election with that of 1912.
