The 1912 election fundamentally transformed American politics.  This transformation and the events which led to it are the subject of Sidney Milkis’s excellent book.  Milkis’s book is both lively and profound, a joy and an education at the same time.  The key thread that runs throughout Milkis’s tapestry is the paradoxical result of Theodore Roosevelt’s candidacy: the joining of mass democracy – replacing party politics with candidate-centered elections and a plebiscitary presidency – with a centralized administrative state where commissions make policy outside of the direct influence of public opinion.  The dilemmas with which Milkis grapples in the book are still the dilemmas confronting progressivism today, and Milkis’s hesitancy about the legacy of progressivism is highly informative for dealing with the contemporary problems we face in light of the progressive resurgence in 2008.

Milkis’s dramatic account of the 1912 election focuses on the central figure during the election: Theodore Roosevelt.  Roosevelt’s democratic faith was the impetus for his departure from the Republican Party and leadership of the Progressive Party.  Yet it is unclear whether Milkis thinks Roosevelt was a true believer in the cause of democracy or whether Roosevelt used the theme of democracy to provide clear distinctions between he, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.  Milkis notes that in speeches leading up to 2012, Roosevelt expressed “temperate support for direct democracy” rather than a full-fledged defense of reforms such as the initiative, referendum, recall, direct election of senators, and referenda on judicial decisions.  Responding to some progressives’ fears that he was not a faithful devotee of direct democracy, Roosevelt suggested that it was wrong “to speak of democracy…as if it were a goddess.”  In an important speech in Columbus in 1912, Roosevelt finally became a convert to the cause of direct democracy, only months after condemning the idea in the National Progressive Republican League platform.  Roosevelt’s actions provoke an important question, not fully resolved in the account: did Roosevelt adopt his faith in direct democracy out of sincere belief, or in order to become the leader of a new progressive party? 

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