CHAPTER 20: Troubled Succession

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 20: Troubled Succession

2 Objectives: o We will examine the troubled succession of William Howard Taft to the presidency, and how it paved the way for the ascension of Woodrow Wilson o We will analyze the administration of Woodrow Wilson as both a conservative and progressive leader

3 Luk_11:17 But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.

4 THE TROUBLED SUCCESSION: o William Howard Taft assumed the presidency in o Taft was Theodore Roosevelt s most trusted lieutenant and his handpicked successor.

5 THE TROUBLED SUCCESSION: o Progressive reformers believed him to be one of their own. o But Taft also been a restrained and moderate jurist. o A man that wanted to be a moderate.

6 THE TROUBLED SUCCESSION: o Conservatives expected him to abandon Roosevelt s aggressive use of presidential powers. o By seemingly acceptable to everyone, Taft easily won the election.

7 Taft and the Progressives: o Taft s first problem arose in the opening months of the new administration, when he called Congress into special session to lower protective tariff rates, an old progressive demand.

8 THE TROUBLED SUCCESSION: o Taft made no effort to fight the opposition of the Congressional old guard which resulted in a feeble Payne-Aldrich Tariff which reduced Tariff rates scarcely at all. o Progressives resented the president s passivity.

9 THE TROUBLED SUCCESSION: o Taft may not have championed reform but neither was he a consistent opponent of change. o In 1912 he supported and signed legislation to create a Federal Children s Bureau to investigate all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life.

10 THE TROUBLED SUCCESSION: o But a controversy broke out in late 1909 that helped destroy Taft s popularity with progressives. o Many progressives were unhappy when Taft replaced Roosevelt s secretary of interior, James R. Garfield, an aggressive conservationist, with Richard A. Ballinger, a conservative corporate lawyer.

11 THE TROUBLED SUCCESSION: o Suspicion of Ballinger grew when he attempted to invalidate Roosevelt s removal of nearly one million acres of forests and mineral reserves for private development. o This ultimately led to Taft firing Gifford Pinchot for insubordination. o Pinchot leaked to the media about Taft attempting to stall any investigation of Ballinger and asking Congress to investigate the scandal. o This alienated supporters of Roosevelt and the Progressives.

12 The Return of Roosevelt: o During these controversies Roosevelt was abroad in safari and a tour of Europe. o Roosevelt remained a formidable presence thanks to intensive newspaper coverage of his every move. o When he returned, it was a major media event. o He stated his intent not to enter politics.

13 The Return of Roosevelt: o Roosevelt embarked in a national speaking tour and before the end of the summer, he was furious with Taft and convinced that he alone was capable of reuniting the Republican Party.

14 The Return of Roosevelt: o In 1910, in Osawatomie, Kansas, Theodore Roosevelt announced a set of political principles that called New Nationalism that made clear he had moved a considerable way from the cautious conservatism of the first years of his presidency.

15 The Return of Roosevelt: o Roosevelt argued that social justice was possible only through the vigorous efforts of a strong federal government whose executive acted as a steward of the public welfare.

16 The Return of Roosevelt: o Progressives candidates were being elected in the midterm elections. o Even the Democrats were offering progressive candidates and won control over the House of Representatives, for the first time in sixteen years and gained strength in the Senate.

17 The Return of Roosevelt: o In 1912, Roosevelt was reluctant to become a candidate for president because Senator Robert La Follette, the great Wisconsin progressive, had been working since 1911 to secure the presidential nomination for himself.

18 The Return of Roosevelt: o But La Follette s candidacy stumbled when he appeared to suffer a nervous breakdown during a speech because of exhaustion and being distraught over the illness of her daughter.

19 Roosevelt versus Taft: o The 1912 Republic Convention was an ideological contest between the Old Guard and the progressive supporters of Roosevelt which would later become the Bull Moose party. o The Republican National Committee who was controlled by the Old Guard awarded the nomination to Taft. o But Roosevelt decided to form his own political party and continue his run for president.

20 Woodrow Wilson: o The Democrats nominated a progressive candidate of their own Woodrow Wilson, who had been a professor of political science at Princeton until 1902 and also served as its president. o He also served as governor of New Jersey and committed to reform.

21 The Return of Roosevelt: o Wilson advocated a political program known as the New Freedom. o Wilson believed that the bigness was both unjust and inefficient that the proper response to monopoly was to not to regulate it but to destroy it.

22 The Election: o The 1912 election, Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote, with Roosevelt unable to draw any significant numbers of Democratic progressives. o Wilson held on to most Democrats and won. o He polled only 42 percent of the vote, compared to 27 percent for Roosevelt, and 23 percent for Taft and 6 percent for Eugene V. Debs. o Wilson won the plurality of the popular vote but he won the majority of the electoral votes and became president.

23 The Wilson Administration: o Wilson was a bold and forceful president. o He exerted firm control over his cabinet, and he delegated real authority only to those whose loyalty to him was beyond question. o His most powerful adviser, Colonel Edward M. House was an intelligent and ambitious Texan, who held no office and whose only claim to authority was his close friendship with the president.

24 The Wilson Administration: o Wilson s first triumph as president was the fulfillment of the old Democratic and progressive goal, a substantial lowering of the protective tariff. o The Underwood-Simmons Tariff provided cuts substantial enough, progressives believed to introduce real competition into American markets and thus help break the power of trusts.

25 The Wilson Administration: o To make up for the loss of revenue under the new Tariff, Congress approved a graduated income tax which the recently adopted Sixteenth Amendment to Congress now permitted. o Graduated income tax taxed those who earned higher and lesser for those who earned less.

26 The Federal Reserve: o Wilson helped reform the banking system with the Federal Reserve Act. o Which Congress passed and the president signed on December 23, o It created twelve regional banks each to be owned and controlled by the individual banks of its districts.

27 The Federal Reserve: o The regional Federal reserve banks would hold a certain percentage of the assets of their member banks in reserve; o They would use those reserves to support loans to private banks at an interest on a discount rate that the Federal Reserve System would set; o They would issue a new type of paper currency-federal Reserve notes that would become the nations basic medium of trade and would be backed by the government.

28 The Federal Reserve: o Most importantly, they would be able to shift funds quickly to troubled areas to meet increased demands for credit or to protect imperiled banks. o Supervising and regulating the entire system was a national Federal Reserve Board, whose members were appointed by the president. o Nearly half of the nation s banking resources were represented in the system within a year.

29 Wilson and Monopolies: o Wilson also focused on legislation in dealing with monopolies. o One was the Federal Trade Commission Act created a regulatory agency that would helped businesses determine in advance whether their actions would be acceptable to the government.

30 Wilson and Monopolies: o The agency would also have authority to launch prosecutions against unfair trade practices, and it would have wide power to investigate corporate behavior.

31 Retreat and Advance: o By the Fall of 1914, Wilson believed that the program of the New Freedom was essentially complete and that agitation for reform would now subside. o He refused to support the movement of national women suffrage and condoned segregation of the Federal Government (reversing Roosevelt s elimination of such barriers).

32 Retreat and Advance: o But after the Congressional Elections of 1914, Democrats suffered major losses in Congress, and voters who in 1912 supported the Progressive party began returning to the Republicans. o Wilson began to support a second flurry of reforms including appointing Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, making him not only the first Jew but also the most advanced progressives to serve there.

33 Retreat and Advance: o Wilson sponsored measures that expanded the powers of the national government in important ways. o In 1916, he supported the 1916 Keating-Owen Act, the first federal law regulating child labor.

34 Retreat and Advance: o However, the Supreme Court, in two rulings related to the 1916 Keating- Owen Act, struck down reform legislation. o But overtime, these innovative uses of government overcame most of the constitutional objections and became the foundation of a long-term growth in federal power over the economy.