Anyone with an iota of interest in the Clinton, Sanders primary dustup last year will devour this history of Teddy Roosevelt's quixotic 1912 effort to regain the presidency after handing it over to his best buddy Bill Taft in 1908. The drama of that broken bromance makes the Berniecrats disenchantment the the DNC establishment backing Hillary seem like a lovefest. Historian Geoffrey Cowan wrote this book in part to understand the origins of the presidential primary process he helped expand during the tumultuous 1968 Democratic convention which still seated racist delegations from the South. Cowan's efforts busted the closed racist delegate process and made the primary King for selection of presidential nominees forevermore, including Hillary, who whopped my boy Bernie 34 to 23 in primaries, including 16,900 000 votes to 13,200,000.
Before 1912 there were no primaries, allowing the party bosses, both nationally and statewide, to select the nominees, for better or worse...and often the latter. TR loved that system. For all his rhetoric about a square deal for the common man, he distrusted real democracy, believing all but the well bred, meaning white, and educated were unfit to govern. But seeking to oust Taft, whom he believed betrayed TR's progressive agenda, and more importantly, TR himself, was doomed by Taft's lock on levers of power. The solution? Create a nationwide primary system which would 'Let the people rule' which became TR's campaign theme. Ravenous ambition make a true small D democrat of the man who feared just that till it served his purpose.
He just missed pulling it off. TR won 9 of the 13 primaries he and fellow progressives hastily arranged. Super lefty 'Fighting' Bob La Follette won 2, as did Taft. But Taft called in just enough favors from the bosses to not let the people rule. Roosevelt and crew bolted the convention to form the Bull Moose Party, splitting the GOP vote, ushering in 8 years of Democratic control under Woodrow Wilson.
TR was so incensed by the victory of the regressive Republicans at the convention, he muttered a quote you won't find in a list of his most famous: "The Republican dog has returned to his vomit." Alas, 115 years later the Republican dog is still lapping it up.
