Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson
This week in class, we have looked in depth at both Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson in their presidencies. All three were considered progressive, yet they all approached progressiveness differently. Out of all of the three, Theodore Roosevelt was the most progressive. He felt strongly that the trusts which caused harm to the people needed to be broken up, and he did not hesitate in doing so. He also enforced the power of the government over the businesses in order to stifle them. He came up with the "Square Deal," which meant that there would be equality for both the workers and the owners. Then, Taft became president through Roosevelt's support. Taft started out as a trust-buster, but then after passing a bill that raised tariffs, he began to lose his reputation as a progressive. In the next election, Wilson came out on top. He was well liked by the people because he was also a progressive. He introduced four major reform bills and was famous for his New Freedom ideas. Unlike Roosevelt, Wilson focused on individual people rather than the bigger picture in his reforms. He also created the income tax. He was more progressive than Taft, however, he was less progressive than Roosevelt. This is because Wilson supported segregation and therefore made less progress in this area. He also did not recognize the suffrage movement very much. Therefore, of these three progressive men, Roosevelt was the most, then Wilson, then Taft.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In my opinion, during the middle of his first and second terms as president, Roosevelt was actually somewhat conservative to an extent and could be considered less of a progressive than even Wilson. This is because during this time period, in order to garner support from conservatives within the Republican Party, President Roosevelt pandered to conservative ideals through choosing to only make moderate political reforms. Rather than going "all out" in his progressive policies in order to only cater to the liberal Republicans, Roosevelt knew this would cause him to lose a lot of his conservative support, so in the end he chose to act as a moderate progressive through his policies. For example, instead of going after all corrupt corporations who were taking advantage of their workers and always taking the side of the unions, Roosevelt used his Square Deal policies to create moderate progressive change, which made him pretty similar to Wilson in this aspect. Now, post-presidency when Roosevelt was campaigning for a third term and didn't care about Republican support, he only promoted progressive ideals and pandered to the liberals, which is most likely why he was considered as the most progressive of these three presidents. But overall, during his presidency, in my opinion Roosevelt was just as moderate in terms of progressivism as politicians such as President Wilson.
ReplyDelete