Question

In the election of 1912, Theodore Roosevelt ran for a second term as president because he was dissatisfied with the way the country was being lead b

Answer 1

After Roosevelt acceded to the presidency in 1901, he soon began to think about how to win election as President in his own right. He realized that although he did not always agree with conservative Republicans in Congress, he needed their support in order to win the nomination in 1904. To that end, he worked out an understanding with legislators, especially Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, which gave him a free hand in foreign affairs in return for holding back the more progressive items of his domestic agenda. But TR did not refrain from using the executive office to break up monopolies, such as the Northern Securities Company, to mediate in labor disputes between unions and management, as he did in the coal miners' strike in 1902, and to use the White House as a "bully pulpit," from which he lectured the nation on how government should regulate big business. Fearful that his anti-corporate sentiments had soured party bosses, Roosevelt toned down his rhetoric in 1903. Most importantly, he was able to place his people in key party positions and maneuvered Mark Hanna, now the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, to endorse his candidacy several months prior to the 1904 convention. Then TR turned to the public, holding press conferences, launching a national tour of western states that lasted for thirty days, and boldly issuing an executive order that provided pensions for all veterans between the ages of sixty-two and sixty-seven.