"Americans have not been energized"

What do you mean by that?

He saw America as a country that should have both the businessmen and the workers working together in a kind of community and so to rise above the factionalism and to end the terrible treatment that many of the unions received at the hands of the capitalists of that period. Nonetheless, he was not someone at that time who understood the importance of such issues as women's suffrage. But he grew in office to the extent that he dropped to a certain degree his imperialist longings. He regretted that America had taken the Philippine Islands. In his foreign policy as president he became a mediator in some very important disputes in the world. For example, he received a Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation in 1907 of the Russo-Japanese war. Later he also acted as mediator in the so-called Tangier crisis, when France and Germany might have come to blows over Morocco. He wanted the United States, above all, to play the role of a great power in the world, to make America's growing economic strength give America a military and naval power and a diplomatic role to play.

He grew in other respects, too. By 1912 he had embraced women's suffrage; he called for broad health insurance for everybody; he spoke out very strongly to get rid of child labor, to get decent working conditions. His views toward black Americans became more pronounced. He realized they must be allowed to vote, and he wanted to use the authority of the federal government to make sure that they were able to vote. So, in many ways, he grew as a man. The boisterous, brash Roosevelt, who was a fiery imperialist, and the man who was for reform, but very modest reform, became radicalized through those years.

Well, we know that Roosevelt was capable of the kind of cynical maneuvers that politicians use. Let's reconsider the notion of getting votes for the blacks. In the South those blacks who were able to vote generally voted Republican. So his aim in this was to make sure more of them could vote. But this meant continuing to cede the white South to the Democrats.

It was definitely a problem in 1912. The South was very much a Democratic stronghold. Blacks did traditionally vote for Republicans, the heritage of Lincoln. What Roosevelt wanted to do was retain the black vote, which would normally go to Republicans, but also get whites, who had traditionally voted for Democrats, to vote for radical Republicanism. And that he was not able to accomplish. For one thing, the Southern whites never forgave Roosevelt for having had a very distinguished black American for dinner in the White House shortly after he became president. Booker T. Washington dined in the White House, and the Southerners never let him forget that.

Of course, your book actually focuses not just on personalities but on the election of 1912, and I suspect that after spending a long time studying that election there are certain features that must have struck you. Would you like to share with us some of the more, shall we say, amusing or interesting facets of the election?

There were, of course, four people running. It is very important to understand that this book is not just about Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson -- the two most prominent men -- but also William Howard Taft, who was president after Roosevelt's first two terms; in fact, he was put in as president because Roosevelt really wanted him to carry on with Roosevelt's work. Then there was Eugene V. Debs. Debs ran a number of times for president as a candidate of the Socialist Party. In 1912 he received the greatest percentage of votes that the Socialist Party ever had in this county, almost a million votes. That was almost solely due to the power and personality of Debs. And finally, of course, there's Wilson, who won because Roosevelt and Taft split the vote of the Republican Party.

Let me say a few more words if I may about the other men. William Howard Taft came from a very distinguished family in Ohio, and became a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt's when he served as Roosevelt's secretary of war and as governor-general of the Philippines. He was a very decent man. His politics were moderately conservative Republicanism; he was not against reform, but he was not a person who wanted to rock the boat too much, whereas Roosevelt was only too willing to rock the boat. Basically, Taft was a perfect lieutenant. When Roosevelt announced in 1904 that he would not run for a third term, he tried to find someone who he believed would carry on the policies of reform he had started, and Taft seemed to him finally the logical man to do that.

Next Page: "As president, Taft was not able to manage things the way Roosevelt was"

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