Two Party Opera

Roosevelt and Taft would eventually make amends in 1918 once both of them were no longer running for some kind of political office. Funny how that works.

Over the last year throughout the campaign and now where our current government is, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on Woodrow Wilson, this supposed father of the modern liberal. It’s interesting just how similar things 2016 was to 1912, and not just because Wilson was the first candidate to use “America First.” But also because it was a during a time of massive technological growth and people were becoming much more organized in protest than they were in the past. Wilson get a lot of credit for giving women the right to vote, but what’s forgotten is just how begrudgingly he did it. It was only after years of constant protest that he finally relented.

I guess the people were finally growing tired of candidates and presidents who run on discrimination and fear of immigrants, as Woodrow Wilson did. But sometimes we’re just too distracted by the long game that we let one pass through every once in a while. If past is prologue, I look forward to the election of 2036 to start getting things back on track.