26 - Kingmakers, god and Woodrow Wilson
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How Capitalists Rule:
The Republocrats Series, No.26:
KINGMAKERS, GOD AND WOODROW WILSON
By Vince Copeland
For Woodrow Wilson to be able to go directly from being president of Princeton University to president of the United States was quite a long jump, indeed, and probably would have required a greater public dissatisfaction with the other candidates than seemed apparent.
So kingmaker George Harvey conceived the idea of making Wilson governor of New Jersey in 1910, as a prelude to the struggle for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in 1912.
Harvey had been a newspaper editor in New Jersey and was well acquainted with the political leaders of that state. They were well aware of his connections with big money and listened to him respectfully. James Smith, the Democratic political leader of the state, was especially willing to do his bidding and even to withdraw from the race for U.S. senator when that proved necessary to achieve Harvey's aim.
After a great deal of wire-pulling and innumerable maneuvers of all kinds--big, small, principled and unprincipled--Wilson was finally nominated to run for governor by a Democratic convention that didn't know him and hadn't even seen him. He redeemed himself by making an inspiring acceptance speech (driving in from a nearby town where Harvey had stashed him for the big moment).
Thus Wilson became a national figure.
While he was governor, the political battle heated up. Some of the local politicians broke with him because he was too conservative. When he saw which way the wind was blowing and how important it was in those times to be a liberal, if not a progressive, he broke with James Smith, who was known to be the immediate architect of his Jersey victory. And then he broke with Harvey himself!
Harvey's connections with the Morgan financial group were well known to all the more politically sophisticated people. And so they had attacked Wilson for being a stooge of Wall Street. Wilson, who was closer to Wall Street than many a crooked small-time politician, then said he wanted no support from Harvey. This was Wilson's own decision and not orchestrated by his managers at all. Harvey, to his great credit as a master politician, put his wounded feelings in his pocket and simply took Wilson's name off the masthead of his Harper editorials, lying low for a while.
But Wilson, for all his other talents, knew very little about U.S. politics and was completely unable to navigate the treacherous waters of presidential maneuvers without both the abilities and the connections of George Harvey to help him. So a reconciliation was arrived at.
`ORDAINED OF GOD'
The break was significant, however, because it showed how far Wilson was willing to go to be president. And like many another super-egotist, he actually thought it was his own great talents that got him the job. For instance, he told his presidential campaign manager, William F. McCombs:
"I owe you nothing.... It was ordained of God that I should be president." This was after an exhausting campaign and finally a nomination on *the 46th ballot* at the Democratic national convention.
McCombs, who later became chairperson of the Democratic Party, told this story on himself. He may have exaggerated, but you don't make up things like that. And if you do, you don't expect it to be taken seriously.
It is true that Wilson made some of the campaign decisions himself. For example, like Roosevelt, he felt the strong wind of popular antagonisms to Wall Street. In one of his very first speeches, he came out for the right to put initiatives and referendums on the ballot, which he had always opposed in the past. He did not have his ear so close to the grassroots as to invite the grasshoppers in, but as a man with a strong character, determined to be president, he was not a mere echo of his Wall Street managers. But this conservative's decision to run as a "progressive" did not upset his canny managers, either.
IT TOOK 46 BALLOTS
At the Baltimore convention, his forces were outnumbered for a long time. Had it not been for the two-thirds rule, Champ Clark of Missouri would have been the nominee, since he gained a majority on the tenth ballot. (This was the first time any Democrat received a majority at the convention without going on to get the necessary two-thirds. It is also interesting that where Clark and Wilson had run against each other in primaries, Clark had usually won.)
The Bryan delegates were opposed to Wilson on the basis that he was too close to Wall Street. So McCombs and Harvey, especially the latter, maneuvered to convince Tammany Democrats of New York to vote against Wilson but not for Clark. This vote against Wilson finally convinced Bryan that the New York money crowd was against Wilson and he would be in the left wing of the Democratic Party. So Bryan threw his large voting strength to Wilson.
Wilson himself, says McCombs, was for throwing in the towel at several points. His pride and ego conjoined were too much to endure the long drawn-out scramble for votes and the humbling, handshaking "stroking" that the situation required.
But given all the unknowns and all the possibilities, the nomination was truly remarkable. It was especially remarkable in light of the plans of the big moguls of New York finance. George Harvey's feat in getting Wilson elected--of course with the collaboration of George Perkins and his colleagues--was an even more startling example of the big bankers' ability to control the elections than the work of Mark Hanna and William Whitney had been earlier.
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010; "workers" on PeaceNet; on Internet: "workers@mcimail.com".)
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