September 3, 2025 • 40 mins
Spoilers ahead! No, not those type of spoilers. We're talking about third party presidential candidates and the reasons third parties can't get a footing in American politics. So, why do third parties fail? And could the current toxicity of both major American political parties create an opening for a centrist third party?
GUEST: Michael Cullinane, professor of U.S. History and the Lowman Walton Chair of Theodore Roosevelt Studies at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. He’s also author of the soon-to-be released book: Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, We
get the answers, leave a message. Hey, they are American
History Hotliners. Your host, Bob Crawford here, happy to be
joining you again for another episode of American History Hotline.
You've been sending us some great questions, and we want
you to keep them coming. The best way to get
(00:25):
us a question is to record a video or a
voice memo on your phone and email it to American
History Hotline at gmail dot com. That's American History Hotline
at gmail dot com. Okay, today's question is about parties,
and not the kind with cake. We're talking about third parties.
Here to help me answer this question today is Michael Cullinane.
(00:48):
He's a professor of US history at Dickinson State University
in North Dakota. He's also author of the soon to
be released book Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet. Thanks
for joining me again.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Today, Thanks Bob for having me. Great to be back.
Let's talk about third parties.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Let's do it. Okay, Michael, here's the question we were
hoping you could help us answer. It's from Phil in Lincoln, Nebraska.
He wants to know why third party presidential bids always fail.
Why can't we elect a president outside of the two
party system. First, Michael, I want to get to some
(01:27):
of the third party movements and major third party standard
bearers like Ross Perrot, Ralph Nader, even Teddy Roosevelt and
the Bull Moose Party. But let's start with some basics
about our political structure. Why do we have a two
party system in America.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, that's a hard question to answer simply because I
guess this just developed over time. I mean, it's not
like it's a natural progression or an organic maybe, but
it's not something that can it's not something it was
structured this way. And in fact, to Phil's question about
third parties and them always failing, they don't always fail.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Actually, they just.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
They don't succeed in the twentieth and twenty first century.
But if you look back to the nineteenth century, you
do see one of the most important presidential victories is
really a third party victory, and that's the Republican President
Abraham Lincoln, who if you think about that eighteen sixty election,
there's four parties that are running. The Democrats are by
far and away the most established party, in the political
(02:28):
system at that time, and the Republicans they'd only been
around for about six years at that stage, so they
were a third party. It's only the second time they
contested a presidential election, and Abraham Lincoln won because there
were two other parties that were also vying.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
For electoral votes.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
So it has happened in the past, it hasn't happened
in what we would call modern presidential history. And I
think the reason for that is the vested interests in
American politics have just moved into two camps and they've
set up what is a very rigid first pass to
post system, which every now and then breaks or Ben's
maybe doesn't break. But the two parties are because they're
(03:06):
so much a part of our political culture that when
a third party runs, they have a chance to disrupt
an election, but not win an election. It takes more
than in American history anyway. It takes more than just
one political run to seize the day. It usually takes entrenched,
long term political warfare to get across that post.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And first past the post, winner take all, right, Right,
our system is kind of set up in this winner
take all black and white set up.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, I mean that's right, I mean, and that's something
that you can really see well in some of the
names that you mentioned that I said are like disruptors. Right,
So there's Ross Parro in ninety two, Bill Clinton doesn't
get elected without Ross Parro. Actually, in nineteen eighty, Ronald
Reagan doesn't get elected without a third party candidate Anderson
running and Jimmy Carter losing votes to him. The same
(04:04):
could be said in Teddy Roosevelt's time in nineteen twelve,
he runs and takes votes away from Taft and we
wind up with Woodrow Wilson. So we have these presidential
leaders who are elected with a plurality of votes, but
not a majority. Interestingly, Bill Clinton never won a majority
of votes in America. He never topped fifty percent. Woodrow
Wilson barely top fifty percent back in nineteen sixteen. So
(04:28):
what these third parties do is they disrupt that two
party system, but they don't win the day.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Let's go to Europe, they don't have third parties, they
have minor parties. How does proportional representation make an opening
for parties for more parties?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, I mean that's a really complicated question too, because
Proportional representation or PR exists in so many different guys
is across Europe. I'm speaking to you today from Ireland,
and in Ireland we have a system whereby you don't
just pick one candidate, you pick the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth,
seventh and eighth choice sometimes and then they tally up
(05:06):
those votes according to who drops out. So you could
vote really radical and really conservative and see neither one
of those candidates win. So it's a really complicated system
in Europe whereby coalitions of parties wind up governing. And
that's because you have a greater chance of a of
a smaller party getting into power. But only on a
(05:27):
constituency level. So with any election whereby you're electing one
person to a single office, first past the post is
the more prominent way of an election working out. Even
even in Ireland, or take France for example, right Francis
presidents just like America does. Macron is a president. Now
he ran against a slate of candidates in a first election,
(05:48):
and then in the second round it was a it
was a one on one competition. So in a lot
of a lot of cases, the European elections for a
single office for like a president. Those do look a
lot like the United States, but in a parliamentary system
it's very different.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
What you're describing sounds a lot to me like ranked
choice voting.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, in Ireland it is ranked choice vote voting, and
it is a proportional representation. So constituencies usually have more
than one person running in a constituency. In fact, they
always do. It's either three, four, or five representatives. And
in that case, it's so much different from the United States.
So you know, where you're living now, you get to
vote for one representative and you get to vote for
(06:32):
two senators. But in Ireland, if you live in a constituency,
you get to vote for five possibly constituents, and then
a president and then senators, and there's just a lot
more representation and a greater chance of your vote counting
towards someone who's from a smaller party.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Well, speaking of me, in North Carolina, I'm unaffiliated. That
is what our version of independent. So help me define
this really quick. I think a lot of people think independent,
which means you're not part of a party, but that's
a party, right, Like, what does the independent party stand for?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
That's a good question.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I mean there have been so many independents in the
past that have run, and they've but they've often they've
often had shades of a party. And one of the
things we might want to remember about the United States
is that despite being a Democrat or a Republican, within
that definition, there are various shades of red and blue,
so much so that you might even be purple or
(07:37):
gray or whatever.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The point is, these parties are broad churches, and they
include a lot of people that have very different opinions
about everything from the economy to foreign policy. So being
part of a party in the United States makes it
easier to express yourself being an independent, and then lacking
that party system does make it harder because there's organization
(08:00):
for independence. I think about Angus King, independent senator from Maine.
I think about well, Joe Manchin before he became independent,
and so did Kristen Cinema before they left the Senate
last term. Bernie Sanders, right, is he he's independent?
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Rights?
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, Tacnically, I guess you. Jesse Ventura was the independent
governor of Minnesota. These these guys, the higher you go
right in being an independent, the higher the office, the
harder it gets.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think that's true, and the Senate does seem to
be the threshold for where you can be independent and
be without a party. Even Bernie Sanders, when he decided
to run for president, ran as a Democrat. So you
do need that party support, and and that's that's no
different the world around. I mean, you know, despite there
being more parties in Europe or in Asia or Africa,
the reality is too that their structural organizations that help
(09:01):
candidates get their message to the to their base, and
so being an independent makes that really difficult. But as
you point out, there have been some really incredible independence
over the time, over the past century in the US.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Okay, so let's talk about presidential history. You said in
the early on that actually Abraham Lincoln was a third
party candidate and he won the presidency. So the Republican Party,
once being an outsider party, right an insurgent third party.
How did the Republican Party evolve from insurgent outsider party
(09:39):
to one of the two standard bearers? Okay? I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Question for so many reasons, because a it's really easy
to answer, but also but it allows us to see,
like what's.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Going on in American politics.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So what makes the third party successful is a single issue, right,
That's what really galvanizes attention and shifts the political compass
in America. And obviously with the Republican Party, that was abolition,
it was slavery, it was the fugitive slave laws, it
was you know, there was a crisis that had gripped America.
(10:13):
And arguably when third party candidates that have their greatest
moments is when there's a singular crisis, when there isn't
quite an obvious crisis, or when there's one that's maybe
construed by a third party candidate, you know, then then
they don't get as much traction. And and that's because
when it comes to voting, if you have if there's
(10:36):
an issue that grips you and you are, you know,
all in on that issue, then then you're gonna you're
gonna be able to pick a candidate quite easily. But
if there's a cacophony of interest, so there's a there's
a range of different issues that you're grappling with, then
your choice for candidate just becomes less clear. And this
is where we see in America the cleavages in the
(10:56):
party system. So like at the end of the era
of good feelings. You know, when John Quincy Adams is
leaving the White House and Andrew Jackson is coming in
what we see as a cleavage. We see Americans deciding
that they did want smaller governments, they want you know,
less investment in infrastructure, they want a hands off approach,
(11:17):
and they want patriotism. Right that is like the motivating
nationalism of the time. The break then again after that
and the next party system is with Lincoln. And you
can see this, you know, whether it's the depression. The
depression is a major break as well. So that's what
really galvanizes a change in the political system in America.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Are we there? I mean, right now twenty twenty five,
it feels like we're It feels like we're past a
breaking point and maybe something's happened and we, just as historians,
we don't recognize it yet, but it seems like the
grievance is there. Right. There's definitely grievance in the electorate
in both parties. The Democratic Party is it's approval ratings
(11:57):
are as bad as they were in nineteen ninety which
I have to remind people that in nineteen ninety two
Bill Clinton did win the presidency, But the Democratic Party
is at a low point. The Republican Party has morphed.
It's a completely different It's put on different clothes. I
(12:18):
like to say, So are we there? Are we? Is
the time ripe for a third party? Or are the
parties ready to is the Where do the establishment Republicans go?
You know what I'm saying? Where do those w Bush
Reagan Republicans go? Along with these disaffected Democrats? What's going on?
(12:41):
Are is it time for a third party in America?
Could one succeed?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah? I mean I think one can succeed.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I mean, it hasn't and there's lots of reasons why
they haven't in the past.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
But you're kind of right.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
I mean, there's an instinctive sense of breakdown in who
a centrist can be affiliated with if they're unhappy. I mean,
what we've seen in the Democratic Party in the last
couple of months is a move towards the left, with
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Casio Cortes going on tours and that,
(13:13):
and also just an absence of opposition to Trump policies.
But also what we see in the Trump world is
Jeff Flake saying things like when is the Trump fever
going to end? Of course, Jeff Flake is that centrist
Republican from Arizona, so there's evidence of that. In reality,
the two previous major collapses of parties were the Federalists
in the early Republic and the Whigs just before.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
The Civil War.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And both of those were precipitated by a major shift
in American's sense of themselves right. And one of them
was the Civil War and the division between the North
and the South. And the other one was this one
that I was talking about, this nationalistic patriotism that led
to the sort of expansion of the United States and
all the trauma that that would have brought as well.
(13:58):
So we might be there too. I'm not sure we
had a trauma that's like the Civil War. I mean,
I like to remind people that Donald Trump is not
our most divisive president. Abraham Lincoln is. You know, the
True States literally left the Union when Abraham Lincoln became president.
We're not quite there yet, but it does seem awfully close,
and it does seem like we're one economic depression away
(14:20):
from a real shift in thinking.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
So the major hurdles for a third party candidate today
are money and.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Money.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Actually, I'm going to say I'm going to be contrarian
here a little bit. Money definitely matters, But money, if
there's only one issue, money doesn't matter that much. And
I'll just you know, remind your listeners that Donald Trump
when he ran in twenty sixteen, didn't have all the
money and he still managed to pull out a win, which,
(14:54):
you know, I think whether you love Donald Trump or
whether you hate him, and there's nowhere in between for
most people, I think, yeah, have to give credit to
the a campaign that came out of nowhere and managed
to win an election that no one thought they could win.
So money's important, yes, sure, but having a singular issue
that galvanizes public opinion is.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Still the only way to win an election.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And Donald Trump, most people didn't believe that he did that,
but obviously his message resonated with people enough so that
they decided to vote. I do think there are bigger
issues though, than the ones that Donald Trump has raised.
I think there are major issues about America's place in
the world.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
There's major issues.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
About inequality that really could come to the four and
I mean those could be very violent. We've seen violent
sort of clashes between the haves and the have nots
in the past in our history, but in other histories
as well, and so things could boil up and really,
you know, leave an opening for a third party to
fill that vacuum.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Today.
My guest is Michael Cullinane. He's a professor of US
history at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. He's also
the author of the soon to be released book Theodore
Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet. We're talking about third parties,
and yes, there are spoilers ahead. By that, I mean
(16:25):
third party presidential candidates that change the outcome of an election. Remember,
send us your burning questions about American history, record yourself
using your voice memo apple on your phone and email
it to American History Hotline at gmail dot com. That's
American History Hotline at gmail dot com. Now back to
(16:45):
the show. All right, Michael, we're going to talk about
a man you are very familiar with. Let's talk about
the nineteen twelve election and Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party. First off,
why did Teddy Roosevelt start a third party? Oh, that's
what you even call it that it wasn't a third party.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Absolutely, it was a third party, no doubt about it.
I mean, like the thing is is tr walks out
of one political convention and then starts another one. So
I mean that is like the ultimate definition. He got
fed up with the Republican Party. They didn't nominate him
for the So let me just roll back really quick
nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Well, first of all, and forgive me for interrupting, but
I am I've always been fascinated with the personal relationship
between Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. So this kind
of sets up like roosevelts the president for a year
(17:45):
for two terms his successor, he's anointed successor as Taft.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That's absolutely yeah. TR picks Taft to be president.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Because he's done being president. TR wants to go travel
the world, old hunt, explore. Okay, take it from here.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Okay, So this is great because this is actually where
the book ends and where you know, there's a lot
there's a lot more to say. So Taft is Roosevelt's
hand picked successor. He runs in nineteen oh eight, and
and he doesn't do as well as Roosevelt, which is
also interesting because I think TR picked Taft in part
because he's not as charismatic or interesting as Roosevelt.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I mean, think about it.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
If you were going to appoint a successor who is
right exactly but you're not there, You're not going to
pick the guy in the room who is, like, you know,
heads and tails, more exciting than you are. Although as
you point out, there's not too many people that are
more exciting than TR. But he picked someone that he
thought would continue on with his policies in an efficient manner,
(18:47):
but not in any way that's going to steal the show.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
And that's pretty much what happens.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Taft does continue with a lot of TR's policies, he
doesn't appoint the same staff, and Tr is like band
of brothers, this tennis cabinet of friends. Tir sort of
expected that Taft would keep a lot of them on
and he doesn't do that, so that already starts to
alienate the two men from one another. The night that
tr passes the torch to Taft, the night before the inauguration,
(19:14):
they had dinner in the White House and things had
gotten pretty frosty between the two men by that point,
that's only about five months after the election, and interestingly,
it's like a freezing cold night in Washington and the
two of them aren't really talking to each other. The
two wives, Nelly Taft and Edith Roosevelt aren't really talking
to each other. They had real differences as well. And
then tr leaves. He goes to Africa, which is probably
(19:37):
the best thing that he could have done for Taft
because he's not involved in politics. But even so, within
the eight months, nine months, his friends, TR's old friends
are coming over to Europe to tell him how badly
Tapt is running the administration. And the falling out pretty
much starts when tr arrives back from his ten month
(19:57):
holiday in Africa and Europe and he comes go back
to a heroes welcome in New York, which again you
have to imagine the ego must have been, like, you know,
riding a high crest there, and he thought, well, so
he makes a famous speech in nineteen ten called the
New Nationalism Speech, which really lays out the idea for
a more progressive America. And what is so interesting about
(20:19):
nineteen twelve is that that is the year when the
first primaries party primaries take place. And the first primary,
in fact, is held in North Dakota, where tr had
spent some time, and he loses. He loses to a
more progressive candidate, Bob La Follett, who would run later years.
But anyway, let me not digress too much here. There's
(20:42):
thirteen primaries. Tr wins nine of the thirteen primaries, which
means he's got the lion's share of delegates. But as
we know from those conventions that happened in like two
thousand and eight, right, there are these super delegates as
well that are basically party faithful, and they swing the
nomination to taft tr is outraged, all of his friends
and acolytes are outraged, and less than a month later
(21:04):
they form a new party called the Bull Moose Party
or the Progressive Party, and that is the third party.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
So why, like was it that tr was too progressive
like had had? Is that what it was? Yeah? Too progressive?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And I think also Tafton made a lot of friends
within the party by nineteen eleven, nineteen twelve, and so
and he's the sitting president, right, I mean, who does that?
Who dumps the sitting president? I mean, it didn't happen
in nineteen seventy six when when Ted Kennedy ran against
Carter right or you know, so, I think it's really
(21:40):
uncommon for a sitting president to be ousted by their party,
and so they don't bail on Taft. They keep capped
in and Roosevelt, feeling slight did and I think rightly
so in a lot of cases when you look at
the counts of the delegates that are there, he starts
his own party, and the party is much more progressive,
like light years more progressive than anything we have seen
(22:02):
in America until really the late twentieth century. So we're
talking about things like inheritance taxes, the direct election of senators,
which was actually quite popular at the time, workers compensation,
and national healthcare system. I mean that is like that
is something that we still are arguing about. But tr
was saying, this is the right way to go. So
(22:25):
it's a remarkable run. And what it does, and what's
important to take away, like for the history of this time,
is that it moves Wilson to the left, you know,
it makes it.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
That's what third parties do.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
They force other parties to take up some of their
issues in order to in order to command their voters really,
and that's what happens to Wilson. Wilson moves to the left,
and the whole country kind of moves a little to
the left.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
And ultimately, how did the bull Moose Party do?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
So they do well by third party measures. Tr wins.
He wins more votes than Taft, so he winds up
with about I think it's somewhere in the region of
eighteen percent of the vote something like that, and he
wins nine I think it's nine states. I had to
check the figures on that, but that's in and around.
(23:17):
Wilson winds up with about forty one percent, which is
actually if you look at the numbers in nineteen oh eight,
when Taft runs against Brian the Democrat, the numbers are
pretty much the same. If you add tr and Taft together,
they're at fifty two fifty three percent something like that,
and then you've got Wilson at forty one percent. The
(23:37):
other interesting character that's running in this election is Eugene V. Debs,
who is a socialist, of course, and he's famous for,
you know, being a union union leader and an outspoken
advocate for communism. And he runs and gets five percent
of the vote, almost a million voters vote for Debs,
so it's a really diverse four way race in nineteen twelve,
(24:00):
and was Debs in jail, he's in jailing member a
later election, I want to say it's nineteen twenty, but
he Yeah, he does run from jail once, which, of
course there's sort of some you know, people have asked
questions like has any has any presidential candidate ever been convicted,
and the answer is yes, Debs.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
All right, so let's move on to Ross Perot. Although
I could talk about tr with you all day, let's
talk about Ross Parrot. I love going back to the nineties.
I've been thinking about the nineties a lot lately and
how the nineties gave us today. Like I really think
that there were cleavages in our society, in our culture,
in our politics, in pop culture that gave us the
(24:44):
moment that we're living in now. So for those who
don't remember the nineteen nineties, who don't remember hammertime, who
have never seen a corded phone, who was Ross Perot
and what role did he play in the nineteen ninety
two presidential election?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Okay, I love this for so many reasons. I'm just
gonna say straight up, I was born in nineteen seventy nine,
so the nineties are like my decade. I remember, it's
like a coming of age moments. And the nineteen ninety
two election is like a real it's a watershed. I mean,
I remember when Ducaucus ran in eighty eight and thinking well,
(25:22):
this guy's got a shot, and then thinking no, that
completely collapsed. Ninety two was exciting because it was just
unlike any election in presidential history that really. Perot was
a sort.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Of squeaky billionaire.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
He's kind of small, he's diminutive, he's not he doesn't
have the look of a man. He's definitely not a
Teddy Roosevelt like command the room, but obviously super clever.
He makes his name in Texas and oil and energy
and mergers and acquisitions, but he also makes his name
in politics because he was an outspoken critic of Jimmy
Carter and the hostage crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis. In fact,
(26:02):
he offers to fund, you know, American paratroopers to go
in and save the hostages. And so he had this
like muscular demeanor about him, with like a Napoleon complex,
it seemed like. But he was a businessman and he
that's what people were attracted to in ninety two, I think,
and I'd love to hear your view on that, because
(26:24):
it's this idea that somehow politicians don't really know how
the real world operates, and that business people are better
suited to making big decisions and doing these sort of
jobs that involve leadership, and that was a revolution in
ninety two. I think, I don't know, do you feel
the same way about.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Well, absolutely, and I remember that election very well as
well as I've pondered the nineteen nineties, which I'm a
child of the eighties, so I was born in seventy one,
so for me, the eighties are that special time. But
my wife was born in seventy four. She leans she's
(27:02):
right between. She leans more towards the nineties. But there,
you know, I've really been thinking about the nineties a
lot lately, and as now we have Trump, and Trump
has become who he is and is one of the
most consequential presidents in the history that probably of the
of the nation. It makes you want to revisit the
nineties because you see ninety two and ninety six differently
(27:26):
and really and Trump kind of grows out of the
Parole Movement or the Entry because that becomes the Reform
Party in ninety six with Pap Buchanan. Does it does it?
I mean it does it because Paro kind of like
leans towards he's going to do it again and then
he doesn't, or you know, Pap Buchanan gets in there,
and Trump and Buchanan are vying for the nomination for
the for the Reform Party. So so this this is
(27:49):
where we get in the American psyche, and well it's not.
There was Wendall Wilkie who was the Republican candidate. He
challenged Roosevelt. Was that thirty six or forty I don't remember.
I think it was was thirty four and he nineteen forty, sorry,
ninety forty. He was a businessman. So this is not
unfamiliar Rockefeller in the seventies. So this is not an
(28:12):
unfamiliar idea in the American psyche, this capitalist nation, that
of course a businessman would be the perfect leader for
this country. It makes perfect sense on paper.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
So yeah, Buchanan is a really interesting character in the
nineties as well, as you point out, I mean, Pap Buchanan,
a lot of the ideas about America. First and about immigration.
A lot of those start with Buchanan and Buchanan has
a Paro and Buchanan are like two forces of two
ideologies really that are vying for the American mind at
(28:51):
that at that time, Paroh, you point out, dropped out.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
He dropped out in ninety.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Two as well, and then he jumped back in. He
jumped back in, right, and then he jumps out later
in ninety six. And so he was always a bit
wishy washy, which I think really doomed him. That was
the thing, like he was, he was on the rise.
It was it was his campaign to lose because if
you remember Clinton, there was so much scandal around Clinton,
Jennifer Flowers, that sex scandal had come out, then there
(29:18):
was there was others that were just beginning to emerge
during that campaign.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Whitewater, Yeah, Whitewater. Right, So you talked about single issues.
Paro's was the deficit and he that wasn't a major
issue at that time. Am I correct on that? Like
Paro's the one who when we talk about deficits today,
it was Pero who brought that issue to the forefront. Yeah,
(29:46):
that's true, But there was a.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Big economic issue in ninety two that was that made
Paro seem like a really viable candidate to most Americans,
and that was the savings and loan scandal. So there
was a I mean, there was an economic recession in
ninety two. The other thing is is that George Bush
had promised this is famously right. George was promas read
my lips, no new taxes. And when the savings and
loan crisis occurs, and when the deficit is on the rise,
(30:10):
the only thing you can do to be fiscally responsible
is to raise the taxes. I mean, it's going to
be the same problem that America faces in later years.
We've cut taxes for so many years, but you can't
do that and still spend. And so eventually Bush, George W.
HW Bush, has to raise taxes and that really sinks him.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Two things I remember from HW Bush, who when we
look back on him, he was all right. He didn't
know how a grocery store scanner worked, right, He went
to a grocery store and was like, oh, this is
all what is this? Yeah, and he looked at his
watch during the debate.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I'll add one more to that, Bob.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
I always, as a child of the nineties, I would
say that Dana Carvey is the thing that reminds me
most of George W.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Bush.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
If there was any political impersonator who sort of nailed it,
it was Dana Carvey's impression of Bush, like when he
goes to Japan and throws up on the Prime Minister's
shoes that Saturday Night Live skit was priceless and no
doubt had some impact on how Americans thought about the president.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Didn't Carvey also do paro?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
He did do paro too, That's right, Yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
So earlier we tease the spoiler effect of these third
party candidates, and I don't think that in our recent
memory there are there's no greater spoiler in presidential history
maybe than Ralph Nader, at least that's the way we
remember him. Tell me about Ralph Nader and his role
(31:41):
in the two thousand election.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Well, Ralph Nader, I mean, to be fair, is like
just a really great guy for America. I mean, nobody's
done more to protect your consumer rights than Ralph Nader.
So he's a lawyer and an activist and he has
been for you know, his entire life effectively, and he
runs as a Green Party candidate in two thousand with
no expectations of winning, but just to make a statement again,
(32:07):
like most third parties do, to try and tip the
needle in the direction of a more progressive really around
green issues like the environment, but also around consumer protection
and social welfare.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
And I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Think that Ralph Nader deserves any of this sort of
credit for tipping the election to George W. Bush, because
we're talking about one state, you know, one state that
was really the whole focal point of the two thousand election.
And yes, Nader got a lot of votes in Florida
where people were, you know, just undecided about Bush or
(32:43):
Gore after like the Lewinsky scandal or what I would say,
one of Gore's like best things that he did was
get Joe Lieberman on the ticket, because Lieberman attracted a
ton of Jews in Florida who were.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
On the fence.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
So putting the blame on Nader is like saying that
Al Gore didn't didn't do a good thing like puting
Nieberman on the ticket, or that George Bush wasn't really
effective with a lot of Christians in Florida. I mean,
one of my favorite things that George Bush did, I
was kind of a McCain guy back in two thousand,
McCain because McCain was a tr guy as well. And
there's this moment in Iowa or m you know, McCain
(33:20):
has asked who's your favorite philosopher? And he says Theodore Roosevelt, right,
And then George Bush is given the chance to answer
the same question and he says Jesus right, And that
won the day for Bush. I mean, it was the
right answer, even though the better answer is is tr
in my mind. But so Bush and Gore were really
effective in Florida.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Nader pulled a few.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Votes, but when it comes down to five hundred and
thirty six votes, I mean, you could have easily blamed anyone.
You could blame the libertarian candidate in Florida for that matter.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Let's circle back to today's political environment. Elon Musk, the
world's richest man. He's pushing for a third party, the
American Party. We don't know if he's serious or not.
It's very possible that this is all just a way
of getting more government contracts or or or taunting, taunting
(34:12):
his his, uh, his old buddy Donald Trump. Two questions
about Musk, One, was he consequential in the twenty twenty
four election.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, I mean the first The first thing I would
say is Pennsylvania and other other states so called russ Belt,
you know, the or the Blue Wall is they were called,
Musk had an influence. I mean definitely in Pennsylvania where
we're talking about paying people to go out and vote
for Donald Trump, that that had an influence. And he
did spend hundreds of millions on his campaign, so there's
(34:45):
no way that didn't hundred and fifty million dollars. Yeah,
it's a huge amount of money, and there's no way
that his advertising didn't sway some Americans towards Trump. I mean,
you got to look at Joe Biden and think, is
he this evil of a president as we as people
have been told because the media and the outpouring of
(35:07):
vitriol against Joe Biden has been so terrible regardless of
the debate performances. I think Elon Musk deserves a lot
of credit for that, as does Donald Trump for that matter.
But what I would say is is that money can't
buy you everything. And I'd be interested to see if
Elon Musk can find an issue that he is so
(35:28):
committed to and that galvanizes support. But free speech, isn't
it right? That's not going to get Americans on board.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, I mean, and this is my second question for
Elon Musk is is how serious? Like how well? I
have more than a second question. How serious is he
about the America Party and who is the candidate and
who is the voter? Because I guess the issue is
the debt and deficits, right, I mean, that's what he
(35:56):
seems to be saying, because he he condemns the BBB,
the Big Beautiful Bill that was recently passed is as
something that will raise the debts and deficits.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah, so that becomes an issue when there's a crisis,
but not until then. I mean, this is what I
was kind of alluding to with Peroh in ninety two.
Paroh and the deficit are important because there's a savings
and loan scandal and an economic recession, So that makes
the economy important, right, But without that, what are we
talking about? Like, let's just say for the sake of argument,
(36:29):
that the Big Beautiful Bill is a is a fiscal
genius idea that manages to keep America's economy humming along
in some unprecedented way. Right, well, then the deficit doesn't
matter because there's growth and you grow your way out
of a deficit. But if we if we see in
the next two three years a real economic decline and
(36:53):
we or or we see tariffs create a situation where
inflation is out of control, then then there's an opening
for a third party candidate to come in and say
I've got the answer to this problem. But until that
point that doesn't seem feasible. And from what I can
see from Musk, he's not even talking about this third
party that much anymore. When the crisis happens, you'll see
(37:15):
him all he'll be back again, all over Twitter, big
ideas will.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Be coming out.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
But also he'll be competing with other politicians in the
Democratic Party for that attention. So it'll be interesting to
see what happens in the context and then what happens
in reaction to that context.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
All right, Michael, Well, this has been a great time.
I always really enjoyed speaking with you. Thank you for
doing this. So just to close to button this up,
you know, twenty twenty eight's around the corner. How many
political parties you think will be on the ballot come
twenty twenty eight and I say this with the caveat
(37:55):
of historians are terrible predictors of the future.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
What do you mean, I think I'm a great predictor.
I mean I said Hillary Clinton was going to win
in twenty sixteen, and I mean, yeah, I don't like
making predictions. I can tell you the Democratic and Republican
parties will have candidates because they have for however many years,
so we can pretty much bank on that there will
be third candidates too. I mean, there are established parties
(38:20):
out there that we don't think enough about. The Libertarian
Party will nominate someone, the Green Party will nominate someone,
and then whether there is another fringe movement that can
attract more than just five percent, which would really be
a high threshold. That's the one that gets you to
federal funding, by the way, so if you if you
breach that five percent the next time around, you get
(38:41):
federal funding. That would be something to watch out for.
And I think if we have a crisis in America,
which as we've already said before, it feels like something's brewing,
but if there's a crisis between here and there, then
you will almost certainly see a third party.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Wrong.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Talking to Michael cullinane. He is a professor of US
history at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. He's also
author of the soon to be released book Theodore Roosevelt
and the Tennis Cabinet. Michael, thanks for joining us on
the American History Hotline today.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Thanks Bob, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show is executive
producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are
Jordan Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me,
Bob Crawford. Please keep in touch. Our email is Americanhistory
(39:44):
Hotline at gmail dot com. If you like the show,
please tell your friends and leave us a review in
Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Feel free to
hit me up on social media to ask a history
question to let me know what you think of the show.
You can find me at Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so
(40:06):
much for listening. See you next week.
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, We
get the answers, leave a message. Hey, they are American
History Hotliners. Your host, Bob Crawford here, happy to be
joining you again for another episode of American History Hotline.
You've been sending us some great questions, and we want
you to keep them coming. The best way to get
(00:25):
us a question is to record a video or a
voice memo on your phone and email it to American
History Hotline at gmail dot com. That's American History Hotline
at gmail dot com. Okay, today's question is about parties,
and not the kind with cake. We're talking about third parties.
Here to help me answer this question today is Michael Cullinane.
(00:48):
He's a professor of US history at Dickinson State University
in North Dakota. He's also author of the soon to
be released book Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet. Thanks
for joining me again.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Today, Thanks Bob for having me. Great to be back.
Let's talk about third parties.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Let's do it. Okay, Michael, here's the question we were
hoping you could help us answer. It's from Phil in Lincoln, Nebraska.
He wants to know why third party presidential bids always fail.
Why can't we elect a president outside of the two
party system. First, Michael, I want to get to some
(01:27):
of the third party movements and major third party standard
bearers like Ross Perrot, Ralph Nader, even Teddy Roosevelt and
the Bull Moose Party. But let's start with some basics
about our political structure. Why do we have a two
party system in America.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, that's a hard question to answer simply because I
guess this just developed over time. I mean, it's not
like it's a natural progression or an organic maybe, but
it's not something that can it's not something it was
structured this way. And in fact, to Phil's question about
third parties and them always failing, they don't always fail.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Actually, they just.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
They don't succeed in the twentieth and twenty first century.
But if you look back to the nineteenth century, you
do see one of the most important presidential victories is
really a third party victory, and that's the Republican President
Abraham Lincoln, who if you think about that eighteen sixty election,
there's four parties that are running. The Democrats are by
far and away the most established party, in the political
(02:28):
system at that time, and the Republicans they'd only been
around for about six years at that stage, so they
were a third party. It's only the second time they
contested a presidential election, and Abraham Lincoln won because there
were two other parties that were also vying.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
For electoral votes.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
So it has happened in the past, it hasn't happened
in what we would call modern presidential history. And I
think the reason for that is the vested interests in
American politics have just moved into two camps and they've
set up what is a very rigid first pass to
post system, which every now and then breaks or Ben's
maybe doesn't break. But the two parties are because they're
(03:06):
so much a part of our political culture that when
a third party runs, they have a chance to disrupt
an election, but not win an election. It takes more
than in American history anyway. It takes more than just
one political run to seize the day. It usually takes entrenched,
long term political warfare to get across that post.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And first past the post, winner take all, right, Right,
our system is kind of set up in this winner
take all black and white set up.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, I mean that's right, I mean, and that's something
that you can really see well in some of the
names that you mentioned that I said are like disruptors. Right,
So there's Ross Parro in ninety two, Bill Clinton doesn't
get elected without Ross Parro. Actually, in nineteen eighty, Ronald
Reagan doesn't get elected without a third party candidate Anderson
running and Jimmy Carter losing votes to him. The same
(04:04):
could be said in Teddy Roosevelt's time in nineteen twelve,
he runs and takes votes away from Taft and we
wind up with Woodrow Wilson. So we have these presidential
leaders who are elected with a plurality of votes, but
not a majority. Interestingly, Bill Clinton never won a majority
of votes in America. He never topped fifty percent. Woodrow
Wilson barely top fifty percent back in nineteen sixteen. So
(04:28):
what these third parties do is they disrupt that two
party system, but they don't win the day.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Let's go to Europe, they don't have third parties, they
have minor parties. How does proportional representation make an opening
for parties for more parties?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, I mean that's a really complicated question too, because
Proportional representation or PR exists in so many different guys
is across Europe. I'm speaking to you today from Ireland,
and in Ireland we have a system whereby you don't
just pick one candidate, you pick the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth,
seventh and eighth choice sometimes and then they tally up
(05:06):
those votes according to who drops out. So you could
vote really radical and really conservative and see neither one
of those candidates win. So it's a really complicated system
in Europe whereby coalitions of parties wind up governing. And
that's because you have a greater chance of a of
a smaller party getting into power. But only on a
(05:27):
constituency level. So with any election whereby you're electing one
person to a single office, first past the post is
the more prominent way of an election working out. Even
even in Ireland, or take France for example, right Francis
presidents just like America does. Macron is a president. Now
he ran against a slate of candidates in a first election,
(05:48):
and then in the second round it was a it
was a one on one competition. So in a lot
of a lot of cases, the European elections for a
single office for like a president. Those do look a
lot like the United States, but in a parliamentary system
it's very different.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
What you're describing sounds a lot to me like ranked
choice voting.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, in Ireland it is ranked choice vote voting, and
it is a proportional representation. So constituencies usually have more
than one person running in a constituency. In fact, they
always do. It's either three, four, or five representatives. And
in that case, it's so much different from the United States.
So you know, where you're living now, you get to
vote for one representative and you get to vote for
(06:32):
two senators. But in Ireland, if you live in a constituency,
you get to vote for five possibly constituents, and then
a president and then senators, and there's just a lot
more representation and a greater chance of your vote counting
towards someone who's from a smaller party.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Well, speaking of me, in North Carolina, I'm unaffiliated. That
is what our version of independent. So help me define
this really quick. I think a lot of people think independent,
which means you're not part of a party, but that's
a party, right, Like, what does the independent party stand for?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
That's a good question.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I mean there have been so many independents in the
past that have run, and they've but they've often they've
often had shades of a party. And one of the
things we might want to remember about the United States
is that despite being a Democrat or a Republican, within
that definition, there are various shades of red and blue,
so much so that you might even be purple or
(07:37):
gray or whatever.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The point is, these parties are broad churches, and they
include a lot of people that have very different opinions
about everything from the economy to foreign policy. So being
part of a party in the United States makes it
easier to express yourself being an independent, and then lacking
that party system does make it harder because there's organization
(08:00):
for independence. I think about Angus King, independent senator from Maine.
I think about well, Joe Manchin before he became independent,
and so did Kristen Cinema before they left the Senate
last term. Bernie Sanders, right, is he he's independent?
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Rights?
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, Tacnically, I guess you. Jesse Ventura was the independent
governor of Minnesota. These these guys, the higher you go
right in being an independent, the higher the office, the
harder it gets.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think that's true, and the Senate does seem to
be the threshold for where you can be independent and
be without a party. Even Bernie Sanders, when he decided
to run for president, ran as a Democrat. So you
do need that party support, and and that's that's no
different the world around. I mean, you know, despite there
being more parties in Europe or in Asia or Africa,
the reality is too that their structural organizations that help
(09:01):
candidates get their message to the to their base, and
so being an independent makes that really difficult. But as
you point out, there have been some really incredible independence
over the time, over the past century in the US.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Okay, so let's talk about presidential history. You said in
the early on that actually Abraham Lincoln was a third
party candidate and he won the presidency. So the Republican Party,
once being an outsider party, right an insurgent third party.
How did the Republican Party evolve from insurgent outsider party
(09:39):
to one of the two standard bearers? Okay? I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Question for so many reasons, because a it's really easy
to answer, but also but it allows us to see,
like what's.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Going on in American politics.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So what makes the third party successful is a single issue, right,
That's what really galvanizes attention and shifts the political compass
in America. And obviously with the Republican Party, that was abolition,
it was slavery, it was the fugitive slave laws, it
was you know, there was a crisis that had gripped America.
(10:13):
And arguably when third party candidates that have their greatest
moments is when there's a singular crisis, when there isn't
quite an obvious crisis, or when there's one that's maybe
construed by a third party candidate, you know, then then
they don't get as much traction. And and that's because
when it comes to voting, if you have if there's
(10:36):
an issue that grips you and you are, you know,
all in on that issue, then then you're gonna you're
gonna be able to pick a candidate quite easily. But
if there's a cacophony of interest, so there's a there's
a range of different issues that you're grappling with, then
your choice for candidate just becomes less clear. And this
is where we see in America the cleavages in the
(10:56):
party system. So like at the end of the era
of good feelings. You know, when John Quincy Adams is
leaving the White House and Andrew Jackson is coming in
what we see as a cleavage. We see Americans deciding
that they did want smaller governments, they want you know,
less investment in infrastructure, they want a hands off approach,
(11:17):
and they want patriotism. Right that is like the motivating
nationalism of the time. The break then again after that
and the next party system is with Lincoln. And you
can see this, you know, whether it's the depression. The
depression is a major break as well. So that's what
really galvanizes a change in the political system in America.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Are we there? I mean, right now twenty twenty five,
it feels like we're It feels like we're past a
breaking point and maybe something's happened and we, just as historians,
we don't recognize it yet, but it seems like the
grievance is there. Right. There's definitely grievance in the electorate
in both parties. The Democratic Party is it's approval ratings
(11:57):
are as bad as they were in nineteen ninety which
I have to remind people that in nineteen ninety two
Bill Clinton did win the presidency, But the Democratic Party
is at a low point. The Republican Party has morphed.
It's a completely different It's put on different clothes. I
(12:18):
like to say, So are we there? Are we? Is
the time ripe for a third party? Or are the
parties ready to is the Where do the establishment Republicans go?
You know what I'm saying? Where do those w Bush
Reagan Republicans go? Along with these disaffected Democrats? What's going on?
(12:41):
Are is it time for a third party in America?
Could one succeed?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah? I mean I think one can succeed.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I mean, it hasn't and there's lots of reasons why
they haven't in the past.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
But you're kind of right.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
I mean, there's an instinctive sense of breakdown in who
a centrist can be affiliated with if they're unhappy. I mean,
what we've seen in the Democratic Party in the last
couple of months is a move towards the left, with
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Casio Cortes going on tours and that,
(13:13):
and also just an absence of opposition to Trump policies.
But also what we see in the Trump world is
Jeff Flake saying things like when is the Trump fever
going to end? Of course, Jeff Flake is that centrist
Republican from Arizona, so there's evidence of that. In reality,
the two previous major collapses of parties were the Federalists
in the early Republic and the Whigs just before.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
The Civil War.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And both of those were precipitated by a major shift
in American's sense of themselves right. And one of them
was the Civil War and the division between the North
and the South. And the other one was this one
that I was talking about, this nationalistic patriotism that led
to the sort of expansion of the United States and
all the trauma that that would have brought as well.
(13:58):
So we might be there too. I'm not sure we
had a trauma that's like the Civil War. I mean,
I like to remind people that Donald Trump is not
our most divisive president. Abraham Lincoln is. You know, the
True States literally left the Union when Abraham Lincoln became president.
We're not quite there yet, but it does seem awfully close,
and it does seem like we're one economic depression away
(14:20):
from a real shift in thinking.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
So the major hurdles for a third party candidate today
are money and.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Money.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Actually, I'm going to say I'm going to be contrarian
here a little bit. Money definitely matters, But money, if
there's only one issue, money doesn't matter that much. And
I'll just you know, remind your listeners that Donald Trump
when he ran in twenty sixteen, didn't have all the
money and he still managed to pull out a win, which,
(14:54):
you know, I think whether you love Donald Trump or
whether you hate him, and there's nowhere in between for
most people, I think, yeah, have to give credit to
the a campaign that came out of nowhere and managed
to win an election that no one thought they could win.
So money's important, yes, sure, but having a singular issue
that galvanizes public opinion is.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Still the only way to win an election.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And Donald Trump, most people didn't believe that he did that,
but obviously his message resonated with people enough so that
they decided to vote. I do think there are bigger
issues though, than the ones that Donald Trump has raised.
I think there are major issues about America's place in
the world.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
There's major issues.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
About inequality that really could come to the four and
I mean those could be very violent. We've seen violent
sort of clashes between the haves and the have nots
in the past in our history, but in other histories
as well, and so things could boil up and really,
you know, leave an opening for a third party to
fill that vacuum.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Today.
My guest is Michael Cullinane. He's a professor of US
history at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. He's also
the author of the soon to be released book Theodore
Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet. We're talking about third parties,
and yes, there are spoilers ahead. By that, I mean
(16:25):
third party presidential candidates that change the outcome of an election. Remember,
send us your burning questions about American history, record yourself
using your voice memo apple on your phone and email
it to American History Hotline at gmail dot com. That's
American History Hotline at gmail dot com. Now back to
(16:45):
the show. All right, Michael, we're going to talk about
a man you are very familiar with. Let's talk about
the nineteen twelve election and Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party. First off,
why did Teddy Roosevelt start a third party? Oh, that's
what you even call it that it wasn't a third party.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Absolutely, it was a third party, no doubt about it.
I mean, like the thing is is tr walks out
of one political convention and then starts another one. So
I mean that is like the ultimate definition. He got
fed up with the Republican Party. They didn't nominate him
for the So let me just roll back really quick
nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Well, first of all, and forgive me for interrupting, but
I am I've always been fascinated with the personal relationship
between Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. So this kind
of sets up like roosevelts the president for a year
(17:45):
for two terms his successor, he's anointed successor as Taft.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That's absolutely yeah. TR picks Taft to be president.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Because he's done being president. TR wants to go travel
the world, old hunt, explore. Okay, take it from here.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Okay, So this is great because this is actually where
the book ends and where you know, there's a lot
there's a lot more to say. So Taft is Roosevelt's
hand picked successor. He runs in nineteen oh eight, and
and he doesn't do as well as Roosevelt, which is
also interesting because I think TR picked Taft in part
because he's not as charismatic or interesting as Roosevelt.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I mean, think about it.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
If you were going to appoint a successor who is
right exactly but you're not there, You're not going to
pick the guy in the room who is, like, you know,
heads and tails, more exciting than you are. Although as
you point out, there's not too many people that are
more exciting than TR. But he picked someone that he
thought would continue on with his policies in an efficient manner,
(18:47):
but not in any way that's going to steal the show.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
And that's pretty much what happens.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Taft does continue with a lot of TR's policies, he
doesn't appoint the same staff, and Tr is like band
of brothers, this tennis cabinet of friends. Tir sort of
expected that Taft would keep a lot of them on
and he doesn't do that, so that already starts to
alienate the two men from one another. The night that
tr passes the torch to Taft, the night before the inauguration,
(19:14):
they had dinner in the White House and things had
gotten pretty frosty between the two men by that point,
that's only about five months after the election, and interestingly,
it's like a freezing cold night in Washington and the
two of them aren't really talking to each other. The
two wives, Nelly Taft and Edith Roosevelt aren't really talking
to each other. They had real differences as well. And
then tr leaves. He goes to Africa, which is probably
(19:37):
the best thing that he could have done for Taft
because he's not involved in politics. But even so, within
the eight months, nine months, his friends, TR's old friends
are coming over to Europe to tell him how badly
Tapt is running the administration. And the falling out pretty
much starts when tr arrives back from his ten month
(19:57):
holiday in Africa and Europe and he comes go back
to a heroes welcome in New York, which again you
have to imagine the ego must have been, like, you know,
riding a high crest there, and he thought, well, so
he makes a famous speech in nineteen ten called the
New Nationalism Speech, which really lays out the idea for
a more progressive America. And what is so interesting about
(20:19):
nineteen twelve is that that is the year when the
first primaries party primaries take place. And the first primary,
in fact, is held in North Dakota, where tr had
spent some time, and he loses. He loses to a
more progressive candidate, Bob La Follett, who would run later years.
But anyway, let me not digress too much here. There's
(20:42):
thirteen primaries. Tr wins nine of the thirteen primaries, which
means he's got the lion's share of delegates. But as
we know from those conventions that happened in like two
thousand and eight, right, there are these super delegates as
well that are basically party faithful, and they swing the
nomination to taft tr is outraged, all of his friends
and acolytes are outraged, and less than a month later
(21:04):
they form a new party called the Bull Moose Party
or the Progressive Party, and that is the third party.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
So why, like was it that tr was too progressive
like had had? Is that what it was? Yeah? Too progressive?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And I think also Tafton made a lot of friends
within the party by nineteen eleven, nineteen twelve, and so
and he's the sitting president, right, I mean, who does that?
Who dumps the sitting president? I mean, it didn't happen
in nineteen seventy six when when Ted Kennedy ran against
Carter right or you know, so, I think it's really
(21:40):
uncommon for a sitting president to be ousted by their party,
and so they don't bail on Taft. They keep capped
in and Roosevelt, feeling slight did and I think rightly
so in a lot of cases when you look at
the counts of the delegates that are there, he starts
his own party, and the party is much more progressive,
like light years more progressive than anything we have seen
(22:02):
in America until really the late twentieth century. So we're
talking about things like inheritance taxes, the direct election of senators,
which was actually quite popular at the time, workers compensation,
and national healthcare system. I mean that is like that
is something that we still are arguing about. But tr
was saying, this is the right way to go. So
(22:25):
it's a remarkable run. And what it does, and what's
important to take away, like for the history of this time,
is that it moves Wilson to the left, you know,
it makes it.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
That's what third parties do.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
They force other parties to take up some of their
issues in order to in order to command their voters really,
and that's what happens to Wilson. Wilson moves to the left,
and the whole country kind of moves a little to
the left.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
And ultimately, how did the bull Moose Party do?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
So they do well by third party measures. Tr wins.
He wins more votes than Taft, so he winds up
with about I think it's somewhere in the region of
eighteen percent of the vote something like that, and he
wins nine I think it's nine states. I had to
check the figures on that, but that's in and around.
(23:17):
Wilson winds up with about forty one percent, which is
actually if you look at the numbers in nineteen oh eight,
when Taft runs against Brian the Democrat, the numbers are
pretty much the same. If you add tr and Taft together,
they're at fifty two fifty three percent something like that,
and then you've got Wilson at forty one percent. The
(23:37):
other interesting character that's running in this election is Eugene V. Debs,
who is a socialist, of course, and he's famous for,
you know, being a union union leader and an outspoken
advocate for communism. And he runs and gets five percent
of the vote, almost a million voters vote for Debs,
so it's a really diverse four way race in nineteen twelve,
(24:00):
and was Debs in jail, he's in jailing member a
later election, I want to say it's nineteen twenty, but
he Yeah, he does run from jail once, which, of
course there's sort of some you know, people have asked
questions like has any has any presidential candidate ever been convicted,
and the answer is yes, Debs.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
All right, so let's move on to Ross Perot. Although
I could talk about tr with you all day, let's
talk about Ross Parrot. I love going back to the nineties.
I've been thinking about the nineties a lot lately and
how the nineties gave us today. Like I really think
that there were cleavages in our society, in our culture,
in our politics, in pop culture that gave us the
(24:44):
moment that we're living in now. So for those who
don't remember the nineteen nineties, who don't remember hammertime, who
have never seen a corded phone, who was Ross Perot
and what role did he play in the nineteen ninety
two presidential election?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Okay, I love this for so many reasons. I'm just
gonna say straight up, I was born in nineteen seventy nine,
so the nineties are like my decade. I remember, it's
like a coming of age moments. And the nineteen ninety
two election is like a real it's a watershed. I mean,
I remember when Ducaucus ran in eighty eight and thinking well,
(25:22):
this guy's got a shot, and then thinking no, that
completely collapsed. Ninety two was exciting because it was just
unlike any election in presidential history that really. Perot was
a sort.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Of squeaky billionaire.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
He's kind of small, he's diminutive, he's not he doesn't
have the look of a man. He's definitely not a
Teddy Roosevelt like command the room, but obviously super clever.
He makes his name in Texas and oil and energy
and mergers and acquisitions, but he also makes his name
in politics because he was an outspoken critic of Jimmy
Carter and the hostage crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis. In fact,
(26:02):
he offers to fund, you know, American paratroopers to go
in and save the hostages. And so he had this
like muscular demeanor about him, with like a Napoleon complex,
it seemed like. But he was a businessman and he
that's what people were attracted to in ninety two, I think,
and I'd love to hear your view on that, because
(26:24):
it's this idea that somehow politicians don't really know how
the real world operates, and that business people are better
suited to making big decisions and doing these sort of
jobs that involve leadership, and that was a revolution in
ninety two. I think, I don't know, do you feel
the same way about.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Well, absolutely, and I remember that election very well as
well as I've pondered the nineteen nineties, which I'm a
child of the eighties, so I was born in seventy one,
so for me, the eighties are that special time. But
my wife was born in seventy four. She leans she's
(27:02):
right between. She leans more towards the nineties. But there,
you know, I've really been thinking about the nineties a
lot lately, and as now we have Trump, and Trump
has become who he is and is one of the
most consequential presidents in the history that probably of the
of the nation. It makes you want to revisit the
nineties because you see ninety two and ninety six differently
(27:26):
and really and Trump kind of grows out of the
Parole Movement or the Entry because that becomes the Reform
Party in ninety six with Pap Buchanan. Does it does it?
I mean it does it because Paro kind of like
leans towards he's going to do it again and then
he doesn't, or you know, Pap Buchanan gets in there,
and Trump and Buchanan are vying for the nomination for
the for the Reform Party. So so this this is
(27:49):
where we get in the American psyche, and well it's not.
There was Wendall Wilkie who was the Republican candidate. He
challenged Roosevelt. Was that thirty six or forty I don't remember.
I think it was was thirty four and he nineteen forty, sorry,
ninety forty. He was a businessman. So this is not
unfamiliar Rockefeller in the seventies. So this is not an
(28:12):
unfamiliar idea in the American psyche, this capitalist nation, that
of course a businessman would be the perfect leader for
this country. It makes perfect sense on paper.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
So yeah, Buchanan is a really interesting character in the
nineties as well, as you point out, I mean, Pap Buchanan,
a lot of the ideas about America. First and about immigration.
A lot of those start with Buchanan and Buchanan has
a Paro and Buchanan are like two forces of two
ideologies really that are vying for the American mind at
(28:51):
that at that time, Paroh, you point out, dropped out.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
He dropped out in ninety.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Two as well, and then he jumped back in. He
jumped back in, right, and then he jumps out later
in ninety six. And so he was always a bit
wishy washy, which I think really doomed him. That was
the thing, like he was, he was on the rise.
It was it was his campaign to lose because if
you remember Clinton, there was so much scandal around Clinton,
Jennifer Flowers, that sex scandal had come out, then there
(29:18):
was there was others that were just beginning to emerge
during that campaign.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Whitewater, Yeah, Whitewater. Right, So you talked about single issues.
Paro's was the deficit and he that wasn't a major
issue at that time. Am I correct on that? Like
Paro's the one who when we talk about deficits today,
it was Pero who brought that issue to the forefront. Yeah,
(29:46):
that's true, But there was a.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Big economic issue in ninety two that was that made
Paro seem like a really viable candidate to most Americans,
and that was the savings and loan scandal. So there
was a I mean, there was an economic recession in
ninety two. The other thing is is that George Bush
had promised this is famously right. George was promas read
my lips, no new taxes. And when the savings and
loan crisis occurs, and when the deficit is on the rise,
(30:10):
the only thing you can do to be fiscally responsible
is to raise the taxes. I mean, it's going to
be the same problem that America faces in later years.
We've cut taxes for so many years, but you can't
do that and still spend. And so eventually Bush, George W.
HW Bush, has to raise taxes and that really sinks him.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Two things I remember from HW Bush, who when we
look back on him, he was all right. He didn't
know how a grocery store scanner worked, right, He went
to a grocery store and was like, oh, this is
all what is this? Yeah, and he looked at his
watch during the debate.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I'll add one more to that, Bob.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
I always, as a child of the nineties, I would
say that Dana Carvey is the thing that reminds me
most of George W.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Bush.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
If there was any political impersonator who sort of nailed it,
it was Dana Carvey's impression of Bush, like when he
goes to Japan and throws up on the Prime Minister's
shoes that Saturday Night Live skit was priceless and no
doubt had some impact on how Americans thought about the president.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Didn't Carvey also do paro?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
He did do paro too, That's right, Yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
So earlier we tease the spoiler effect of these third
party candidates, and I don't think that in our recent
memory there are there's no greater spoiler in presidential history
maybe than Ralph Nader, at least that's the way we
remember him. Tell me about Ralph Nader and his role
(31:41):
in the two thousand election.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Well, Ralph Nader, I mean, to be fair, is like
just a really great guy for America. I mean, nobody's
done more to protect your consumer rights than Ralph Nader.
So he's a lawyer and an activist and he has
been for you know, his entire life effectively, and he
runs as a Green Party candidate in two thousand with
no expectations of winning, but just to make a statement again,
(32:07):
like most third parties do, to try and tip the
needle in the direction of a more progressive really around
green issues like the environment, but also around consumer protection
and social welfare.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
And I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Think that Ralph Nader deserves any of this sort of
credit for tipping the election to George W. Bush, because
we're talking about one state, you know, one state that
was really the whole focal point of the two thousand election.
And yes, Nader got a lot of votes in Florida
where people were, you know, just undecided about Bush or
(32:43):
Gore after like the Lewinsky scandal or what I would say,
one of Gore's like best things that he did was
get Joe Lieberman on the ticket, because Lieberman attracted a
ton of Jews in Florida who were.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
On the fence.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
So putting the blame on Nader is like saying that
Al Gore didn't didn't do a good thing like puting
Nieberman on the ticket, or that George Bush wasn't really
effective with a lot of Christians in Florida. I mean,
one of my favorite things that George Bush did, I
was kind of a McCain guy back in two thousand,
McCain because McCain was a tr guy as well. And
there's this moment in Iowa or m you know, McCain
(33:20):
has asked who's your favorite philosopher? And he says Theodore Roosevelt, right,
And then George Bush is given the chance to answer
the same question and he says Jesus right, And that
won the day for Bush. I mean, it was the
right answer, even though the better answer is is tr
in my mind. But so Bush and Gore were really
effective in Florida.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Nader pulled a few.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Votes, but when it comes down to five hundred and
thirty six votes, I mean, you could have easily blamed anyone.
You could blame the libertarian candidate in Florida for that matter.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Let's circle back to today's political environment. Elon Musk, the
world's richest man. He's pushing for a third party, the
American Party. We don't know if he's serious or not.
It's very possible that this is all just a way
of getting more government contracts or or or taunting, taunting
(34:12):
his his, uh, his old buddy Donald Trump. Two questions
about Musk, One, was he consequential in the twenty twenty
four election.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, I mean the first The first thing I would
say is Pennsylvania and other other states so called russ Belt,
you know, the or the Blue Wall is they were called,
Musk had an influence. I mean definitely in Pennsylvania where
we're talking about paying people to go out and vote
for Donald Trump, that that had an influence. And he
did spend hundreds of millions on his campaign, so there's
(34:45):
no way that didn't hundred and fifty million dollars. Yeah,
it's a huge amount of money, and there's no way
that his advertising didn't sway some Americans towards Trump. I mean,
you got to look at Joe Biden and think, is
he this evil of a president as we as people
have been told because the media and the outpouring of
(35:07):
vitriol against Joe Biden has been so terrible regardless of
the debate performances. I think Elon Musk deserves a lot
of credit for that, as does Donald Trump for that matter.
But what I would say is is that money can't
buy you everything. And I'd be interested to see if
Elon Musk can find an issue that he is so
(35:28):
committed to and that galvanizes support. But free speech, isn't
it right? That's not going to get Americans on board.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, I mean, and this is my second question for
Elon Musk is is how serious? Like how well? I
have more than a second question. How serious is he
about the America Party and who is the candidate and
who is the voter? Because I guess the issue is
the debt and deficits, right, I mean, that's what he
(35:56):
seems to be saying, because he he condemns the BBB,
the Big Beautiful Bill that was recently passed is as
something that will raise the debts and deficits.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah, so that becomes an issue when there's a crisis,
but not until then. I mean, this is what I
was kind of alluding to with Peroh in ninety two.
Paroh and the deficit are important because there's a savings
and loan scandal and an economic recession, So that makes
the economy important, right, But without that, what are we
talking about? Like, let's just say for the sake of argument,
(36:29):
that the Big Beautiful Bill is a is a fiscal
genius idea that manages to keep America's economy humming along
in some unprecedented way. Right, well, then the deficit doesn't
matter because there's growth and you grow your way out
of a deficit. But if we if we see in
the next two three years a real economic decline and
(36:53):
we or or we see tariffs create a situation where
inflation is out of control, then then there's an opening
for a third party candidate to come in and say
I've got the answer to this problem. But until that
point that doesn't seem feasible. And from what I can
see from Musk, he's not even talking about this third
party that much anymore. When the crisis happens, you'll see
(37:15):
him all he'll be back again, all over Twitter, big
ideas will.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Be coming out.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
But also he'll be competing with other politicians in the
Democratic Party for that attention. So it'll be interesting to
see what happens in the context and then what happens
in reaction to that context.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
All right, Michael, Well, this has been a great time.
I always really enjoyed speaking with you. Thank you for
doing this. So just to close to button this up,
you know, twenty twenty eight's around the corner. How many
political parties you think will be on the ballot come
twenty twenty eight and I say this with the caveat
(37:55):
of historians are terrible predictors of the future.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
What do you mean, I think I'm a great predictor.
I mean I said Hillary Clinton was going to win
in twenty sixteen, and I mean, yeah, I don't like
making predictions. I can tell you the Democratic and Republican
parties will have candidates because they have for however many years,
so we can pretty much bank on that there will
be third candidates too. I mean, there are established parties
(38:20):
out there that we don't think enough about. The Libertarian
Party will nominate someone, the Green Party will nominate someone,
and then whether there is another fringe movement that can
attract more than just five percent, which would really be
a high threshold. That's the one that gets you to
federal funding, by the way, so if you if you
breach that five percent the next time around, you get
(38:41):
federal funding. That would be something to watch out for.
And I think if we have a crisis in America,
which as we've already said before, it feels like something's brewing,
but if there's a crisis between here and there, then
you will almost certainly see a third party.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Wrong.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Talking to Michael cullinane. He is a professor of US
history at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. He's also
author of the soon to be released book Theodore Roosevelt
and the Tennis Cabinet. Michael, thanks for joining us on
the American History Hotline today.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Thanks Bob, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show is executive
producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are
Jordan Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me,
Bob Crawford. Please keep in touch. Our email is Americanhistory
(39:44):
Hotline at gmail dot com. If you like the show,
please tell your friends and leave us a review in
Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Feel free to
hit me up on social media to ask a history
question to let me know what you think of the show.
You can find me at Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so
(40:06):
much for listening. See you next week.
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