The 1912 Election and the Rhetorical Foundations of the Liberal State

In the 1912 presidential campaign, two of the most philosophical orators in the history of the country debated the future of the American experiment at the dawn of a new era of energetic government. This article argues that they offered fundamentally different rhetorical justifications for the incipient expansion of governmental power, and that the victory of Woodrow Wilson's vision over Theodore Roosevelt's, at one of the critical moments in the nation's ideological history, continues to be felt in America's ambivalence toward active government.