From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: HIST: How Capitalists Rule #26
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Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 02:13:32 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

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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