In 1912, three was a crowd: Teddy Roosevelt showed that a third party could make a serious run for the White House.

• Author: Roberts, Sam
• Position: Times Past

The question comes up often during presidential, elections, including this year's: Does a third-party candidate stand a chance of winning the nation's highest office?

If nothing else, the often overlooked election of 1912 proved that the right candidate--in this case, a larger-than-life former President coming out of retirement to run an insurgent campaign--could give the Republicans and Democrats a serious run for their money.

By 1912, Theodore Roosevelt had a well-deserved reputation for shaking things up. In 1898, at age 39, he resigned his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to form a cavalry unit to fight in the Spanish American War in Cuba, where he and his fellow soldiers earned renown as the "Rough Riders." After serving as Governor of New York, Roosevelt became Vice President in Republican President William McKinley's second term. When McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Roosevelt, then 42, became the nation's youngest President.

THE TRUSTBUSTER

As President, Roosevelt pursued a pioneering agenda of environmental conservation and of breaking up the trusts, or corporate monopolies, in such industries as oil, railroads, and tobacco (for which he had earned the nickname "trustbuster"). He went on to win a full term in 1904, but conservatives in his own party increasingly came to oppose what they considered his anti-business policies.

Roosevelt didn't seek re-election in 1908. Instead, he practically handed the presidency to his Secretary of War and chosen successor, William Howard Taft, a rotund Ohioan.

Taft, who would have preferred an appointment to the Supreme Court, won the election, but did not agressively pursue Roosevelt's activist policies. This angered Roosevelt, who in 1910 urged his followers to undertake "a genuine and permanent moral awakening."

Challenging Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912, Roosevelt went on to win most of his party's primaries, but Taft was nominated in Chicago at a convention controlled by conservatives.

A BULL MOOSE PARTY

Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party and a few weeks later, he was nominated by the Progressive Party, a coalition of mostly insurgent liberal Republicans. At the convention, Roosevelt declared that he felt as fit as a bull (or male) moose, which became the party's nickname.

The Democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian by birth who was Governor of New Jersey. Wilson was not a born campaigner, but he benefited from the split among Republicans.

On one of the key...