Theodore Roosevelt's reputation has swung wildly between adulation and enshrinement on Mount Rushmore to loathing and contempt, largely in the hands of psychoanalysis and culture studies. During the past two decades, TR's standing has clearly risen, inspired by the environmental movement and by a nostalgic longing to recreate a national culture of reform that marked the Progressive movement. And nothing better represents Progressivism's moral idealism and democratic hopes than the Progressive Party, formed in the wake of the failure of Roosevelt to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1912. Despite its loss in that election and its quick demise as a political party, the Progressive Party had success in defining the issues and in shaping the organizational style and techniques of presidential campaigns that left durable marks still evident today. Most tellingly, as Sidney Milkis points out in this fine book, the victor in that election, Woodrow Wilson, “whose New Freedom Campaign was far more sympathetic to the decentralized state of courts and parties than TR's, felt compelled—or saw the opportunity—as president, to govern as a New Nationalist Progressive” (p. 25) and, in so doing, transformed both the Democratic Party and American politics.

On one level, Milkis's study of TR is narrowly focused on the period 1910–12, culminating in a four-way presidential race. This narrow focus, however, is so intelligently designed and so contextualized in American political time that it illuminates the political eras that preceded and those that followed this historic campaign. This achievement is made possible because Milkis takes seriously the ideas that propelled the Progressives and shows how these ideas were both innovative in themselves and shaped the sudden formation and success of the Progressive Party. Central to this analysis is the concept of “direct democracy” and its relationship to the enhancement of executive power as the necessary vehicle for the achievement of social justice and industrial democracy.

Direct democracy as an ideal and in its earliest manifestations in the form of primary elections, legislative initiative and referenda, and recall of elected officials was most firmly grounded in hostility to the domination of political parties and their organizational networks over elections and governance. Another measure, direct election of U.S. Senators, attacked party dictation of the composition of the upper house that had so much power in presidential executive and judicial appointments. Women's suffrage was also part of antiparty politics because women symbolized consensual, disinterested, and community caring values. This hostility to political parties was, in turn, part of a larger critique of prevailing politics. Milkis shows that as these ideas were developed, opposition to party became opposition to constitutional understandings of representative government that the party system so strongly reinforced. This threat to “Constitutionalism” was quickly picked up by Roosevelt's opponents.

The more populist elements in Progressivism supported not only the recall of state judges but also the overturning, by legislative initiative and popular referenda, of state court decisions regarding social provision and industrial regulation. Aside from long-standing support for direct primaries and a “stewardship” theory of the presidency, Roosevelt was a very late convert to most of these ideas and proposals. In the course of his renewed quest for the presidency, however, direct democracy and the centrality of executive leadership became the leitmotif of the campaign, forcing Wilson, William Howard Taft, and Eugene V. Debs to respond. The campaign of 1912 became a serious national debate about the Constitution, the modern presidency, centralized administration, and the role of political parties in elections and governance.

Roosevelt's new position was outlined in three of his major speeches, speeches that form the centerpiece of the main thesis of the book. In Osawatomie, Kansas, TR outlined his “New Nationalism” social and industrial reform program premised on enhanced executive and administrative power. In his “Charter of Democracy” speech in Columbus, Ohio, he connected his vision of industrial democracy to calls for adopting the full range of direct democracy measures. Finally, he gave a major address in Madison Square Garden in defense of the Progressive Party platform. Here, in language akin to that of a sermon, Roosevelt connected direct democracy, social and industrial justice, and a greatly expanded federal government to the creation of a national community bound together “in a bond of a common brotherhood” (p. 250). That these speeches called for major transformations of American political life was recognized by sophisticated American weeklies and monthlies and by major publications in England, France, and Germany.

Given its sudden formation, why was the Progressive Party able so successfully to recruit candidates for most major state and federal offices and to mount a national campaign that outpolled the Republican Party? Here the book indicates but does not explore deeply enough the ideological passions and organizational structures that came together so effectively. While pointing to the key role that “social workers” such as Jane Addams and umbrella organizations (e.g., National Conference of Charities and Correction and Survey magazine) played in political mobilization, Milkis underplays the decades-long organizational entrepreneurship connecting the ecumenical social Christianity of liberal Protestant churches, the emerging social science disciplines in the universities, the rapid expansion of popular monthly and weekly magazines, and, most tellingly, the rise of locally based but nationally organized advocacy groups. That two major voices of Progressivism—Outlook (TR served on its editorial board) and the Independent—began as church publications says a lot about how liberal Protestantism migrated into the creation of the increasingly powerful infrastructure of Progressive organizations and publications. For Robert Crunden (Ministers of Reform: The Progressives' Achievement in American Civilization 1889–1920, 1984), what Milkis calls “social workers” (coined by political economist Simon Patten to define the values of a “new civilization”) embraced churchmen, philanthropists, academics, advocacy group members, settlement house workers, labor leaders, prison reformers, journalists, factory inspectors, statisticians, even enlightened businessmen—indeed, all who held out a vision of America refounded on principles of social justice and industrial democracy.

Milkis concludes that “the Progressive Party was a party to end party politics” (p. 239) because this higher vision of American democracy would so permeate American culture and institutions that the electorate would select those who exemplified this vision and would implement its mandates. Tellingly, when the Progressive Party dissolved after the election, it became an organization called Progressive National Service, divided into four research and reporting bureaus (social and industrial justice; conservation; popular government; cost of living and corporation control), each headed by a prominent progressive figure. The organization saw itself as the highest form of political organization and the highest expression of good citizenship: “Unbound by statutory forms and legal technicalities [and] unhampered by election law discrimination,” the new model party called for the exercise of “civic responsibility and duty year round, locally and nationally” (p. 254). Every day a day of service.

The marriage of direct democracy and social justice, and the melding of mass democracy and the administrative state, have an abiding presence in reform liberal culture in America. That this set of combinations also requires incessant media play, top-down personal campaign organizations, rich benefactors, and plebiscitary campaign appeals—all innovations of the Progressive Party campaign in 1912—is not so readily acknowledged even if pervasively practiced. A major virtue of this study is to draw out this connection. And given Milkis's earlier studies of parties and the presidency, this acknowledgment is informed and convincing. With this book, Theodore Roosevelt should now be honored—or condemned—as an innovative figure in American political development.