Election 1912 Essay Example for Free

Election 1912 Essay In the election of 1912, candidates Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and Eugene Debs competed for the spot as President of the United States. Wilson represented the Democratic Party, Roosevelt, the Progressive, Taft, the Republican and Debs, the Socialist. Although there were four candidates in the running, most would agree that the real competition was between Wilson and Roosevelt. A few of the many issues during the time of this election concerned trusts, women’s suffrage and tariffs. Wilson thought that trusts, or big monopolistic businesses, should be eliminated all together, while Roosevelt wanted to place limits on them. Roosevelt openly supported women’s suffrage and Wilson wanted individual states to decide voting rights for women. Wilson wanted to get rid of tariffs along with trusts, but Roosevelt wanted to keep them in order to protect wages. There was still an indecisiveness between state power and national power as we have seen in nearly every era preceding. Can’t Bring A Bull Moose Down In the first ad, the audience we were trying to address was the everyday, common men. We felt that people could relate to facing hard times and adversities and overcoming them. As common people ourselves we found these acts admirable and felt that the common man of 1912 would have viewed them the same way. This ad is supposed to show viewers about how persistence is an important quality in a president and how Roosevelt clearly showed that quality when he kept speaking for 90 minutes after being shot in the chest. This way, viewers will know that Roosevelt will be persistent in his original and elected beliefs when making decisions for their country. What Women Want The audience we were trying to address in the second ad were women. Although women did not have voting rights, they still had a fair amount of political pull. The issue of voting rights would have been a very important one to women everywhere at the time and the fact that Wilson did not even acknowledge them was an issue, whereas Roosevelt supported women’s suffrage in his campaign. The message of this ad tried to get voters to retract support for Wilson because he didn’t encourage women’s rights and support Roosevelt because he did.