The most popular contemporary version of progressive reform—at least inside the Beltway—puts Theodore Roosevelt at the center of events, leading insurgent Republicans against the party’s Old Guard, consolidating progressive gains during his presidency, and passing the baton to his successor William Howard Taft—and then, frustrated by Taft’s persistent conservatism, running for president as the candidate of a new Progressive Party and losing to another progressive, Woodrow Wilson, in 1912. This is the story retold by Doris Kearns Goodwin in her thoroughly mediocre book.
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