What America feared above all was the growing concentration of wealth and political power. A Republican alliance with big business had flooded election campaigns with torrents of money, and it threatened to reduce — if not eliminate — whatever influence ordinary Americans had with their elected officials. Wall Street and the oil industry wielded outsize power and received commensurate criticism.
America in 2012?
To be sure, but also America in 1912. And what's profoundly depressing is that three of the four presidential candidates in the campaign 100 years ago confronted the challenge of corporate and financial power more forthrightly than do our candidates today. (A good guide to that century-old election is "1912," by the late James Chace, the longtime managing editor of Foreign Affairs.)
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