History ping.
Thanks for the ping, x.
From the article/blog from this post:
“He was elected as America’s 28th president (POTUS 28) in 1912 on a platform called The New Freedom advocating limited government”
and which is taken nearly straight from the Wikipedia entry for “New Freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Freedom#Campaign_slogan_in_1912
Wilson was a “limited government” candidate? LOL. I’d love to waste a trip down the rabbit hole to see how that one ended up on the wiki page. It’s alluded to but not illuminated on that wiki entry, that Wilson’s “New Freedom” was merely a divergent take on TR’s “New Nationalism” whereby Wilson, a straight progressive, deflected TR by calling for outright destruction of all trusts, not just the “bad trusts” that TR attacked. As a D, Wilson also wanted low tariffs, supposedly to protect the consumer and the farmer, but more specifically as anti-business. As others here have noted, Wilson was a big-state, regulatory, economic interventionist who was able impose the logic of his program during WWI with his economic regime of wage, price and other economic controls, including practical nationalization of the railroads.
All these “New”’s from the period would be hilarious but for FDR’s “New Deal” that enshrined much of the program permanently. If we can credit Taft for anything, it’d be for sticking to the “old” in face the onslaught of the “new”. Here from Taft in 1910, recognizing the progressive tide:
“The present political situation is a curious one. Indeed, the condition of public opinion is curious. It seems to be feeling the effect of the flood of misrepresentation which manifests itself in a protest against everything and everybody who is not in the forefront crying ‘Stop thief!’”