Progressive Party, USA

Progressive Party, USA The name adopted by a variety of differing political parties in the twentieth century. The first Progressive Party, nicknamed the ‘Bull Moose’ party, formed the basis of Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 presidential campaign in which he polled 28 per cent of the popular vote. However, the Progressive Party was less a personal movement than a motley collection of activists with particular agendas drawn from across the political spectrum. The policies promoted by progressivism during the first three decades of the twentieth century comprised, in varying mixtures, conservationism, suffrage reform, prohibition of drugs and alcohol, health and safety legislation, progressive taxation, professional administration, economic controls, and corporate regulation. The Progressive Party thus built upon a contemporary faith in the perfectibility of society, rational methods of government, and the possibility of forming legislation based on universal, scientific truths and principles. It ran no candidates in the 1920 presidential elections, but in 1924 the Progressive Party and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) joined forces to support Robert LaFollete for President, who garnered over 16 per cent of the vote. Increasingly absorbed into western Republican and northern Democrat groupings, it dissolved in 1925, though its influence continued into the New Deal.

The unsuccessful presidential candidacy of Henry Wallace in 1948 as a self-styled ‘Progressive’ bore no ideological connection to the earlier Progressive Party. Instead, he absorbed the support of those who would have supported the Socialist Party, as well as the Communists for favouring closer relations with the Soviet Union. Since then, some fringe groups have attempted to appropriate the title ‘progressive’.