Compare and Contrast
Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson are the main figures that shaped
America during what is called the Progressive Era and worked to improve the American people’s lives.
Being that Roosevelt was aligned with the Republican Party and Wilson the Democratic Party their views
politically would differ greatly, but their views socially would seem to overlap with the common
goal of improving American lives.
Wilson’s democratic party platform “New Freedom” and based his ideas that around one theme
that government should be limited in its regulation and the only thing that it should do is to break up big
corporations because he believed that they held too much power in the political process and that if the
government got into the business of trying to regulate them then it would become corrupt itself.
Roosevelt’s progressive or Bull Moose Party as it was called ran on the platform of “New
Nationalism” focused on allowing the government to oversee the country’s economy that way it could
ensure that it was tilting in the favor of the people.
World policy was something that seemed like comparably it was the same they were both
committed to protecting the United States and its Allies. Roosevelt was committed to building a strong
Navy and was instrumental to the building and creation of the national park system and Wilson sought
to have control over the unions. Both presidents were important in what is called the progressive era
which from the 1890’s to the 1920’s. It was a great time of reform in the social and political realm as the
American people seem to prosper like they never had before.
The government that we see today is because both presidents had the fore thought to see ahead as
to what this nation would become...