Interesting article on Charles Evans Hughes run for the Presidency in 1916

[Benjamin Frank]

From Jeff Greenfield. It seems he would have been a lot better President than the horrible Woodrow Wilson.

The Closest Calls: How America Nearly Forged a Different Path in 1916
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/06/1916-election-hughes-wilson-00108288

[Republican Party Stalwart]

I hate Wilson more than anyone else I've ever met, and this article is garbage. Nothing but the usual misinformed "Wilson bad because Wilson authoritarian Wilson racist." Zero awareness of the fact that the wartime authoritarian domestic policies of Wilson's administration were a wholly bipartisan program, zero awareness of the fact that the First Red Scare was a wholly bipartisan phenomenon (the article hilariously alleges there would have been "no J. Edgar Hoover" had there been no president Wilson, as if in complete ignorance of the fact that Hoover was a lifelong Republican and far more ideologically and politically proximate both to Theodore Roosevelt and to Charles Evans Hughes than he ever was to Wilson), and a gross misrepresentation of Wilson's relationship with the Second Klan and complete lack of context regarding his position on segregation. The author asserts that Hughes would have been strongly antiracist in federal policy and substantially "better" than Wilson in that regard, to the point of seriously challenging the status quo, based on absolutely no evidence other than the fact that Teddy once met with Booker T. Washington (someone should tell him about the Brownsville Affair).

KYWildman Alben Barkley, do your thing...

[Orser67]

Props to Stalwart_Grantist for correctly calling this article garbage. The author did bring up some borderline interesting ideas, but seemed to have little in-depth knowledge about Wilson, Hughes, or the Progressive era in general.

It's a shame because this is supposedly the first article in a series on the closest presidential races, which would be awesome if executed well. Also, Hughes seems like a cool guy and it would've been nice to learn more about him beyond Wikipedia-level basic facts.