Woodrow Wilson was governor of New Jersey when he became the 1912 Democratic presidential nominee. The only US president to hold a Ph.D., Wilson had previously been a professor of Political Science and president of Princeton University. This wooden nutcracker was an attempt to add a lighter touch to Wilson’s reputation as an intellectual and academic. He won a four-way race in 1912 defeating former president Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive), incumbent president William Howard Taft (Republican), and labor activist Eugene V. Debs (Socialist) who finished in that order.
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