TR's insane behavior in 1912 was essential to getting Democrat Woodrow Wilson elected President.
I've long wondered what motivated him to do that, and now think maybe it was something to do with his mother and uncles?
I think it was more TR’s ego that led him to challenge Taft and to form a third party when he didn’t get the nomination. There was an aspect of the campaign that’s much talked about lately. He wanted to build the Progressive Party in the South. This led him to accept segregated “lilywhite” Southern state delegations to the Progressive Party convention. And that cost him Black votes in the North and led to the tragicomic spectacle of Black progressive leaders supporting Wilson, who definitely didn’t have their best interests at heart. Was it Roosevelt’s Southern connections that led him to make that choice?
David Hackett Fischer in “Albion’s Seed” an important study of American political cultures, grouped FDR with the New England culture (his mother and grandmother were of New England stock) and TR with the backwoods, largely Southern, Scotch-Irish culture (his mother was from Georgia). I don’t know if he’s right, but TR did have a very different style from FDR.
One of TR’s uncles served in the Confederate Navy. Another was a business agent in Britain for the Confederate Navy. Both lived in Britain after the war. TR’s great interest in naval affairs and combat may have come from them (FDR’s may have come from his New England ancestors who were ship captains).
TR was a globalist, but in his day, a “globalist” wanted to expand American power outward, rather than give up American sovereignty at home. In that sense he could be a globalist (that is, an imperialist) and a fierce nationalist. TR and Taft didn’t disagree about empire and expansion. TR and Taft both had ideas about a League of Nations, but later TR rejected Wilson’s rather different proposed League. Taft had qualms, but didn’t object to it.