Zócalo Public Square

In 1912, former President Teddy Roosevelt came out of retirement to seek the Republican nomination, and demanded that party bosses refrain from picking a candidate and instead hold the very first presidential primary elections. “Let the people rule,” he thundered. Geoffrey Cowan, president of the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, USC professor, and author of the new book Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary, visited Zócalo to examine the past, present, and future of the peculiar way Americans pick our presidents.