Teddy was the Trump of that time. The establishment stabbed him in the back too and installed Wilson. He tried to go third party but there wasn't enough momentum. I don't think people appreciated how corrupt things had gotten. Even Wilson knew what a disaster his Presidency was. Late in his life he said his regret made him miserable and he fealt he was responsible for destroying our Republic. Seems like he was well intentioned but clueless about the effects of the things he was doing until it was too late. He said people would speak to him about a powerful subversive group, the irony being he was the one that gave them the reins to unlimited power:

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far as his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut from under him and the markets shut against him.