Woodrow Wilson - Classic or Dud?

so why did he decide to get involved in the war?

cw sez it was lusitania and the zimmerman telegram, right? thats what i remember from hs textbooks.

He and Teddy Roosevelt couldn't stand each other because they were mirror images: both were fueled by messianic American exceptionalism.

a taft man myself

that Walter Karp book is seriously great shit, despite his hectoring style.

karp's book of essays, "buried alive," is also wonderful stuff. it's a shame he never finished the book on the korean war he was working on when he died.

explanation for war: one of wilson's advisers came back after visiting europe to sniff out prospects of a peace conference (WW's great dream) and told wilson that the conference could be done but unless he somehow got america involved all *he* could do was "call through a crack in the door." karp's great insight was to read every blunder wilson made in the name of "keeping the peace" (and no one denies that they were blunders, even sympathetic historians) in light of the fact that this brilliant, clever, eloquent but incredibly arrogant and self-centered man undoubtedly wanted to be a Great War President. sound like anyone we know? (apart from the "brilliant, clever, eloquent" bit, of course.)

Didn't he invent American Football or something? no wonder Nixon liked him.

I hear he was always writing constitutions for things.

Didn't he invent American Football or something?

Not sure, but he was an avid baseball fan.

also: I'm no fan of William Jennings Bryan, but it took guts for him to resign on principle as secretary of state in 1915, in protest over Wilson's insistence on violating U.S. neutrality.

i understand the very strong case for america staying out of wwi, but i kind of wonder whether the result would have been functionally any better. the americans who wouldn't have died would most likely have been counterbalanced by non-americans who would have died, wouldn't they? and the consequences of the "peace" would have been as bad if not worse. has anyone ever really gamed out the possible ramifications of non-involvement?

i guess you can argue that the u.s. prolonged the war, but that hypothesizes a successful negotiated end that may or may not have really been in view. otoh, it's hard to make the case that the intervention made anything better, which by itself is maybe enough argument against it.

well, the Central Powers knew that once America entered the war that they (the CP) would eventually lose; as a result they increased submarine warfare, which wrecked havoc on the Brits' supply lines.

Germany could not have won anyway, given the range of resources against them, and their shock offensive in 1918 had crested even before the US troops started arriving. They might have got a better peace deal if they had hung on into 1919 (when US troops would have been so predominant that Wilson could basically have dictated the peace, overruling British and French objections), so maybe the actual peace deal that came up was not so different from what you would have had if the French and British had defeated Germany on their own.

Another side issue: who was more repellent - Wilson or Henry Cabot Lodge?

the worst president in history

Whaddya know, Jonah Goldberg agrees

I bought 1912 and Holywood based on this thread. Edmund Morris' Roosevelt books are ripping yarns.

http://www.doctorzebra.com/imprez/28teeth.jpg

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g34/jesus_aguado/ShaneMacgowan2.jpg

Besides his other offenses, friend Woodrow had gnarly teeth?!?

Wilson had his good points. He firmly believed that people should determine their own government. But he caved in at the end of the treaty negotiations in 1919 and let Clemenceau have his way. So, he is docked points on that one.

When he entered WWI, he formed the most despotic, propagandistic, autocratic, lying, conniving government machinery the USA has ever endured. Resistance to Wilsonian policy was seen as ipso facto treason. You were either with him or a scumbag worthy of long imprisonment or vigilante lynching. See Eugene Debs, IWW.

Wilson gave high ideals a bad name.

He firmly believed that people should determine their own government.

Which is why he manipulated us into provoking a conflict with Mexico (and nearly succeeding) and helped Clemenceau and Lloyd George carve the Middle East into the divisions that have brought so much tranquility in the last 90 years.

among America's greatest 20th-century fascists, makes Joe McCarthy look like a piker. (Nixon love makes perfect sense)

I'm reading Hollywood at the moment. Good stuff so far.

I'm sure this story is familiar to the usual suspects on this thread, but for anyone else, this NYRB article is a nice overview of Debs vs. Wilson during/after the war.

PDF: http://www.mediafire.com/?yotlmnz32kq

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22800
Justice Holmes and the 'Splendid Prisoner'
By Anthony Lewis
Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent
by Ernest Freeberg

Harvard University Press, 380 pp., $29.95

...Harding commuted Debs's sentence effective Christmas Day 1921. When he walked out of the prison, Debs was cheered by most of the two thousand inmates, who had been given permission by Zerbst to press against the windows. Then Debs got on a train to Washington to see Harding—at the President's invitation!

The visit to the Oval Office lasted thirty minutes. No one disclosed what was said, except that Harding greeted Debs by saying, "I have heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now very glad to meet you personally." Harding went on to release most of the other political prisoners, and his postmaster general ended the Wilson administration's bans on left-wing journals.

It is an extraordinary story. A pacifist is imprisoned for a vague speech in wartime, and a supposedly liberal president refuses to release him when the war is over. A conservative successor then quickly frees him, and rolls back other repressions imposed by Woodrow Wilson. Public opinion, at first so antagonistic toward Debs, moves under the impact of the pardon campaign to more sympathy for him and for tolerance of dissenting speech in general. H.L. Mencken scoffed at Debs's pacifism and his "Marxian rumble-bumble." But Mencken said:

Is his release denounced by The New York Times, the Rotary Clubs and the idiots who seem to run the American Legion? Then it is precisely because he is fair, polite, independent, brave, honest and a gentleman.

I just finished this splendid biography, which doesn't stint on the man's frustrating compromises. At any rate, I'm prepared to give him credit for the progressive achievements of his first two years.

A total douchebag in his last two years, though (Hollywood is very good – and accurate – on this).

He firmly believed that people should determine their own government.

well, as long as they were white Europeans anyway. he didn't do squat from anyone in the Middle East, Asia or Africa.

alfred, are you watching boardwalk empire?

No. Should I?

it's not great. i wouldn't necessarily make an effort. acting is pretty weak/hampered by miscasting most of the character drama is a bit rubbish. the premise is politically quite interesting, but it's nowhere near as well handled as, say, deadwood.

anyway, the latest episode was partly set at the 1920 GOP convention and featured cameos by harding and his wife. one of our heros is the atlantic city treasurer and kingmaker for the nj delegation, and meets harding and horsetrades with the Ohio bosses. the wife mentioned to him that her fortune teller predicted harding is going to die while president, which made me think of hollywood (and wonder if they'd pinched that from vidal's fictionalization or whether it really happened).

not clear if this grander political canvas is going to become a bigger part of the show (which has mostly been local bootlegging so far). harry daugherty is played by christopher mcdonald, which makes me think he may appear again.

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/NonStopPop/Blogs/BoardwalkEmpire117c.jpg

went to Wilson's end-of-life home in DC yesterday. The guide was kind of forthright on his being "diminished" in last 17 months of his presidency. Otherwise enjoyed seeing his piano, Victrola and kangaroo-fur coat.

One of the surprises I've learned: Wilson liked sex.

yeah, even the house's 15-minute video mentioned an affair he had late in his first marriage.

Not sophisticated, but Frum's speculations are worth a read. I too wish Charles Evans Hughes had beaten Wilson.

ol' woody was the first pres to give press conferences! they sound hilariously stilted.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21761429

He could be witty, however. "I am not as big a fool as I look, and if you will just go on the assumption that I am not a fool, it would correct a good many news items," he remarked at one press conference in 1914.

oh, burn!

Chris Hayes reminded people over Twitter last month that, despite conservative efforts to the contrary, the left hasn't considered Woody a hero in years.

Obama is like Wilson, Michael Kazin argues, because he's a good speaker and is a Democrat and stuff.

tbh obama seems more like wilson these days than ever

Ahead of A. Scott Berg's new bio, Jill Lepore gives him the New Yorker treatment.

anyone read the new bio?

oh boy did I! I finished it Saturday.

how the hell I wrote two thousand words I dunno; the asshole deserves it, I guess.

apropos of nothing, Alfred, what's the best book on FDR's presidency?

The best single volume one is H.W. Brands' A Traitor to His Class. The excellent recent Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time analyzes the degree to which the New Deal required the support of Southern racists who needed federal boodle.

The one with the best prose is Arthur Schlesinger, Jr's, surprisingly, with little of the sycophancy he'd demonstrate as the Kennedy court intellectual.

thank you

I am shocked to learn Princeton had a libidinous prez btw

to be honest I can understand the attraction. Must be the lantern jaw.

excellent piece (as usual), alfred: i'm impressed that you could stomach wilson's company for two biographies!

as long as we're doing book recommendations, i'd love to see your picks for the best books on 20th century u.s. history.

You want'em here or in that other thread?

and thanks!

what other thread?

J.D. recently started a thread about our formative books or something.

here is fine, i can't seem to find that other thread right now.

A few. I cheated a bit.

Gore Vidal - Narratives of Empire
Edmund Wilson - Patriotic Gore
Taylor Branch - The King Years
Larzer Ziff - The American 1890's: Life and Times of a Lost Generation
Robert A. Caro - LBJ stuff
Amy Kaplan - The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture
Walter Karp - The Politics of War
William Appleman Williams - The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Henry Adams - The Education of...
Edmund Morris - Theodore Rex
John Carlos Rowe - Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism
Jonathan Schell - The Time of Illusion
Henry James - The American Scene
Garry Wills - Nixon Agonistes
Joan Didion - Political Fictions
Gary May - Bending Towards Justice

thanks! nice list, a few that would be on my own and a few i've been meaning to get around to (taylor branch's king books, adams's 'education').

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/18/princeton-students-take-over-presidents-office-demand-erasure-of-woodrow-wilson/

waiting for the right to chortle over the supposed deliciousness of left wingers taking on Woody's reputation.

i once found myself quite by accident in staunton, virginia, wilson's birthplace. i went to the W.W. museum and it was kind of a whitewash (pun not really intended). the guy held some views and did some things that seem rather progressive, and other views/things that seem unconscionably retrograde. i'm not sure it's right to say--as some have--that his racism was unexceptional for the time. i actually think that even among his own milieu he was a bit outspoken in his racist attitudes.

i'm not sure what taking his name off of anything will accomplish, but it's not like people are in any danger of forgetting woodrow wilson, so i don't mind it. for the same reason i didn't mind that the DGA took D.W. Griffith's name off of their yearly prize, which some people reacted to like it was the end of the world.

i don't think any ideological faction would really be comfortable claiming the entirety of wilson's legacy, which is complex and very mixed.

He resegregated the federal government, which is worse than what Grover Cleveland ever did re civil rights.

I think one of those demands is absurd. "The left" has known about Wilson's contempt for civil liberties and civil rights for years.

He resegregated the federal government, which is worse than what Grover Cleveland ever did re civil rights.

yeah, that's what i mean. not only was his racism fairly virulent even among his class, but he had a position from which he could do a lot of damage. and he did.

that said, it does seem to me that there are probably lots of more important and substantive things to protest than the name of a building or college... not just matters of racial justice (mass incarceration, police abuse, unequal employment and housing opportunities) but also some global matters that we as americans are complicit in (like drone strikes, environmental collapse). i guess you could say that all these things go together, somehow, and to protest one thing does not mean you can't protest another. but it does seem to me that a lot of righteous anger is being focused on what in the grand scheme of things seem like trivial matters. obviously a lot of folks don't agree w/ me on that.

fucking hate woodrow wilson. if nixon wasn't literally guilty of treason, i'd rank him worse than nixon. on the other hand, the idea of "making the world safe for democracy" is probably more geopolitically astute than any us president since 1979. :(

Chas Pierce on the 100th anniv of the current American Empire

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53792/american-empire-bob-lafollette-wilson/