Woodrow Wilson - Classic or Dud?

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/