** The History Scholar Who Lost History **
There are few presidents whose stories read like tragedies: Lincoln, Nixon, LBJ. Woodrow Wilson is one of them. What should have been his culminating achievement died on the vine, and for his impact on history, he died with it.
Wilson’s arc—from lawyer to immensely successful academic to successful politician—commands respect. He stands with Obama in a field of the most academic presidents. His legislative record before WWI is something history usually forgets, as is his vision of the president as prime minister. Cooper’s biography does a great job detailing just how much America tried to stay out of WWI, and how Wilson is much less passive than biographies from Theodore Roosevelt’s perspective make him out to be.
He was able to do a party purge, a ruthless but impressive tactic yet to be repeated. But he also jailed an opposing candidate, Debs, taking his prime-minister level authority too far.
The real tragedy came at Versailles. Even the Republicans were willing to sign the League of Nations treaty, which likely would have been better than the way it turned out. “The almighty has given us 10 commandments, but Wilson has given us 14.” Even after the fight was lost and his faculties limited, Wilson lingered in office, which with 100 years of hindsight he should not have done. Similar to Hoover but with different ideologies, his laudable idealism but unwillingness to bend to realities led to a much worse outcome for the country.