Wilson was only the second Democrat to move into the White Houses since the
Civil War and the first to have been born in the South. His father was a
Presbyterian minister, his mother the daughter of another. Every day of his
youth, Woodrow Wilson heard God's word as filtered through the strictly
moralistic teachings of John Calvin, and he grew up to believe that he had a
special obligation to serve both God and his fellow man. From Calvin, he
learned the traits that would characterize him as president: scholarly
detachment, orderly conduct, self-righteousness, and an intense personal
When he entered the White House, therefore, he came across as a complete
novice, as a stern schoolmaster out to scold the nation. With his set jaw,
humorless disposition, and twinkle-free gaze through a pince-nez, Wilson was
the farthest thing from a populist politician America has ever produced.
But as with Roosevelt, when Wilson was president no one ever questioned who was
in charge. And also like Roosevelt, in many ways Wilson carried the imperial
presidency too far. He kept U.S. diplomacy largely to himself, thereby
weakening the morale at the State Department and among its foreign service
officers. Not that this should have come as a surprise: throughout his
writings on government Wilson had expressed an exalted view of executive
leadership, going so far as to remark that presidential authority in foreign
affairs was "virtually the power to control them absolutely."
As wildly different as they were in temperament, Roosevelt and Wilson shared
the firm belief that democratic capitalism was the best form of government, bar
none. To both men, capitalism represented nothing less than freedom and
democracy through economics, a system that allowed all citizens -- provided
that they were male -- rather than any single elite to determine a nation's
destiny. Both presidents honestly believed in the United States as a superior
nation perfectly suited to lead the world. Unburdened with militarism,
unentangled in Old World realpolitik, and uninterested, for the most part, in
the ugly competition for colonies, America remained the "shining city on the
hill" John Winthrop had prophesied.
But unlike the pragmatic, realistic Roosevelt, it was a missionary idealism
that fired Woodrow Wilson, a bedrock certainty that it was America's national
duty to provide the world with strong moral leadership. While earlier
presidents had attempted to broaden the scope of U.S. interests, none since the
passing of the Revolutionary generation had done so in the name of spreading
"the American way" to other nations. Presidents James K. Polk, Ulysses S.
Grant, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt had pushed the U.S. agenda in
the names of the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, and what British poet
Rudyard Kipling had dubbed the "white man's burden," but Wilson harbored an
almost messianic belief in the spread of democracy. A belief that it could
save the world from humanity's worst instincts.
World War I
Wilson's presidency must, of course, be assessed in the context of the First
World War, which overwhelmed his attention for nearly his entire two terms.
Throughout those war years, Wilson spent many sleepless nights pondering the
gravest challenge to face any president since Abraham Lincoln. He seized his
role as spokesman for the nation, and as its leader made all the major
decisions himself. His influence, however, appeared less in the decision to
enter the war than in the rationalization for the intervention: that this was a
war that the United States now had no choice but to fight.
In 1914, when World War I began, America had little concern about how the
conflict had started or how it might end. Some two and a half years later,
however, the nation's young men were trained into doughboys and sent to fight.
Many, like millions of Europeans before them, died in the muddy trenches of
France and Belgium. With Germany torpedoing American ships on the high sea,
Wilson decided it was just impossible to stay neutral.
Formally abandoning neutrality on April 2, 1917, Wilson delivered a stunning
36-minute war message to Congress. In it he declared that America's first
objective would be to crush the German military command, but its long-range
goal was to "end all wars" and make the world "safe for democracy." In words
worthy of Thomas Jefferson in their grace and power, Wilson proclaimed that it
was America's righteous mission to return to the Old World of Europe and bring
it a democratic peace. Even Roosevelt, who was no admirer of Wilson, admitted
that it was an inspiring bit of oratory. Congress quickly declared war against
Many Americans disagreed and argued for peace at all costs. Congresswoman
Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman to be elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives, would vote against entering World War I, stating: "I want to
stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war."
America's leading industrialists felt the same way, if partly out of the belief
that an overseas war would hurt business at home. Andrew Carnegie of U.S.
Steel bankrolled several peace groups, while the bumptious Henry Ford, beloved
for his affordable automobiles, went so far as to dispatch a "peace ship" to
Europe in 1915.
The preacher-in-chief, however, proved to be an able commander-in-chief. But
victory came at an enormous price. America's participation in World War I
lasted nineteen months and sent more than two million Americans overseas, 1.4
million of them to serve in France. More than 53,000 U.S. troops died in
combat, while another 63,000 perished from disease and other causes. In
addition to the incalculable human loss, in today's dollars the financial cost
of World War I to America amounted to some $32.7 billion.
But we did win, and after the war President Wilson was hailed as a hero nearly
everywhere he went on his way to the Paris Peace Conference. Once there, his
status as savior enabled him to win substantial concessions from the Allies,
including self-determination for a dozen new countries from Austria to
Yugoslavia and the formation of his beloved League of Nations, an international
body the U.S. president had long dreamed of establishing.
In the end, Wilson got much of what he wanted in the Treaty of Versailles,
although he did not manage to keep the Allies from imposing a harsh peace on
Germany that permanently barred any rearmament and assessed reparations of $32
billion. A resigned Wilson, unsure if his leadership at Versailles had been
successful, sighed to his wife, "Well, it is finished, and as no one is
satisfied, it makes me hope we have made a just peace; but it is all in the lap
of the gods."
Unfortunately for Wilson, the gods had abandoned him. The Senate twice failed
to ratify the treaty, and the United States never joined the League of Nations.
On October 2, 1919, in the midst of his public campaign for the treaty, Wilson
suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed him on one side and left him an
For the next seven months his wife, Edith Galt Wilson, isolated her ailing
husband, and kept the public from learning that she was in effect carrying out
the business of the presidency.
When told by his physician that the Senate had voted the treaty down, Wilson
replied, "Doctor, the devil is a very busy man." But Wilson's peace efforts
did not go unnoticed. In 1919 he joined Theodore Roosevelt as one of only two
American presidents to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Through the rest of the century, every succeeding Chief Executive would look to
the Warrior and the Minister as models of ambitious leadership. In foreign
affairs, Roosevelt became the embodiment of realpolitik; Wilson, the founder of
the global human rights movement, his failed League of Nations -- the precursor
to today's United Nations. On the domestic side, both men made it clear that
the president, not the Congress, truly leads the nation.
These two presidents, equally learned in theory and accomplished in practice of
democratic government, but from opposite sides of the fence, are credited
with major ideological bents of 20th century Western politics. The
"Warrior" and the "Minister" put the United States on the world map.
These two intellectuals, with such starkly different personalities, define the
practice of 20th century democracy, its possibilities and its
limitations, as surely as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had for their