During Woodrow Wilson's two terms as a president, he was an outstanding democratic leader. He managed to accomplish a lot, despite his poor health. Wilson was always strongly interested in the government and wanted to make some changes and improvements. As a president, he was never afraid to show a bit of a radical side, when it came to making changes. He desired the world peace and avoidance of World War I. Even though he was unsuccessful in avoiding the war, he showed to be a distinguished leader during it. He never gave up on anything he was trying to do (Cooper 1).
The Atlantic said about Woodrow Wilson, “He made the world safe for U.S. intervention, if not for democracy.” Those twelve words greatly show essential elements of the Wilson’s historical reputation. He influenced foreign affairs a lot, where he remained the avatar of an idealistic approach to the nation’s role in the world. Wilson has not become a figure of warm and generalized adulation as his great rivals were. Rather, nine decades after his death, people still admire or revile him. Clearly, he is a person, who deserves to be revisited and examined again for who he was, what he did, and how he influenced the world (Cooper 1).
Many politicians did not like Wilson’s high moral view of his own actions. Wilson took his ideas directly to the people. Wilson’s speeches were like sermons. His goal was to strengthen America’s morals. He wanted to hold up the nation as an example for the world. “The force of America,” he said, “is the force of moral principle”(Green 9).
In 1861, when the American Civil War between the Northern and Southern states began, Woodrow was just five years old. At that time, the Wilsons lived in Augusta, Georgia. There was little fighting in Augusta. Joseph Wilson’s church was used as a hospital for the Southern troops. Woodrow saw the horrible wounds of young men, and he began to understand the horror of war (Green 11).
Woodrow Wilson believed that God had chosen him to govern. He saw how his nation had been nearly damaged during the Civil War. Woodrow wanted to guide the United States, because he thought it was his destiny (Green 13).
Wilson’s home life taught him to value the significance of authority, the necessity of achieving an absolute truth and the importance of religion. Other indications of his parental heritage are his veneration of England, his interpretation of luxury as a major factor in the decline of Rome, and his emphasis on good manners and respect for parents (Saunders 2).
Wilson’s behavior in the period between 1910 and 1912, from the time he left his Princeton post to the time he was elected President, proved that he was able, at least in some circumstances, to be a universal political strategist. He maneuvered his way to his goal by adjusting his views to conform with a popular sentiment, cultivating the favor of men who could advance his interests, making and breaking commitments as the expediency dictated. He left a trail of a tough-minded and experienced politician. He showed himself a practical politician (George and George 57).
It is important to break down Wilson’s performance between domestic and foreign affairs. In the first eighteen months of his presidency, he oversaw and pushed through a significant program of the major legislation. This program goes by the name “the New Freedom”. It included the first successful lowering of tarif in four decades, which was accompanied by the first permanent income tax, establishment of the Federal Reserve System and passages of a new antitrust act (Cooper 10).
Wilson’s legislative accomplishments are well known and acknowledged even by his severest critics. In the last year of his first term, he pushed through another program. The legislative parts included a federal child labor law, the first federal financial aid to farmers, regulation of maritime shipping, levying of the first graduated income tax and the first federal inheritance taxes, and an eight-hour-day law for railroad workers. Those two programs of the New Freedom made Woodrow Wilson one of the greatest legislative presidents of the twentieth century (Cooper 11).
Like most presidents, Woodrow had little background or, as he liked to say, “"preparation” in foreign affairs. His handling of America’s posture toward the war was often masterful. During America’s participation in the war, he performed creditably. His continued pursuit of a new world order gave the Allied victory dimensions that it would not otherwise have had. Above all, there is no arguing with success: Wilson won his war (Cooper 15).
Wilson’s postwar performance in foreign affairs has the severest criticism and harshest judgments of his presidency. Those criticism and judgments have concentrated on what he did and did not do in 1919. He went to the Paris peace conference as the head of the American delegation. In Paris, he got down and bargained over the terms of the peace settlement, and he made compromises. He also played the main role in drafting the Covenant of the League of Nations. Back home, he tried, but failed in selling his peace program. Ultimately, a conflict arose between him and the Republican leadership of the Senate over the peace treaty and membership in the League. In addition, in the middle of this “League fight”, he suffered a severe stroke that made him an invalid, who would never again functioned as a president. At that time, the Democrats suffered one of the worst electoral defeats any party has ever suffered (Cooper 15).
No other president has had Wilson's background and preparation. No other president has made such a quick jump from the private life to the White House. In addition, Wilson is the only holder of a PhD and the only professional academic to become the president (Cooper 16).
Woodrow Wilson was not a man given to the display of emotion in interviews with strangers. Once, however, something moved him so much that his self-control deserted him. One day in the summer of 1918, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman called on the President with one Mme. Botchkarova. She was a Russian woman, who told an awful story about the privations of her countrymen. There was a revolution in Russia. People were starving, and they needed his help. When Mme. Botchkarova made her touchingly beg, the President burst into tears (George and George 195).
This incident shows the depth and quality of Wilson’s identification with the humanity’s suffering. He not only felt the great misery of war-ravaged mankind, he was possessed of the idea that it was his God-given mission to improve it. He wanted to reach it by so reordering the relations of the world’s nations that never again would the plain people of this earth be afflicted with a war (George and George 195).
In his social values, Wilson reflected a high degree of intolerance towards ethnic groups and religious practices that differ from his own. For example, he did not like immigrants and worried that their influx into the United States might corrupt the American system. He treated Jews as dirty, oily, junk-shop operators. In addition, he expressed stereotypical opinions of Chinese as "jolly" and inferior people. He exhibited a strong disgust to the Roman Catholic Church. He believed it was hostile to free governments, and forced its members to send their children to parochial schools that opposed tolerance, civil liberties and the majority rule (Saunders 3).
Wilson had a similar opinion about black suffrage. He opposed black people voting, because they failed to meet modern standards of education. Professing to be pleased with the educational and material progress of blacks by the early 1880s, he resignedly admitted that the progress would be slow. At that time, he was so intent on the advancement of blacks that he advocated a compulsory education for “those of them who will not or cannot educate themselves” (Saunders 4).
Wilson also wrote a long indictment of the convict lease system in Georgia. To Wilson’s mind, the state should be educating the convicts, at least in handicrafts. They had to attempt to improve the morals of prisoners, rather than allowing private interests to exploit them for a profit. Wilson wondered whether the system constituted a form of punishment, since most of the black convicts were “of the lower class of Negroes”, who were accustomed to a hard labor. Nevertheless, he expressed a degree of the humanitarian concern for blacks in that he implied that blacks were a product of their environment. On this basis, Wilson held out the possibility for a long-term improvement for blacks through the education. For the immediate future, however, he consigned blacks to a subordinate role in society (Saunders 4).
Furthermore, Woodrow argued that the role and status of women had significantly improved in the nineteenth century. He asserted that “it is simply ridiculous to argue as if women were now what they once were the mere drudges of the household.” Wilson’s clinching point was the contention that in order for women to lead the same type of life as men, men would have to “assume the sex and the duties abandoned by the mother and the housekeeper!” Wilson thought that it was obviously a physical and social impossibility (Saunders 6).
Reflecting the growing impact of the equality concept in terms of the relationship between the sexes, the president attempted to carve out a separate and complementary, but not subordinate role for women. Women were different from men morally and intellectually. They had mental and moral gifts of a sort and of perfection that men lacked. The way to utilize these gifts was to blend them with a man’s abilities through a marriage. Wilson insisted that this did not mean that women in marriage should have a place “subordinate to the position allotted to men”. Yet, Wilson apparently never gave any serious thought to the practical implementation of his ideas (Saunders 6).
Wilson proved to be an able wartime leader. He always looked toward the peace, even in the day the United States entered the war. He dreamed of creating a lasting peace. Wilson wanted to live in a world, where people would be safe, and problems of nations were resolved not through violence, but through peaceful discussions. It was both the greatest hope and the greatest disappointment of his (Green 9)
He was one of the greatest legislative leaders ever in the White House. He conducted a largely successful foreign policy. Even his great failure had a tragic grandeur and left a haunting legacy. He was not a president for all seasons. It is difficult to imagine him as a president in an “ordinary” time, if there is any such thing. If it had not been for the political upheaval caused by the progressive movements, such an outsider with such an unusual background would not have become the president. If it had not been for that upheaval, he would not have enjoyed the chance to employ his penchant for the boldness and preparation as a legislative leader. If it had not been for the international upheaval of the World War I, he would not have employed the same penchant on the world stage. He needed demanding times, and when he got them. he attempted and accomplished great things (Cooper 22).
In addition, Wilson brought the eloquence and depth of thought to the presidency. He brought an approach to leadership that became the maturity and self-restraint. These were all functions of what he called the “preparation”. He valued the self-control, and he liked a dispassionate discussion. His model of public persuasion was not the evangelical one followed by Bryan and Theodore Roosevelt. Instead, and not surprisingly, his model was the education. He believed in educating the public and being educated by the public (Cooper 22).
This concept of preparation was the most important asset Woodrow Wilson brought to and tried to give to the presidency. He did not seem to succeed in transferring that asset. His models of leadership and persuasion have not found much of a following among his successors. The presidency has been the poorer for not having become more Wilson in this proper sense of that term. This professor and then the president believed in teaching and learning, and someday, women, who sit in the White House, would do well to learn from him. This man with the long jaw and pince-nez showed a way to be both good and great as the president (Cooper 22).
