Woodrow Wilson

Rating:
Summary: A "Near-Great" Biography of a "Near-Great" President...
Review: The top five Presidents in American history are called "great" Presidents by historians, and the next five Presidents are usually referred to as "near-great". Woodrow Wilson, our 28th President, is usually placed into the near-great category. "Near-great" Presidents are those leaders who accomplished many of their goals, but fell just short in one area. And "near-great" is also how I would rate this biography by August Heckscher. It is easily the best one-volume biography of Wilson to appear in many years. Heckscher writes eloquently of Wilson's troubled childhood. The first President from the South since the Civil War, Wilson grew up in the shadow of his domineering father, a well-known and intimidating Presbyterian minister in some of the South's largest and wealthiest churches. The elder Wilson expected nothing less than perfection, and his son often had a difficult time meeting those expectations. As a result he often turned to his doting mother for emotional warmth and support, and as Heckscher notes, he would always be extremely dependent upon the support and encouragement of women to boost his self-confidence.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Wilson still grew up to resemble his father, for good and ill. On the positive side Wilson was strong-willed, extremely intelligent, ambitious, idealistic, and an eloquent orator like his father. But on the negative side he could be narrow-minded and self-righteous, humorless (at least in public), inflexible, and prone to making enemies. His health was also poor, and it can be persuasively argued that he suffered two major strokes before assuming the Presidency - once in 1896 and another in 1908. However, neither Wilson nor anyone else recognized them as strokes, but instead he regarded them as "nervous breakdowns". The first and only President with a Ph.D (in political science) Wilson enjoyed a distinguished academic career, first as a professor at Princeton University and then (from 1902-1910) as the President of Princeton. Wilson transformed the sleepy, laid-back campus into the distinguished university that it still is today, but his domineering leadership style earned him many enemies, and Wilson eventually quit after losing a bitter battle to change the living and social conditions on campus by forcing the wealthier students to live and work with the less well-to-do. In 1910 the corrupt Democratic bosses of New Jersey were looking for a "respectable" candidate to run for Governor - someone who could legitimately run as an "honest" candidate while being weak or naive enough to remain under their control. In Wilson, a nationally known college president and intellectual, they thought they had their man, or rube. Wilson accepted their offer, won the election, and then dramatically turned against the bosses, leading a major effort to clean up New Jersey politics. His about-face won national acclaim and helped make him the Democratic presidential candidate in 1912. In one of the nation's most colorful and historic presidential races, he defeated his two opponents - President Taft, the Republican candidate, and Teddy Roosevelt, the third-party Progressive candidate - and became President. During his two terms he passed major domestic legislation such as giving women the right to vote, ending child labor, and improving safety conditions in factories and mines. He also endured the crushing death of his first wife from kidney disease, quickly remarried a year later, and tried desperately to keep the nation out of World War One. In 1916 he barely won re-election in a race that was so close the winner wasn't announced for several days. In early 1917, after German submarines began sinking unarmed American merchant vessels, Wilson convinced Congress to declare war on Germany and the nation entered World War One. At the end of the war in 1919 came Wilson's greatest failure. Determined to bring about "world peace", Wilson helped create the League of Nations to peacefully settle disputes between countries. He knew, however, that without US membership and leadership the League would be useless. Unfortunately, Wilson's domineering leadership style as President had alienated the Republicans and even some members of his own party in Congress. Led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, they were determined to defeat Wilson and prevent US entry into the League. To gain public support for his cause, President Wilson went on a nationwide speaking tour by train. But in early 1919 he suffered a massive stroke that nearly killed him. He was not able to return to work for months (his second wife and staff kept the news from the public, and his wife was in many ways the "acting President" during this period). Wilson never regained the full use of his body or speech, and Lodge and his allies were able to easily defeat the League. An invalid, Wilson died in 1924 after predicting that the US would pay a huge price for its' failure to join the League, which was proven true when the League proved to be powerless to stop Hitler's rise to power in the 1930's. Heckscher eloquently lays out the details of Wilson's life. However, the book fails to turn up any original or new insights into Wilson's life and character that previous biographies have not already discussed. Additionally, Heckscher leaves out another dark side of Wilson's life - his strong racist beliefs regarding blacks. Wilson's low opinion of African-Americans has been an ugly blot on his Presidency that many historians chose to ignore until the last 20 years or so, and Heckscher would have been well-advised to at least mention in some detail this flaw in his character. Nevertheless, this is still an excellent and detailed account of a high-minded, well-meaning, but ultimately tragic President. Recommended!