The 16th and 17th amendments were passed by Congress when Taft was President. The 16th amendment was ratified by 3/4 of the states by February 1913, shortly before Wilson was sworn in, and the 17th amendment by April 1913, shortly after he took office, so I don’t see how he can reasonably be blamed for those two. I’m not sure about his attitude towards the 18th amendment but I think a lot of people expected it to ban hard liquor and didn’t anticipate the Volstead Act which banned beer and wine. I think Wilson actually vetoed the Volstead Act but Congress passed it over his veto.
Thank you for the corrections.
During Wilson’s initial campaign for President he had opportunity to quash the 16th Amendment by gathering the support of states that would pledge to vote no on ratification. The 16th was never serious to begin with in that it was a more a ‘game of chicken’ and ‘I dare ya’ between opposing political interests. No one expected it to be seriously taken up. In that backdrop, Wilson had opportunity to resolve the out of control game playing but he chose not to.
Wilson however signed into law an income tax and oversaw its expansion in his years as President. He had opportunity to kill the income tax but he chose not to.
He also signed into law the Federal Reserve Act and a host of other legislation that steered the United States into a path of progressive ideology. He was far removed from any faithful adherence to the US Constitution.
The 17th Amendment was still defeatable when he took office and also was prone to his influence when he was running for President. Again he chose not to fight any of these unnecessary and deleterious amendments.
Same story with the 18th amendment. These series of Amendments were all a stain on the US Constitution as they served no purpose whatsoever to strengthen protections of rights and freedoms of the People. Without any of these amendments the United States would have continued to thrive and it can be strongly argued that the continued prosperity would have been much greater than what ensued following the ratification of these amendments.
Woodrow Wilson was positioned to move to quash all of these amendments but his ideology was aligned with these amendments. That’s was makes him the worst president ever.