Woodrow Wilson (PBS American Experience). Has Anyone Watched This?

PBS American Experience Series ^ | Jan 6 & 13, 2002 | PBS TV Production

[KeyBored]

Being a cable deprived household, we have no access to the History Channel, Discovery Channel, etc; and have to rely on leftist PBS occassionally for commercial-free TV.

Caught part one of a two-part series on Woodrow Wilson last evening. Was wondering if anyone else watched and would care to comment on it?

Some interesting tidbits:
Wilson was elected with just 43% of the vote (sound familiar?)
Wilson was elected in part because the opposition was divided (again, familiar?)
Wilson had a longtime mistress
The income tax was implemented during his first term
Much "Progressive" legislation implemented during his first term.

I always believed the steep decline toward socialism began during FDR's terms. Perhaps it began earlier than that.

Any FR historians care to comment?

[TomGuy]

Wasn't he also very ill, and his wife secretly "ran" the Presidency?

[Austin Willard Wright]

If you want to read a devastating pyschologically-based critique of Wilson, read the book by William Bullett on the subject. It was co-authored by Sigmund Freud!

[KeyBored]

"Wasn't he also very ill, and his wife secretly "ran" the Presidency?"

They alluded to that some in the program, but apparently that happened during his second term. Part one (last night) only covered until about 1915.

His first wife, Ellen, died during his first term. Obviously he must have re-married (but it wasn't to his longtime mistress, as she was also married.)

[billbears]

decline toward socialism began during FDR's terms. Perhaps it began earlier than that.

LOL!! Where do you think FDR got the idea that he could do all that he did without Congressional approval or fear of the Supreme Court? Federalized education began in 1867 if that tells you something

[KeyBored]

". . . the book by William Bullett on the subject. It was co-authored by Sigmund Freud!"

Freud, huh? I guess Wilson did have some psychological "demons". He (and his first wife) suffered from depression. It was brought out in the program that at one point Wilson confessed he was so out of it that "I shouldn't be the president".

A crazy president. Good thing we didn't have nukes in those days.

[wjcsux]

Wilson was our first Socialist president. He was a big supporter of the League of Nations which is now the U.N. He was elected because the GOP was divided on whether to support Teddy Roosevelt or Howard Taft. Teddy Roosevelt ran on a 3rd party ticket called the Bull Moose Party. Wilson was responsible for signing the Federal Reserve Act into law.
Basically, Wilson set the stage for later big government types like FDR and LBJ.

[Libertarian_4_eva]

The one thing that wilson was right about is that if england and france tried to take large reparations out of germany for WW1 they would find themselfs at war with germany again. They pretty much ignored all of his 14 points and destroyed germany economy.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Freud focuses on Wilson's "Jesus Christ complex" e.g. Wilson's belief that only he could "save" the world. Some devastating prose. It increased my respect for Freud tremendously.

[silmaril]

Unfortunately, the decline began before FDR; FDR was more of a culminator than an instigator. The real culprit lay in the Progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. Among other things, the Progressives gave us:

1) The income tax (bad for obvious reasons)
2) Direct election of Senators (eliminating state governments' voices in the national government)
3) Civil service reform (enabling a class of lifetime bureaucrats to exist and metastasize)
4) Paper money not backed by gold or silver (a Progressive cause brought to successive fruitions by FDR and Nixon)
5) The National Park System and large-scale Federal acquisition and permanent administration of land (ask some of our Western Freepers about that!)
6) The Federal Reserve System (denounced by many, especially libertarians)
7) The whole concept of Federal regulation of pretty much anything (starting with food and drugs, now creeping into toilet water)
8) Nationalization of industries (proposed to appropriate monopolies, imposed in wartime, and today giving us boondoggles like Amtrak)
9) The idea of farm subsidies (finally enacted by FDR, and today sucking up billions in taxpayer money)
10) The concept of international "collective security" (embodied in Wilson's failed League of Nations, and carried on today by the UN)
11) The idea of a "morality-based" foreign policy (initiated by Wilson, who managed to eliminate any chance of a secure peace in east-central Europe, while simultaneously forestalling any action against the Bolsheviks; carried on by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton)

There are more, but you get the picture. Wilson was a towering buffoon who managed to lose the peace after the First World War, with all the subsequent suffering that implies. Domestically, he carried to logical fruition many of the Progressive plans (the popularity of which, in all fairness, we must attribute in large part to TR), and the nation has paid for it ever since.

The philosophy which the Progressives (and presidents like Wilson) introduced into American government was one of efficiency and power. No longer would a mere document like, say, the Constitution inhibit the government from doing "what's right." Can't find Constitutional justification for Federal meat inspection? No matter -- it's a good thing, so we'll do it anyway. Does the Tenth Amendment reserve the power to run a park system to the states and the people? Just ignore it -- no one will challenge it. The Progressives saw their causes as so self-evidently good that they felt just in denouncing the stuffed shirts who insisted on things like "process" and "justification" -- how heartless they were to value legal niceties over the welfare of the people! The fruits of this logic are with us today. Thanks, TR. Thanks, Wilson.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Wilson wasn't right about this. He urged the Congress to ratify the Versailles treaty which included reparations and a humilitating "war guilt" clause. Wilson's excuse was the League would "solve" all problems later.

[KeyBored]

"Teddy Roosevelt ran on a 3rd party ticket called the Bull Moose Party."

As much as we get frustrated with the two party system (the similarities of the two parties and all), there's a lesson here. Because of the split opposition, a fairly radical (or in PBS' terms, progressive) man was elected and we're still paying the price.

Heck, the dems. didn't really even want Wilson - it took them something like 47 ballots at their convention to nominate him.

No, if we're ever to reform the two party system, IMO it will have to be within the two parties and not a third.

[SteamshipTime]

Wilson's election, with a compliant Congress, was the triumph of the Progressive movement which continues thru the present day. During his reign, we got the income tax, the Federal Reserve, the popular election of Senators, and involvement in a bloody European war which pre-destined the horror of World War Two.

Wilson's soul belongs in hell.

[KeyBored]

"Federalized education began in 1867 if that tells you something"

Geez, the dumbing down of the masses began that long ago? Yes, that does tell me something.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

I never watch anything about Wilson, lest I be tempted to fall into sin by wishing earnestly that he rots in the lowest circle of Hell forever.

Were it not for his cynical manipulation of American neutrality and his slavish devotion to the perpetuation of English global hegemony, WW I would have turned out far differently. Hitler would have gone on to become a commercial artist, and the Soviet Union would have been terminated in its infancy. The just aspirations of the Slavs would have been realised by constitutional means -- the martyred Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been a leading advocate of a "triple monarchy." Instead, the Slavic states were set adrift and comparatively defenseless, only to fall victim first to Fascists and then to Communists.

I doubt that Wilson would have lost sleep over this because he probably despised Catholics as much as he did Negroes.

Even the problems we are currently having with suicidal/homicidal Arabs are directly attributable to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the interests of "national self-determination", which is nothing other than the expression of Wilsonian racism as applied to other people's countries.

Wilson was one of the chief architects of the destruction of Christendom.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I think you're on to something.

[Austin Willard Wright]

If anything TR, was more radical that Woodrow Wilson. The Progressive Party convention in 1912, for example, supported a hard leftist agenda including national health insurance and was endorsed by the likes of Jane Addams and Lincoln Steffans. The best candidate in the race was Taft (a man who had great respect for the rule of law) but even he was heavily tainted with statist "progressive" ideas.

[KeyBored]

"Wilson's soul belongs in hell."

< grin > According to the progam, Wilson was a Presbyterian (Calvinist) who claimed he was one of God's elect. So he can't be in hell < /grin >

Please no flames, you good Presbyterians out there

[CatoRenasci]

Indeed, Thomas Woodrow Wilson by Freud & Bullitt is remarkable for its portrait of "little Tommy Wilson". I also liked H.L. Mencken's charactarization of Wilson as The Archangel Woodrow. (Mencken, of German extraction and a German sympathizer, was not a fan of Wilson).

I'm not sure where Wilson did more damage: domestic affairs where he gave us the Federal Reserve and the income tax (rates on those who paid were confiscatory during WWI and after) or international affairs, where he falsely pretended neutrality (leading William Jennings Bryan, in the only courageous and principled act of his life, to resign as Secretary of State), then beat the drums for War, lead a war effort charactarized by a loss of civil liberties and the jailing of dissidents, and gave us the nonsense of the 14 Points (including 'self determination of peoples - responsible for the breakup of Austria-Hungary and the whole decolonialism movement), the tragedy of the Versailles Treaty (everyone should read Sir Harold Nicholson's Peacemaking 1919) and the idiocy of the League of Nations.

Not a bad record for a former president of Princeton who wouldn't have been elected if TR had not been so annoyed with Taft that he decided to run an insurgent campaign!

The standard multivolume biography (or hagiography, more accurately) is by Arthur Link and, despite its pro-Wilson bias, it is worth reading.

[Austin Willard Wright]

It was truly a terrible time. Fortunately, Wilson's successor was Warren Harding, who was able to undo some of the damage and release WW's political prisoners. I have always thought that Harding was the most underrated president in American history.