The Very Worst President of the United States

Enter Stage Right ^ | Aug. 11, 2003 | Bruce Walker

[danielmryan]

What I'm wondering is:

1. Why don't these facts appear in the mainstream textbooks, even as an "Alternate Point of View";
2. And why is it that a bunch of conservative Internet renegades (some Canadian) seem to be the only ones bringing these things up?

As far as the cover-ups are concerned, the only opinion I can advance is that professional intellectuals, despite the political positions they undertake, always have a Toryish streak to them. (To be fair, the standards of their trade contain a bias towards Toryishness.)

[William McKinley]

Wilson also appointed as Secretary of State that paragon of virtue, the virulently racist and anti-Semitic perennial Democrat nominee, William Jennings Bryan. His famous (or infamous) "Cross of Gold" speech referred to the same "New York Jews" that seem to have so troubled Harry Truman.

Bryan was a wuss. My namesake even beat his butt without leaving his own patio.

[JohnGalt]

Why?

Because Wilsonianism is a major part of Internationalist Conservatism or neoconservatism so he is a bit of hero in some part of the Right.


I'd suggest Tom Fleming's recently released Illusions of Victory for an excellent debunking of the Wilson era.


The author also could have added direct election of Senators, and the war on some drugs all began under his reign.

[harpseal]

Internationalist Conservatism

Talk about oxymorons.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Not to mentioned that the 16th (Income Tax), 17th (Senators elected by popular vote), and 18th (Prohibition) Amendments were all ratified under his administration.

[William McKinley]

By the way- on my blog I am doing a "Presidential Survivor" type of game. The end result will be, after about a year, a ranking of the Presidents from worst to first. Wilson was the second one voted off (after LBJ, with both being cast out the first time they appeared). As such, Wilson is in the running for the worst President ever.

It looks like Slick Willie will be the third voted off.

[wayoverontheright]

For me, no way could Wilson have been worse than the treasonous Clinton.

[William McKinley]

so he is a bit of hero in some part of the Right

Provide some evidence to support this assertion.

[Blood of Tyrants]

The WOD, how could I have forgotten to attribute that to Wilson, too?

So now, we have WOD, Prohibition, the income tax, popularly elected senators, and the rise of the KKK to attribute to Wilson.

[JohnGalt]

There is one more you are leaving out, but I don't wish to play the role of Neanderthal sexist today...but maybe tomorrow...

[William McKinley]

Him being first voted off does not mean that he is considered the worst.

Each week, a randomly selected group of five is presented. One goes.

LBJ happened to be in the first group of five.

[JohnGalt]

Neoconservative, Max Boot, in the Wall St Journal.
What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002840


"The most prominent champions of this view inside the administration are Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Their agenda is known as "neoconservatism," though a more accurate term might be "hard Wilsonianism." Advocates of this view embrace Woodrow Wilson's championing of American ideals but reject his reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish our objectives. ("Soft Wilsonians," a k a liberals, place their reliance, in Charles Krauthammer's trenchant phrase, on paper, not power.) Like Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, "hard Wilsonians" want to use American might to promote American ideals."

[eyespysomething]

What can be said about Wilson? One of the least damaging parts of his awful eight years happened at the very beginning, when the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, allowing a federal income tax.

Is that supposed to be sarcasm?

[danielmryan]

It might be. Those guys have a stong libertarian undercurrent.

[No Truce With Kings]

I am convinced that the *only* reason that Wilson inevitably appears in lists of the "ten best Presidents" is that the lists are drawn up by history professors.

Woodrow Wilson was not the first historian elected President (Teddy Roosevelt was), but Wilson was the first *history professor* that became President. So, the next time you see a list of Presidents with Wilson near the top, rather than the bottom, just remember. He is only there because of professional courtesy.

[bassmaner]

One of the least damaging parts of his awful eight years happened at the very beginning, when the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, allowing a federal income tax.

I presume that the author is being sarcastic - the income tax was the beginning of the Imperial Federal Government. And the 17th Amendment, also enacted during the Wilson years (which changed the way U.S. Senators assumed power from being appointed by state legislatures to a popular election), was the last nail in the coffin for state's rights.

But probably the biggest blows to liberty during the Wilson Administration were the first successful movements to enact national prohibition laws: the Harrison Narcotics Act, passed in 1914, and growing power of the so-called temperance movement which led to the 18th (Prohibition) Amendment which was passed the year after Wilson left office. The fallout from these doomed attempts to defy human nature started the greatest crime wave in American history in the 1920's, and contributed to the destruction of the American inner cities and the corruption of several generations of minority youth.

Yes, the author is correct: Wilson was the Very Worst President of the United States - even worse than Clinton.

[William McKinley]

Is Max Boot a 'neoconservative'? From the very article you link:

I have been called many names in my career--few of them printable--but the most mystifying has to be "neocon."... The neocons, in the famous formulation of one of their leaders, Irving Kristol, were "liberals mugged by reality." Well, I haven't been mugged lately. I haven't even been accosted. I like to think I've been in touch with reality from day one, since I've never been a Trotskyite, a Maoist or even a Democrat. There's no "neo" in my conservatism. I don't deserve much credit for this, I might add, since I grew up in the 1980s, when conservatism was cool. Many of the original neocons, by contrast, grew up in the days when Republicans were derided as "the stupid party.""

Quite ironic, really, in that the ones running around calling Republicans 'the stupid party' nowadays tend to be the same ones railing about some 'neoconservative' movement. But I digress. So Max Boot is not a 'neoconservative' as you stated.

But your point that some on the right look to Wilson as some sort of hero is not supported by the article either.

"Advocates of this view embrace Woodrow Wilson's championing of American ideals but reject his reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish our objectives. ("Soft Wilsonians," a k a liberals, place their reliance, in Charles Krauthammer's trenchant phrase, on paper, not power.) Like Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, "hard Wilsonians" want to use American might to promote American ideals.

This is akin to reducto ad Hitlerum- that agreeing with Hitler on anything makes one a Nazi. Call it reducto ad Wilsonium.

It's silly calling it Wilsonian anyway, since projecting American interests internationally was the policy under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

Your argument basically says that Reagan considered Wilson a hero, by the way. Surely you can find some quotation by Ronald Maximus to support your contention. There is no dearth of material by Reagan on the net. Go to town!

[murdoog]

And the 17th Amendment, also enacted during the Wilson years (which changed the way U.S. Senators assumed power from being appointed by state legislatures to a popular election), was the last nail in the coffin for state's rights.

I blame the 17th amendment for Clinton's impeachment acquital.

[CatoRenasci]

Well, most professional historians have a somewhat more nuanced view of Wilson than the usual adulatory stuff you see in high school textbooks.

I happen to agree with the author of this piece that Wilson was one of our very worst presidents. My reasons are many and varied, from his foreign policy (not really neutral in WWI from the beginning) to his propaganda campaign during WWI, the 1919 Red Scare excesses against civil liberties, his championship of the income tax, the Federal reserve, and, of course, the extreme Southern bigotry of his views, although as one descended from Southerners I hardly take a pro-Radical Reconstruction view of the period.

Curiously, my dislike of Wilson was actually formed reading the major ostensibly favorable multivolume biography by Leuchtenberg. One of the best short takes on Wilson is a little known (today) book by Sigmund Freud and Thomas Bullit titled Thomas Woodrow Wilson, in which the father of psychoanaltic frummery describes the psyche of "Little Tommy Wilson". It really is a must read for conservatives.

A couple of notes on the article: Wilson did appoint William Jennings Bryan as secretary of state, but the two never got along: Wilson was a psuedo-aristocrat, former president of Princeton, and Bryan a populist, though by no means a stupid or uneducated man. I mentioned above that Wilson was not really neutral during WWI, conspiring essentially with Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, (through is emmissary, Col. House, who pretty much described the whole thing in his memoirs) to tilt American 'neutrality' against the Central Powers and towards the Brits. Bryan, an honest patriot even if a fundamentalist mountebank in many respects, was appalled and, in what I have elsewhere described as the one principled act of his entire life, resigned as secretary of state in 1915 over the matter.

Wilson was also heavily under the influence of his wife, who was practically running the government after his stroke. Wilson's insistance that the US Senate accept the League of Nations "as is" ensured its rejection and failure.

Moreover, Wilson's whole vision of the post WWI world, the Fourteen Points, and the entire performance of the American delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, which resulted in the infamous Treaty of Versailles, has been heavily critiziced by diplomatic historians. The classic which everyone should read on this is Peacemaking 1919 by Sir Harold Nicholson, who was a member of the British delegation. Wilson's lack of preparation was astonishing, and was a major factor in the disaster that ensued. I don't know if the book is still read, but when I was a graduate student in European history, it was one of those books you had to know, rather like Fritz Fischer's Germany's Aims in the First World War (Griff nach der Weltmacht in German)