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| Source: Learn Out Loud- President Woodrow Wilson: Democrat, New Jersey, 28th President of the United States. |
"Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, in office from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. With the Republican Party split in 1912, he led his Democratic Party to control both the White House and Congress for the first time in nearly two decades."
From Learn Out Loud
As I’ve blogged before I have mixed feelings about President Woodrow Wilson. Similar to how I feel about President Richard Nixon and President Ronald Reagan, President Lyndon Johnson as well.
One one side you have this brilliant foreign policy leader and President who literally is the father of the liberal internationalist doctrine. That was the American foreign policy with each President making their own amendments to that doctrine especially President George W. Bush who was a Neoconservative, that was about defending liberal democracy at home and abroad. Working with our allies to defend, protect, and promote liberal democracy and prosperity around the world. Work with friendly developing countries to promote and defend democracy and prosperity in those countries through foreign aide. President Wilson’s liberal internationalist doctrine, was the foreign policy doctrine of the Democratic Party all the way though President Barack Obama’s presidency.
And then on the economic front you have a pretty Progressive President in Woodrow Wilson. He expanded the regulatory state that was created by President Theodore Roosevelt with the creation of the Federal Reserve and creation of the national progressive income tax. He supported tariffs on foreign goods. He supported workers rights and even organized labor. He was in favor of creating public Unemployment Insurance that President Teddy Roosevelt first proposed as President, but like President Roosevelt President Wilson failed to get Unemployment Insurance through Congress.
But then you had this other side of Woodrow Wilson who along with being the father of America’s liberal internationalist foreign policy doctrine, President Wilson was also one of the father’s of Jim Crow laws and segregation among the races both in the public and private sectors. President Wilson had given life to the Southern Dixiecrat segregationist Neo-Confederate Governor’s in the South who didn’t see African-Americans has American citizens and perhaps even as human beings. And wanted them segregated from European-Americans through force. Who were in bed politically with the Ku Klux Klan and wouldn’t prosecute from for their terrorism against African and Jewish-Americans, As well as other racial and ethnic minorities in America.
You get Jim Crow and the segregationist policies out of the Woodrow Wilson Presidency and had he been successful in getting the League of Nations passed in Congress through the Senate and we’re talking about one of our greatest American president’s instead of being in the 20s of wherever he’s ranked but certainly in the middle of the pack.
But you can’t get Jim Crow out of the Wilson Presidency, just like you can’t get Watergate out of the Richard Nixon Presidency. Because of the lasting horrible legacy of Jim Crow that went all the way through the 1960s in America. That alone could make a good argument for President Wilson not being a mediocre President, but one of our worst ever.
