Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era

I enjoyed reading this excellent work by Arthur S. Link. It covers the Progressive Movement in America, starting with Theodore Roosevelt's second term, all the way through the very beginning of Woodrow Wilson's second. But most of the book deals with President Wilson's first term, where there was a flourishing of the Progressive agenda: Income Tax, Labor reform, anti-trust legislation, direct election of Senators, and the establishment of a foreign policy based on morality and human rights.

Link does not go overboard in hero worship of Wilson, which I'll admit is something that I had readied myself for. He addresses Wilson's imperfections, his ego and self-righteousness. The same qualities that enabled him to steer one of the most ambitious reform administrations in U.S. history, also contributed to his eventual fall from grace and effectiveness in his second term.

The "6th year" jinx plagued every American President in the 20th Century. Truman had his troubles in Korea and labor problems. Eisenhower lost Congress in the midst of Soviet expansion. LBJ had the escalating war in Vietnam and unrest in the streets. Nixon had Watergate. For Reagan, it was Contragate; Clinton, Monica Lewinsky; and Bush II, the Iraq pre-surge stalemate and economic woes.

Even FDR had his troubles, which, while he was able to win re-election not once, but three times, still his popularity and effectiveness waned throughout his administration. Had there not been the rise of the Nazi menace in Europe, he may very well have been forced into retirement in 1940.

President Wilson had his obsessive push for ratification of the League of Nations Charter. He pinned his legacy on it, and it ruined him. This book deals with the good times of his administration.

But ninety-two years hence, President Wilson's legacy is secure. He ranks up there with the "Near Great" to "Great Presidents," due to his skillful marshaling of the Progressive agenda, and effective management of our victorious war effort. Indeed, he has always been one of my favorite Presidents.

My primary "take-away" from this book, is a clearer understanding of the immense significance of Wilson's term. Prior to 1912, the Progressive (liberal) movement could have gone either way. It was up to Theodore Roosevelt, or Wilson, to carry the banner of Progressivism into the White House. Roosevelt, by failing to win the Republican nomination, bolted the party and ensured both his and incumbent President Taft's election by running under the standard of the newly-formed Progressive Party.

Had Roosevelt been elected in 1912, or even in 1916 or 1920, his Progressive Party may have eclipsed the Republican Party, leaving the conservative element to settle in the Democratic Party under the leadership of its Southern wing. The Progressive movement would have been permanently married to the strong, militaristic, and even imperialistic vision of Roosevelt. His social morality and early advocacy of equal rights for minorities would have found a home in his brand of progressivism. And the modern environmentalist movement would likewise have been elevated to a major tenet for the Progressives.

But Wilson carried the day, and secured for the Progressives, a home in the Democratic Party. Thus began the Democrats' historic and permanent linkage as the party of economic equality and electoral reform. Civil Rights and the Environment would wait until another day. The hawkish tendencies, and linkage to the rights of business, of the Republicans, were also cemented during the Wilson years.

The Democratic Party that followed: that of FDR, of Truman and JFK, of LBJ and Jimmy Carter; indeed, of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama - would not have been, had Woodrow Wilson not been so successful in laying the foundation a little less than one hundred years ago.

I hope that President Obama studies the lessons of Woodrow Wilson well. Make the most of the first term. Get your agenda through. Steer a middle course (as Wilson did) so that the most important elements of your program may become law. But beware of the pitfalls of the second term!

This book is a must-read for all students of American history.