The Tug of War: A Review of A. Scott Berg's "Wilson"
Spent the last five days reading A. Scott Berg's incredible biography of our nation's 28th President. Woodrow Wilson is, in my humbled opinion, one of the most fascinating presidents in American history.
An enigma of controversy, idealism, tragedy, and scholarly intelligence, Wilson was suited as both a leader of stalwart genius and victim of blatant incompetence capable of remorse one second and great vindictiveness the next. Here was a President whose antipathy towards basic American rights in freedom of speech and the press, as well as a blind eye towards racial animosity, greatly haunted his later political ambitions. After three years of successfully keeping the ill-prepared United States out of The First World War, idealistic internationalism undermined Wilson's campaign promise of neutrality and his second term would be dominated by America's entry into the war in April 1917.
A Progressive Liberal, Wilson's Fourteen Points strategy for peace in 1918 eventually led to the creation of the 26 year global tenure of the League of Nations. But it would be Wilson's role in the six month long Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that marked one of his most recognized endeavors. Ironically, Wilson himself was responsible for derailing American ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, itself a colossal diplomatic blunder of a resolution for vengeful peace shared by not only Wilson, but also French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando. The Treaty crippled Germany, cause economic depression and near collapse, and empower Adolph Hitler's rise in the late 1920s. Many could argue the Treaty of Versailles, as well as the preceding Armistice, be considered a cause of World War II.
Woodrow Wilson's life and legacy was, and still remains, one of a fascinatingly flawed leader who began his political career as a dynamic, far-seeing reformer and ended it short-sighted and delusional, "a broken piece of machinery."
In short, Berg's biography is both a compelling and magnificent life story of one man's remarkable rise and swift fall from grace — a most authoritative and inspired read!
