The Visible Hand of Woodrow Wilson

"I have defined statesmanship as the guidance of the opinion and purpose of a nation in the channels of political action," declared Woodrow Wilson in 1903, then president of Princeton.¹ This pronouncement epitomizes Wilson's leadership: he aspired to influence the ideas and intentions not only of Americans, but of the whole world. "I have a passion for interpreting great thoughts to the world," he wrote to his wife in 1916. "I should be complete if I could inspire a great movement of opinion . . . and so communicate the thought to the minds of the great mass of the people as to impel them to great political achievement."² How successful was Wilson in influencing American opinion, and how effective were his political achievements? These questions have exercised scholars ever since.

Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson originated in a 2006 conference at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars marking the sesquicentennial of Wilson's birth. That milestone inspired a spate of publications, conferences, and roundtables with overlapping authors (and reviewers), including G. John Ikenberry et al., The Crisis in American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-first Century, and Cooper's massive new biography of Wilson.³

Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson is oddly organized. The thematic part titles mostly correspond to the original conference panels, but in many cases the title is a poor fit.⁴ Part one, "Institutionalizing Progressivism," begins with Cooper's overview appreciation of Wilson, which focuses on neither progressivism nor institutions. Originally the keynote speech, it could perhaps have been merged with Cooper's introduction to the volume. W. Elliott Brownlee's chapter on Wilson's economic reforms does indeed illustrate the institutionalizing of progressivism, but Trygve Throntveit's essay is more about the theoretical basis of Wilson's progressivism than its institutionalization. Part two is titled "Race, Speech, and Gender," but it only contains two of these topics: Gary Gerstle on race and Victoria Bissell Brown on gender. Geoffrey R. Stone's chapter on free speech is found instead in part three, "The Seeds of Wilsonianism," along with Mark T. Gilderhus' chapter on Latin America, neither of which has much to do with the "seeds" of Wilson's policy. Lloyd Ambrosius' essay on "Democracy, Peace, and World Order" does fit with the stated theme. The final section, "Post-Wilsonian Wilsonianism," delivers as advertised, with Emily S. Rosenberg on the continuity between Wilson's and FDR's economic reforms and Martin Walker and Frank Ninkovich debating the applicability of Wilsonianism in the later twentieth century. Anne-Marie Slaughter's "Making Democracy Safe for the World," originally the luncheon address, appears as an afterword.

One could imagine a different structure for the book: beginning with the "seeds" or intellectual roots of Wilsonianism, then examining Wilsonianism in action and the limitations or flaws exposed by those actions, and concluding with the post-Wilsonian legacy. It is in this order that I shall discuss the chapters.

The title of Cooper's essay, "Making A Case for Wilson," gives a fair clue to the author's stance. Cooper's overall assessment of Wilson's record in both domestic legislation and international affairs is generous, letting Wilson off lightly on such missteps as Mexico. (He agrees the Mexican intervention was a mistake but says Wilson learned a valuable lesson from it.) Cooper brushes off the many critiques of Wilson's actions without making a detailed supporting argument—though, to be fair, he has addressed such issues in much greater depth elsewhere.⁵ Still, if the purpose of the book was really to reconsider Wilson, it might have been interesting to pair Cooper's with an opposing essay, perhaps called "Making A Case against Wilson."

The intellectual roots of Wilson's progressivism are brilliantly explicated by Throntveit in "'Common Counsel': Woodrow Wilson's Pragmatic Progressivism, 1885-1913." Throntveit emphasizes the ideal of participatory democracy, in which government is "responsive to the people's will and efficient in carrying it out...