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How did Woodrow Wilson become America’s most hated President?

SDET

SDET

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Woodrow Wilson | HistoryNet

A few items he worked on were the Federal Reserve Act, The Clayton Antitrust Act, The Federal Farm Loan Act, Federal Trade Commission Act and income tax. He was responsible for an agenda that was large and unmatched until the New Deal.
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"The 20th Century’s first fascist dictator,” National Review columnist and Fox News contributor Jonah Gold*berg called Wilson in his book Liberal Fascism. To tearily dramatic radio talk show host Glenn Beck, Wilson has become nothing less than the source of all political evil. “This is the architect that destroyed our faith, he destroyed our Constitution and he destroyed our founders, OK?” Beck ranted on the air last spring. “He started it!”

Nor is Wilson generating much praise from liberals who might be expected to defend him. Wilson was a bigot who sanctioned official segregation in Washington, D.C., say critics on the left. He used America’s entry into World War I as a rationale for crushing civil liberties. He was autocratic.
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Prior to Wilson, America was mostly isolationist, with a small Federal government. He promised that we would stay out of WW1, but then reneged on that deal. Then he enforced a new income tax to pay for the war and it created a minor recession once the war was over. Woodrow was sort of like the pre-FDR of his time.
 
SDET said:
Woodrow Wilson | HistoryNet
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That might be Paula Span's question and what we know about the vilification of Wilson is that the hard right has labeled him a danger to democracy in their efforts to rewrite American history. Wilson was a deep thinker, a PhD and quite lineal when it came to governance with something of a mathematician's pursuit of what works and what doesn't.

With France AND Britain drawn into WWI there was no way we were going to stay out of it: it was the very same problem that FDR had in 1940 and he had already secretly met with Churchill three times. Our commitment in WWI was just over a year due to Wilson's repeated refusals to get involved. Again, the very same thing happened in 1940, and then of course by Dec '41 all bets were off.

Glenn Beck is responsible for reworking Wilson on his radio show and in his books, which brought a lot of ink to Wilson as a president, so I for one put no validity into the right's reworking of our history. Teddy Roosevelt, wanted war and was a very staunch pregressive, but somehow the right just passes over that like yesterday's news.
 
I do not think he is the msot hated president, he even came in #8 in a poll conducted in 2010 by Sienna Research Institute.

Skip to 8:55.
And according to this whole page in Wikipedia he usually scores in the Top 10 of these polls.
 
This might do it:
Wilson’s intense Christian piety —— he was the son of a Presbyterian minister —— was not unusual in his own time or (for that matter) in our own. But Wilson’s piety was perhaps quite unusual in its millennial expectations. More and more, as America was drawn into the maelstrom of war, Wilson expressed his belief that the providence of God was about to usher in the great peace foretold in Isaiah, and with divine providence guiding events in this way, there was little need for presidential strategy. God would make it all happen in the end.

And so it was that Wilson proceeded to ignore —— or throw away —— a long series of opportunities when strategic thinking and contingency planning might have given him a real opportunity to shape the flow of events, and especially so when it came to the war aims of the allies. It was beautiful ideals expressed in beautiful words that would turn the tide of war, Wilson thought.
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History News Network | Woodrow Wilson?s Four Mistakes in the Early Years of World War I

I always got the sense that the real problem was that he was just so European in outlook and behavior, which ticked people off, THIS IS AMERICA DAMN IT!
 
SDET said:
Woodrow Wilson | HistoryNet
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There is a very good book on the two progressives, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and how much damage they, together, with other "progressives" and separately, did to our nation.

The regulatory state, the involvement in almost every aspect of our lives, unconstitutionally, by the Federal government, their combined racism, their flawed foreign policies of which Wilson broke with all other presidents and got us involved in that which the sage Washington advised against in his farewell address... getting us onto the victorious side in WW1 leading to a crushing defeat of Germany instead of an otherwise negotiated and more balanced settlement between the exhausted European nations which, of course, led to the boot on Germany's neck then to Hitler and all that comes with that.

And we should not minimize nor forget the ushering in of the Federal Reserve central bank, the dreaded income tax and upsetting the carefully thought out delicate balance put in place by the drafters of the state legislative election of senators.

What a mess both Teddy and Woody have made of it all.
 
Gaugingcatenate said:
There is a very good book on the two progressives, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and how much damage they, together, with other "progressives" and separately, did to our nation.

The regulatory state, the involvement in almost every aspect of our lives, unconstitutionally, by the Federal government, their combined racism, their flawed foreign policies of which Wilson broke with all other presidents and got us involved in that which the sage Washington advised against in his farewell address... getting us onto the victorious side in WW1 leading to a crushing defeat of Germany instead of an otherwise negotiated and more balanced settlement between the exhausted European nations which, of course, led to the boot on Germany's neck then to Hitler and all that comes with that.

And we should not minimize nor forget the ushering in of the Federal Reserve central bank, the dreaded income tax and upsetting the carefully thought out delicate balance put in place by the drafters of the state legislative election of senators.

What a mess both Teddy and Woody have made of it all.
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And yet they are two of the most popular presidents in American history. They helped make America the power it is today, If they did not do it the can would have just been kicked down the road. I also do not thing you know what happened at the end of WWI.
 
Carjosse said:
And yet they are two of the most popular presidents in American history. They helped make America the power it is today, If they did not do it the can would have just been kicked down the road. I also do not thing you know what happened at the end of WWI.
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Yes, perhaps they did.

Well, Teddy did for sure. But please inform me where Woody enhanced us except maybe at the expense of the losers of WW1, which came back to bite us and foist the world into world defensive pacts, and in predator creation, bloodthirsty packs such as the Tripartites which did create our own alliances that have come to now dominate.

That should be considered a Pyrrhic victory at best I would think one would concede. And Wilson hurt us in so many other ways as well.

I am not for the amount of power and the purposeful unbalancing of the constitution the feds, under the two progressives, did... yet despite that I do like our national park lands preserved by concepts initiated by Teddy. So slightly ambivalent on that point and few others.

As regards the end of WW1, try me.
 
Gaugingcatenate said:
Yes, perhaps they did.

Well, Teddy did for sure. But please inform me where Woody enhanced us except maybe at the expense of the losers of WW1, which came back to bite us and foist the world into world defensive pacts, and in predator creation, bloodthirsty packs such as the Tripartites which did create our own alliances that have come to now dominate.

That should be considered a Pyrrhic victory at best I would think one would concede. And Wilson hurt us in so many other ways as well.

I am not for the amount of power and the purposeful unbalancing of the constitution the feds, under the two progressives, did... yet despite that I do like our national park lands preserved by concepts initiated by Teddy. So slightly ambivalent on that point and few others.

As regards the end of WW1, try me.
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The central powers were on the brink of collapse anyways, all the US entry to the war did was expedite the process. They both gave America a presence on the world stage. Wilson cemented America's place among the great powers.Also without all of these things in place from WWI there is no way the army could have mobilized and grown at even a fraction of the speed they did during WWII.
 
Carjosse said:
The central powers were on the brink of collapse anyways, all the US entry to the war did was expedite the process. They both gave America a presence on the world stage. Wilson cemented America's place among the great powers.Also without all of these things in place from WWI there is no way the army could have mobilized and grown at even a fraction of the speed they did during WWII.
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All the original participant nations were exhausted. Russia had already bowed out and Germany made its last big push which stalled... Then fresh American troops kept a coming. If we had not intervened they would have settled like they always did, all sides just ready to be done with it. Instead, the Central Powers got the blame, saddled with the reparation payments, broken up and emasculated. Nice job Wilson and company.

Had we not entered WW1 there may well have been no need for gearing up a large army. Hitler didn't come out of the pyrric victory winners of Europe, he came out of the crushed and the then vengeful.
 
SDET said:
Woodrow Wilson | HistoryNet
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Not Hoover? Not Trump?

"A new Pew Research Center poll shows 53 percent of Americans saying Trump’s election makes them “uneasy.” Pew also asked respondents to give the candidates a letter grade for how they conducted themselves during the campaign. Forty-three percent gave Hillary Clinton an “A” or a “B,” consistent with what other losing candidates have gotten since they started asking the question in 1988. Only 30 percent gave Trump an “A” or a “B,” the worst ever. The previous low mark for a winner was George H.W. Bush’s 49 percent in 1988. In 2008, 75 percent gave high marks to Obama."

Lol...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wa...ever-how-much-will-that-matter/?client=safari
 
SDET said:
Woodrow Wilson | HistoryNet
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Because he was simultaneously a liberal interventionist (a precursor to the modern neoconservative), a racist (though a progressive one for his time), and the President who crystallized the process of centralization and federalization that had been in progress since the early 19th Century and accelerated by the Civil War.

In other words he's a convenient target for butt mad libertarians, lily flower liberals, and unpleasant uber-conservatives.
 
Sherman123 said:
Because he was simultaneously a liberal interventionist (a precursor to the modern neoconservative), a racist (though a progressive one for his time), and the President who crystallized the process of centralization and federalization that had been in progress since the early 19th Century and accelerated by the Civil War.

In other words he's a convenient target for butt mad libertarians, lily flower liberals, and unpleasant uber-conservatives.
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And a well-deserved target at that. Let's not forget that he set up and then abandoned the League of Nations which ultimately led to its failure which in turn led to WW2.
 
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