Woodrow Wilson's Administration and AchievementsLord, Frank B.
History
Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements
Lord, Frank B.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924
Mr. Wilson was likewise totally deficient in the art of advertising,
and advertising is the very breath of American politics. He held
himself aloof from all these points of public contact. _The World's_
relations with him have certainly been as close and intimate as those
of any other newspaper; yet during the eight years in which Mr. Wilson
has been in the White House he never sought a favor from _The World_,
he never asked for support either for himself or any of his policies,
he never complained when he was criticised, he never offered to explain
himself or his attitude on any issue of government. In the troublesome
days of his Administration he often expressed his gratitude for
services that _The World_ had rendered in the interpretation of his
policies, but he never solicited such interpretation or took measures
to facilitate it. He was an eloquent pleader for the principles in
which he believed, but he had no faculty whatever for projecting
himself into the picture.
_The Experience of History_
Mr. Wilson's enemies are fond of calling him a theorist, but there is
little of the theorist about him, otherwise he could never have made
more constructive history than any other man of his generation. What
are commonly called theories in his case were the practical application
of the experience of history to the immediate problems of government,
and in the experience of history Mr. Wilson is an expert. With the
exception of James Madison, who was called "the Father of the
Constitution," Mr. Wilson is the most profound student of government
among all the Presidents, and he had what Madison conspicuously lacked,
which was the faculty to translate his knowledge of government into the
administration of government.
When Mr. Wilson was elected President he had reached the conclusion
which most unprejudiced students of American government eventually
arrive at--that the system of checks and balances is unworkable in
practice and that the legislative and executive branches cannot be in
fact coordinate, independent departments. Other Presidents have acted
on that hypothesis without daring to admit it, and endeavored to
control Congress by patronage and by threats. Mr. Wilson without any
formality established himself as the leader of his party in Congress,
Premier as well as President, and the originator of the party's program
of legislation.
Senators and Representatives denounced him as an autocrat and a
dictator. Congress was described as the President's rubber stamp, but
Mr. Wilson established something that more nearly resembled responsible
government than anything that had gone before, and Congress under his
direct leadership made a record for constructive legislation for which
there is no parallel. It was due to this kind of leadership that such
measures as the Federal Reserve Banking Law were enacted, which later
proved to be the one bulwark between the American people and a
financial panic of tragic proportions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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