Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era: 1910-1917

Wilson came into office riding a wave of progressive sentiment that had been unsatisfied by the lackluster William Howard Taft. Since the GOP split between the Taft and Theodore Roosevelt wings, Wilson won the election of 1912. His new administration was the Democrats first opportunity to run the executive branch in nearly 20 years. Wilson's initial domestic accomplishments were impressive in some respects. He and his allies in Congress passed the first real attempt at centralized banking (the Federal Reserve Board) since antebellum times and Wilson continued TR's path towards labor rights. Unfortunately, his administration continued to erode rights for African-Americans, barring them from employment all the way down to the level of local post master. His moralistic ideals spilled into foreignaffairs when events in Mexico overwhelmed all other concerns along the Mexican-US border. Here in 1911, Taft had bungled US policy badly and Wilson managed to involve the US in the Mexican revolution in a regrettable and meddlesome way that damaged US-Mexican relations for many years. Any person reading about Pancho Villa's raids into the United States (he killed more than a dozen US citizens in a raid in New Mexico) is immediately reminded of our own chase of Osama Bin-Laden. Vera Cruz is a lesson to be learned. Be careful what you ask for. The rest of the chapter about Mexico is unbelievably complicated, and Link's writing style doesn't do much to help us understand just what the hell he is talking about. Link proposes that Wilson carried out his policy of neutrality with an earnest desire to keep the US completely out of the First World War. The slight contradiction in his apology for Wilson is that the same man is cast as being heavy handed in dealing with Mexican affairs midway through the book. Distance may suggest that Wilson indeed saw no great moral imperative to join the struggle against Germany, but the kinship (at the time) of language, culture and democratic idealism continually pulled the US towards joining the English in the War. Although I remain skeptical that Wilson did not wish for a war, facts are presented that clearly show Wilson did not merely give the British a free pass. There were clashes between the English and the Americans before German submarine warfare and the Zimmerman note drove the US over the edge. Being an election buff, I found great interest in the 1916 contest. Link depicts Charles Evans Hughes as completely void of ideas and totally negative, adding that Hughes was badly out of step with the progressive tone of the times. Wilson was able to convince enough of the voting public that he was a new kind of Democrat to sway the progressive block to his side. Running as the peace candidate, and indirectly stating that Hughes was "Berlin's Candidate" enabled him to win the election, increasing his totals from 1912 by three million votes. Of the New American Nations series, this was not my favorite. I thought the