As the 150th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson's birth was recently observed, the college professor who was educated in Baltimore and eventually became U.S. president seems more important - and more controversial - than ever.
Current events often bring up comparisons to Wilson's years in the White House (1913-1921). Bush's narrow election victory in 2004? It was the closest for any incumbent since Wilson's in 1916. Problems with Mexico? Wilson sent troops to protect the border against Pancho Villa. Debates about how to stop the genocide in Darfur? Wilson failed to prevent the Armenian genocide.
Wilson had the most important foreign policy idea of modern times: that the United States ought to spread democracy around the world.
"Wilsonianism" remains contentious today: Is it noble idealism or reckless meddling? "For a president who lived almost 100 years ago to have his ideas still being debated is remarkable," says Steven David, professor of international relations at the Johns Hopkins University. "People aren't talking about Hooverism."
America entered World War I because Wilson decided it should, and later he traveled to Paris for the 1919 Peace Conference - where, among other things, the nation of Iraq was carved out of the Ottoman Empire, with Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites thrown together. In a 2005 book, Jim Powell blames Wilson's decision to meddle in the European war for the eventual rise of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler and the deaths of millions. This is too sweeping, but historians agree that Wilson's policy of interventionism shaped key events of the 20th century and beyond.
For generations, critics have equated Wilsonianism with reckless idealism, as opposed to pragmatic "realism." "There are few epithets more damning in American politics than `Wilsonian'," says the foreign policy expert Max Boot. "It carries connotations of purblind self-righteousness, of senseless moralizing, of good intentions gone awry."
Did invading Iraq in 2003 and attempting to build a democracy there make George W. Bush a Wilsonian? In his second inaugural address Bush said, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Some remembered Wilson's call "to make the world safe for democracy."
But Bush staffers seem uncomfortable with the label. "I can't tell you," deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz once said, "how much I resent being called a Wilsonian."
