Obama - A Potential Combination Of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and JFK

[Median Democrat]

Obama has Wilson's intellect, idealism and oratory, FDR's calm reassurance and temperment, and Kennedy's charisma and ability to excite young people. The potential problem is that these same strengths can also have drawbacks, since these three Presidents were great, but they also were not perfect. Worse, Obama takes over just as a major recession is about to hit, and the country is involved in two wars.

[The Magistrate]

1. Please Leave Wilson Out, Sir: One Of Our Very Worst Presidents....

[Dennis Donovan]

3. In regards to constitutional rights, he ranks up there with Nixon, Bush...

...the Palmer raids, especially.

[The Magistrate]

5. Among Other Things, Sir....

He was a supporter of the Ku Klux, and removed all Blacks from Federal employment.

His interference in the Great War was the seed-bed of most of the twentieth century's horrors....

"Fourteen Points? God contented himself with Ten."

[Median Democrat]

6. Woodrow Wilson Is Widely Regarded As One Of The Ten Best Presidents

I understand your point that Wilson's strong racism disqualifies him. However, Obama obviously is not going to share this quality or belief. Obama is not Wilson. Yet, many scholars consider Wilson to be one of the ten best Presidents in United States history while acknowledging Wilson's racist views:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_United_States_Presidents

What Obama will share is Wilson's visionary, idealistic approach to the Presidency, Wilson's intellectualism, and Wilson's gifts as a writer and speaker.

Do you disagree with these latter points?

[The Magistrate]

10. Idiocy Is An Insidious Disease, Sir, It Gets Into Many Places....

Wilson's 'idealism' was his worst and most crippling flaw, and did incalculable damage to the human race in the twentieth century. His 'intellectualism' was worthless, as it did not engage with either human empathy or pragmatic calculation, and was principally devoted to the rationalization of his prejudices and sustaining his hubric pride. Skill in writing means nothing; a great many thoroughgoing rotters have been decent writers and speakers.

[bunkerbuster1]

15. Wilson, from the crypt: "Don't you compare me to that n*ggah!"

fuck Woodie Wilson.

[JVS]

22. Amen.

[PVnRT]

23. You said it before I could

Wilson is basically a very racist Joe Libermann.

[Ferret Annica]

34. Wilson was a racist who worsened things when president

His wife told 'darkie' jokes in Cabinet meetings and this Democrat is no one anywhere near Obama's caliber as a human being.

[political_Dem]

2. Not Wilson.

President Wilson was the man http://chnm.gmu.edu/features/episodes/birthofanation.html">who praised and approved of the film "Birth of a Nation". D.W. Griffith directed the film praising the rise of the KKK. It also denounced Reconstruction. Wilson thought the film represented a historical document of America.

So, despite Wilson's achievements, I won't be using him in a comparison to Barack Obama. I'm sorry.

[Median Democrat]

4. Thomas Jefferson Owned Slaves...

Yet, I would not dismiss his virtues as a President based on this fact.

And Birth of a Nation was racist, yet it is still studied as an example of film and effective propaganda. Wilson's prediction that the efforts to extract reparations from Germany would prove disastrous proved preticient. Also, Wilson's idea for a League of Nations was also ahead of its time, but Wilson's stroke precluded Wilson from forcefully advocating in support of it.

As I said, Wilson was far from perfect, but in many ways he either had a lasting influence or was ahead of his time.

[political_Dem]

7. Fine. You can believe what you like and praise this man.

Of all of his achievements, Wilson still threw Black people under the bus--especially when lynching in America was at an all time high in this country. Furthermore, the membership of the KKK rose as a result of "Birth of a Nation". That too is a fact of his administration.

I realize the significance of "Birth of a Nation", but I would be the last to praise it as well as the other work of D.W. Griffith (especially, "Intolerance", "Broken Blossoms" and "Way Down East"). There are so many other film directors during the silent film era (Murnau, Pabst, Von Stroheim, Lang, among others) who were more masterful in their direction and their mise en scene.

[Median Democrat]

8. Again, What's Your Take On Thomas Jefferson? It Is Naive To Dismiss History

Because it is not perfect and to dismiss historical figures because they do not live up to modern day standards on race. What about FDR? Do we dismiss him as a great President because he permitted the internment of Japanese Americans?

I think Obama is a student of history, and his speech last night demonstrates this.

[political_Dem]

9. I thought we were talking about Wilson.

Why change the subject? Defend Wilson, since you love this man so much.

His wife was much more of a heroine for taking over when he stroked out.

[Median Democrat]

11. "since you love this man so much..."

Where did I say this? This sounds like something a second grader would say during an argument in a sandbox. Would you like to re-phrase, then I would be happy to respond.

[political_Dem]

14. No. You're the one speaking in glowing terms about this terrible President.

Btw, I answered below.

[mythyc]

12. don't mean to interject, but you're changing the subject too

by switching to Wilson's wife. The connection to Wilson there also changes the subject, but the OP's points are more relevant in strict logical votes because they pertain more directly to the discussion you raised about how a President's racial views and measures affects his legacy and success in the office. I think you raise a valid rebuttal, but the OP's counterpoint--asking whether the same standards apply unequivocally to other "legacy" presidents like Jefferson and FDR--is more on topic than recourse to Wilson's wife, which, if not a red herring, is more off topic and a digression....

[political_Dem]

13. Okay.

Jefferson was a rich, white landowner who had a biracial slave mistress (Sally Hemmings was supposedly a half-sister of his wife) and children. Even though he still kept slaves and purported that black people were 3/5th of a person, I can say that his ideas were influential.

Does that make me respect him more? No. I don't respect him.

FDR was very despicable in making the Japanese citizens in this country go to internment camps. At the same time, African-Americans were segregated against and still fought for this country despite that knowledge. In fact, many of my older relatives fought in WWII because they felt that if they conquered Nazism, that there might be a change at home. There wasn't. They didn't even get the GI Bill.

But they, and myself, admired Eleanor Roosevelt because she was the one who pushed for civil rights and an end to segregation. Mrs. Roosevelt respected Black Americans.

So do I respect FDR? Not entirely when it has to do with people of color. But do I know that he was influential? Yes, because of the New Deal. I respect what was done during the New Deal because it helped everyday Americans and precipitated a post-war boom in the economy.

[mythyc]

20. well put on racism, tho the discussion also comprises legacy & their effect on our history and char.

Within this original context for this thread and its rebuttals, Jefferson's was much more of a seminal influence than you insinuate. Not that I or any conscientious critical thinker could be entirely comfortable with this, of course, given the obvious reasons you state. Still, his influences spread and continues to pervade so deeply and broadly not just because of the Declaration of Independence, an epochal document even ahead of himself though he understood its significance and progressive intent, but because of his national character-shaping work throughout his philosophical writings (especially Notes on a State of Virginia) and politically through such measures as the Louisiana purchase. Though they did have progressive and/or meritorious intentions and effects, these are of course not things any conscientious historian critic or theorist could characterize as wholly beneficial and humane either. Their legacy has shaped our country so deeply in many complicated, interrelated ways some good some bad other neither and still more that can't be so readily diagnosable ethically or morally. In all these respects they've been woven into the fabric of the American enteprise, identity, conflict and penance, which itself as a melting pot of the world, is culminative not only of the tangles but also of the richness within the larger tapestries of world histories and character(s). More on the pragmatic level than the idealist one, FDR has had a similar impact. Wilson, as I see it, not nearly as much as these two, though some of the OP's points pertain on a less immanent level than the former two, Kennedy, or, now, Obama....

.

One quick side note-- Did Jefferson himself purport the 3/5 ID? That was the Constitutional Congress which he was not a member of. Of course its really just a moot point because he did support the constitution, though it might be a stretch to imply he's the originator of that particular article and concept. In Notes on a State of Virginia he argues in detail for the freeing the slaves, though he also does personally purport considerable racist and/or racialist views there as well.

Then another note.... I can't say I respect the man either, but I don't think the OP was requesting we do that--rather, if I read it correctly, he was forming a proposition on legacies, which are different from personal respect because they are transactional and national rather than based on individual moral verdicts....

[political_Dem]

26. Your explaination is succinct and fascinating.

I agree that Jefferson, Wilson and Roosevelt are complicated figures in history, so much so that their influences on American society will be debated throughout the ages to what their impact is. They have made a tremendous impact that made substantial changes in the thinking and governance of this country. However, that does not excuse them of their less than stellar attitude when it comes to race. That should not be forgotten and should be worked into their already complex character studies, achievements and history.

Furthermore, I also think that how each president dealt with race is very much a part of their legacy (especially for those of color who are taught about these men). It gives one a glimpse of how each man viewed humanity as a whole. How can someone say they are great people if they treated a portion of their citizens as inhuman? How can people of color respect these men?

It says quite a lot.

But, I believe that the OP was saying that despite other well-known presidents that were detected in Mr. Obama's leadership style, he most notably mentioned Woodrow Wilson.

But on the question of Wilson, I still say it is a mistake to equate him with Obama. Mr. Obama is much more brilliant and inclusive than Wilson ever was. Furthermore, I doubt that with Mr. Obama's sense of history that he would watch an openly racist film and declare praise of it knowing that it might de-humanize a portion of his nation's populace.

It comes down to how history is interpreted. In the cultural lens of white privilege and entitlement, certain aspects of a (white) President's character and influences get ignored. That's how it is taught from primary to secondary education. Instead, the values of the dominant culture continue to be reinforced as positive and not detrimental. Very rarely are the negative aspects of a (white) President's character are examined--especially through a different cultural lens.

[mythyc]

29. This is a convincing analysis that I agree with wholeheartedly

I especially agree with your comments about how a broader view of the total character and policies -- particularly those respecting social justice, race, and morality -- needs to be offered beginning from the early levels of public education. Without a doubt you are correct that these things should not be excused: we need to integrate them into our larger reflection on our nation's past, particularly in how they were manifested in the policy and perspctives of our past leaders. Over both the most popular and the most influential of these leaders an even more acute critical eye must be cast indeed.

Great discourse here. This is one of the several reasons I appreciate DU so much.

:dem:

[political_Dem]

30. Thank you for saying that. :)

What's most important is that we need to have these conversations because it helps shape what we're going to do in terms of changing America for the better. To simply ignore history and its impact on the present is a mistake. This needs to be discussed here as well as elsewhere.

It makes me excited that people are willing to think about the depth of this situation and use history as a way of framing what we are experiencing right now.

That's why I love to hear historians like John Hope Franklin and Dolores Kearns Goodwin.

[mythyc]

35. Dolores Kearns Goodwin is great. I like watching her on Charlie Rose

Did you hear Obama when he cited her book on Lincoln? It was about 2-3 months ago in South Florida I think. He cited her discussion of Lincoln's diverse appointments to his Cabinet as a more expansive, discrusive form of executive administartion. This is the same passage that Colbert had her on to discuss to debunk some republican (can't remember which) lying about said topic. great bit that one....

thank you too! I love dialogue like this and couldn't agree more.

[political_Dem]

39. Yes. His take on history fascinate me. And, it provides a thought-provoking look

of how he defines his own style.

Other than that, I enjoy Ms. Goodwin's interviews on various programs because she pays attention to intimate insights. I always found her much better that Arthur Schlesinger when it came to describing the meticulous details of the Presidency.

And no problem! Fruitful and enriching talk is like manna for the soul. :D

[PVnRT]

25. This is not about nit-picking

Idealism? Wilson may have had Fourteen Points, but he was too pigheaded and arrogant to actually get them ratified in the Senate.

His record on civil rights is abysmal.

He shredded the Constitution during WWI.

He ran as a pacifist, then promptly got us involved in WWI.

This isn't finding one or two things to be whiny about. The man's record is atrocious, and I'm baffled to this day why historians are so in love with him.

[Median Democrat]

36. Not Arguing That Any Of These Presidents Were Perfect, But They Were All Influential...

...and, whether you agree with some, all or none, of their policies, their impact is still being felt. This is what I had in mind when I wrote the OP. I guess I could have named some obscure President like Franklin Pierce, and say that I hope Obama barely causes a ripple in the historical tapestry.

Yes, Woodrow Wilson was a racist. Does that mean that we should not study him or examine the ways in which he was extremely effective and influential in ways that reveberate to today?

Woodrow Wilson presided over the founding of the Federal Reserve, an institution that has a pervasive influence on everyone, through the passage of the Federal Reserve Act:

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You say that Wilson "ran as a pacifist, then promptly got us involved in WWI." This is not true. WWI lasted from 1914-1918. Wilson did not involve the US in WWI until his second term in 1917, a year before the end of WW1.

You attribute Wilson's failure to win ratification of the Versailles Treaty following the end of WW1 to his arrogance. However, Wilson suffered a severe stroke in 1919, and was largely kept out of the public until the end of his term in 1921. Finally, in the international arena, Wilson's idea for a League of Nations was ahead of its time.

Was Woodrow Wilson perfect? No, far from it. However, Wilson left an indelible print on the office of the Presidency, and his impact is still felt today through the Federal Reserve and the United Nations.

[PVnRT]

24. Under Teddy Roosevelt, the federal government started hiring blacks

Wilson fired every last one of them.

I would venture that Wilson is the reason Jim Crow lasted into the 1970's. He emboldened it.

[jacksonian]

17. Wilson in historical context

one has to compare Wilson to what went before. The Presidency was a string of guys who were nothing but devious hacks - Grover Cleveland vs. James Blaine, just try to imagine how you would have voted in that.

Teddy Roosevelt, for all his manliness and trust-busting progressivism, was no deep thinker and a big political loser post-White House. Wilson is the first modern pres because he brought the modern liberal man (as in liberal education) to national office, elected for what he knew instead of who. He was flawed but had some forward-thinking policies, and was sort of cheated out building his true legacy by a massive stroke at a key time in his second term.

As for the racism, some of this sticks to Wilson - he played ball and was not as progressive as we would have like, even for 1912. But you have to remember what the Dem party was back then - Wilson was also for us the first person out of that wilderness that was William Jennings Bryan. Everything in the Dem party then went through Bryan, Wilson only got the nomination because running Bryan a fifth losing time didn't fly. The rural, midwestern voters that were Bryan's were very racist and socially conservative. A college president from New Jersey was maybe not able to criticize "Birth of a Nation". as you would like - there were other issues of the day, which is no excuse - except as a reminder we had fought a huge civil war over race and some of those people were still alive.

D.W. Griffith directed the film praising the rise of the KKK. It also denounced Reconstruction.

In context, even in 1915 people thought "Birth" a racist film, so you are right, but "denounced Reconstruction" probably isn't your best arguing point, especially if you were Wilson in 1915.

Really the Dem party is what it is today because Wilson, like Obama, showed a new way to put together a national majority, one based on reason and merit rather than personality politics and the flowery oratory. One does hope Obama will govern better, and i bet he will.

[political_Dem]

27. You're right.

Instead of "denouncing Reconstruction" (which I initially said), the film was a reaction against Reconstruction. "Birth" itself parodied what might happen (by using whites in black-face) if Blacks were in power and had gotten rights after the Civil War. As a result, the KKK was depicted as a force that would lessen "white paranoia" through putting a stop to what occurred.

After all, the script was based on "The Clansmen" by Thomas Dixon.

You are also correct that people did react to the film. Oscar Micheaux, a black filmmaker, shot "Within Our Gates" (1920) as a reaction to D.W. Griffith's movie.

The NAACP also campaigned against "Birth" and the lynchings that were occurring because of it. They even tried to get the film banned, but was not successful.

And still Wilson was not moved. He was not "caught up in the times", per se. He could have set in motion ground-breaking opinions regarding race and civil rights as black leaders asked him to. But he didn't.

[jacksonian]

28. again, remember the times

all civil rights groups, all blacks, all what we would call "progressive" social workers were Republicans. Wilson was a Dem. He had to work with Dems to pass anything. The whole idea of the Dem party at the time was "NO MORE RECONSRUCTION/EQUALITY SHIT" because, like the whole history of their party, everything the Republicans do turns instantly into corruption.

Some things never change. Then again, other things do. Anyway, before Roosevelt (Franklin) could come along and move the Dems to the left and bring in AA voters, Bryan had to die, which he finally did, politically, in 1924, four years after Wilson left office.

I believe William Jennings Bryan is the boogieman you're looking for here, not Woodrow Wilson.

[political_Dem]

32. I still stick with the notion that Wilson has a racist legacy.

Here is an article from http://www.reason.com/news/show/33906.html">Reason that discusses President Wilson's racist attitude better than I can:

Wilson's historical reputation is that of a far-sighted progressive. That role has been assigned to him by historians based on his battle for the League of Nations, and the opposition he faced from isolationist Republicans. Indeed, the adjective "Wilsonian," still in use, implies a positive if idealistic vision for the extension of justice and democratic values throughout the world. Domestically, however, Wilson was a racist retrograde, one who attempted to engineer the diminution of both justice and democracy for American blacks—who were enjoying little of either to begin with.

Wilson's racist views were hardly a secret. His own published work was peppered with Lost Cause visions of a happy antebellum South. As president of Princeton, he had turned away black applicants, regarding their desire for education to be "unwarranted." He was elected president because the 1912 campaign featured a third party, Theodore Roosevelt's Bullmoose Party, which drew Republican votes from incumbent William Howard Taft. Wilson won a majority of votes in only one state (Arizona) outside the South.

What Wilson's election meant to the South was "home rule;" that is, license to pursue its racial practices without concern about interference from the federal government. That is exactly what the 1948 Dixiecrats wanted. But "home rule" was only the beginning. Upon taking power in Washington, Wilson and the many other Southerners he brought into his cabinet were disturbed at the way the federal government went about its own business. One legacy of post-Civil War Republican ascendancy was that Washington's large black populace had access to federal jobs, and worked with whites in largely integrated circumstances. Wilson's cabinet put an end to that, bringing Jim Crow to Washington.

This is why, Bryan is not the boogey man. Wilson was plenty culpable.

[jacksonian]

33. i'm not trying to whitewash him

everything said in that link you supplied is true, AFAIK. And not very pretty, is it? I just see it as a larger issue - that was what the party wanted and no Dem pres, especially an academic from the East who wanted to pass any legislation, was going to do any different. That was Bryan's legacy and the legacy of the rank and file he was spokesman for - all Dem roads passed through Bryan. And unlike Bryan, if you can get past Wilson's retrograde racial shortcomings, there is a larger vision more like a voter would expect in a leader today, a style almost unheard of at the time.

Mind you, when Warren Harding and the Republicans came back into office in 1920, Jim Crow in Washington continued. It continued through the next two administrations, as the Republicans paid lip service to being the party of Lincoln while absorbing the Great Plains rural voters that had been Bryan's base. In 1912 when Wilson was elected for his first term, an AA voting Dem was like Jews for Hitler. By 1932, things had flipped almost 100%.

The South had always been, traditionally, against integration. It was Bryan and the midwestern rural coalition that made the South powerful enough to influence national policy and put Wilson in the WH. After both Bryan and Wilson were long gone, the Republican drive to co-opt this majority led them down this very same path.

[political_Dem]

38. You're right. Except one thing.

Wilson's "retrograde" shortcomings are very much a part of his policy.

It's interesting how there are always excuses made about his attitudes--especially to the point that the "party influenced him more than his own emotions". I tend to believe that his attitudes were his own. He used those attitudes to foster more animus, intolerance and ill-will toward blacks through shaping policies and setting the national mindset of how to treat people of color as a whole.

It can't be scape-goated into what "the party does". Wilson, as President, is the de-facto head of that party. Now if he acts like a sycophant and not stand on his own morality to shape a different way of treating those who were not like him, I'd say he was a poor leader.

That means his failure to persuade others and only follow the mindset of hate that would shape the party really until the Johnson Administration (when legislation really began to pass to make up the "Great Society), only demonstrates how ineffectual and weak he truly was.

So, we'll have to agree to disagree here.

[political_Dem]

31. Double Post. Sorry.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

16. Barack Obama will be Barack Obama.

For one to be truly great and reach his or her highest potential, they don't need to be compared to others. Hopefully, Obama's name will one day be synomonous with greatness as the others have been.

[mr poe]

18. Exactly!

I don't understand the constant need to compare things happening today (this entire election especially) to the past. How about looking forward to the future? Obama may just be something new!

[jacksonian]

19. because seeing history as a movie rather than a photograph

helps you anticipate how it's going to come out.

[mythyc]

21. good analogy. very good analogy--comparison doesn't have to devalue or denigrate

:dem:

[mmonk]

37. Leave off Wilson por favor.