Why woodrow wilson was a good president

For such historians, Wilson's action, when seen in the context of the Palmer Raids and his heavy-handed treatment of socialists at home, was a principal cause of the Cold War. When legacy is defined as influence on the nation and future politics, Wilson ranks behind only Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Jefferson in importance. Richard Nixon recognized the power of Wilson's legacy when he returned Wilson's desk to the Oval Office in Nixon saw himself as the president who would establish a new, Wilsonian world order of stability and collective security to replace the Cold War confrontations of the s and s.

The question of whether collective international action, such as Wilson advocated, or unilateral American policy will be most conducive to the creation of the sort of world Americans want or the rest of the world for that matter is the basic foreign policy issue of the early twenty-first century, as it was one hundred years ago.

Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Help inform the discussion Support the Miller Center. Though his efforts won him a Nobel Peace Prize, his dogged pursuit of an idealistic moral vision was not universally popular and was thwarted by Congress.

After suffering a debilitating stroke in , Wilson relied heavily on his wife, Edith, to help run the White House for the remainder of his term. Era Related to this President. The Emergence of Modern America Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him Presidential timber.

First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform, which he pursued as governor. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote. Wilson maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax.

The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices. Another burst of legislation followed in One new law prohibited child labor; another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day.

But after the election Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the World War. On April 2,, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. Massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. After the Germans signed the Armistice in November , Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace.