Speaker 1: It's seven oh six here at fifty five car CD
Speaker 1: talk station. Happy Monday to you Christopher Smith and coming
Speaker 1: up in the next segment to the Smith Event. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, please welcome to the fifty five Carcy Morning
Speaker 1: show Man. He's gonna be doing it Empower You seminar
Speaker 1: tomorrow evening seven pm. Empower You America dot org. It's
Speaker 1: virtual only. All you need to do is go empower
Speaker 1: you America dot org and just register and log in
Speaker 1: at seven pm. Christopher Burkett. He's Associate Professor of Political
Speaker 1: Science and director of Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University,
Speaker 1: where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on American political thought,
Speaker 1: including the American Founding and the Progressive Era. Author of
Speaker 1: numerous articles in his area of expertise, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 1: It is a pleasure to have you on. Christopher Burkcat.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Brian, Thank you glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Pleasure and pleasure talking about Woodrow Wilson, probably one of
Speaker 1: the least liked presidents among my listening audience. We have
Speaker 1: him to thank for the income the income tax, don't
Speaker 1: we we.
Speaker 3: Do, among a number of other things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So now my understanding is that part of Woodrow Wilson.
Speaker 1: The presidency really wasn't yet I don't want to say
Speaker 1: that powerful, but an equal, coequal branch of government. It
Speaker 1: wasn't sort of like the imperial presidency that we seem
Speaker 1: to that that he created and and and used and
Speaker 1: used the authority they office the president to accomplish a lot.
Speaker 1: Was very activist along those lines. In what ways did
Speaker 1: Wilson transform the nature of the office that had real
Speaker 1: long lasting implications.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he of course, Sorry, the Spanish American War
Speaker 2: had a big impact on increasing the president's powers with
Speaker 2: regard to foreign policy, But it was really Wilson who
Speaker 2: who came up with a sort of blueprint or a
Speaker 2: vision for what the president should be domestically in terms
Speaker 2: of taking the lead and formulating policy sees and pushing laws,
Speaker 2: pushing Congress to pass reform laws. And the unique thing
Speaker 2: about Wilson, long before he was president, he was a
Speaker 2: college professor, as you know, and he had been writing
Speaker 2: about what he thought presidential leadership should be like for
Speaker 2: about thirty years before he ever became involved in politics.
Speaker 2: So as an undergraduate student, a graduate student, and then
Speaker 2: a college professor and president at Princeton, he was really
Speaker 2: laying out a kind of blueprint for what he thought
Speaker 2: presidential leadership should look like. And then, of course he's
Speaker 2: elected the office, and so he shaped the idea of
Speaker 2: the powers of the president both from a kind of
Speaker 2: academic and theoretical standpoint, and then had a chance for
Speaker 2: two terms to try to put those ideas into practice.
Speaker 2: So really a unique figure in that sense.
Speaker 1: Well, he was an academic, as you know, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't he, if I can boil it down in a
Speaker 1: simple terms, wasn't he pretty much full of himself in
Speaker 1: the sense that he thought x everts in government knew
Speaker 1: better than what the day to day folks living their
Speaker 1: lives knew by way of you know, making decisions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he always claimed that, look, democracy is inevitable. We're
Speaker 2: going to have democracy in this country. But what you
Speaker 2: really need to make democracy work is really strong executive leadership, because,
Speaker 2: as he famously wrote, in democracies, and especially in American democracy,
Speaker 2: the people are what he called rigidly unphilosophical, which was
Speaker 2: this sort of nice way of saying people just aren't capable.
Speaker 2: The people aren't capable of governing themselves.
Speaker 1: Well, I just I have a profound disdain for people
Speaker 1: who have that mindset, my friend, I really do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well a lot of people do. And you mentioned
Speaker 2: he was described him a sort of full of himself.
Speaker 2: A lot of people may not know this, but Simund
Speaker 2: Freud did a psychoanalysis of Wilson after he passed away
Speaker 2: and found that he was one of the most extreme
Speaker 2: cases of messianic complex.
Speaker 3: So yeah, he was.
Speaker 2: He was absolutely confident in his that he was He
Speaker 2: had this vision of where the United States should go,
Speaker 2: of what our constitutional government should look like, and he
Speaker 2: was unshakable in his faith that he could reform transform
Speaker 2: American politics into this this great vision of of democracy
Speaker 2: as he understood democracy.
Speaker 1: So well, he's also a racist too, I understand he was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he uh infamously resegregated Washington, d C. In
Speaker 2: terms of you know, people working for the civil service
Speaker 2: and bureaus and things. And his argument was, uh, we're
Speaker 2: just not We're just not there yet, sort of historically
Speaker 2: we were not ready. We're getting ahead of ourselves. Someday
Speaker 2: maybe we can have you know, perfect desegregation, and but
Speaker 2: not yet. So yeah, he was, yeah, not a not
Speaker 2: a very popular move today.
Speaker 1: On Wilson's part, No, I understand a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of people were really thrilled with his view of women either.
Speaker 1: I guess he would have been one of those guys
Speaker 1: that would have denied women the right to drive since
Speaker 1: he didn't want them to have the right to vote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was very He was a luke warm is
Speaker 2: a generous term to describe his his sort of agreement
Speaker 2: to let the amendment go forward right in it amendment,
Speaker 2: But yeah, he was. He was not a very strong
Speaker 2: supporter of that, for the same reasons that he was
Speaker 2: in favor of segregation. He argued that women just weren't
Speaker 2: ready yet to exercise political equality. We're just not there yet.
Speaker 2: So someday maybe, but not in his not under his watch.
Speaker 1: So well, I guess. Also interesting from his his foreign
Speaker 1: policy standpoint was a little different than and transformative. I know,
Speaker 1: he was responsible in large part for the creation of
Speaker 1: the League of Nation that was a failed exercise.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when Wilson, you know, Wilson ran for reelection in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixteen, and he ran on this platform of neutrality, right,
Speaker 2: we weren't going to get involved in World War One,
Speaker 2: And then a year later, he flip flops and said, oh,
Speaker 2: now we've got to get involved. And I think the
Speaker 2: reason he did that was because he saw an opportunity
Speaker 2: if the United States were to get involved in the war,
Speaker 2: that would give him a footing in the peace talks. Eventually,
Speaker 2: that would allow him to push for the creation of
Speaker 2: the League of Nations. And so when Wilson went over
Speaker 2: to Paris for the peace talks during the Armistice at
Speaker 2: the end of World War One, he was pushing to
Speaker 2: get the League of Nations created. He made a big mistake,
Speaker 2: which is sort of ironic, given him all the things
Speaker 2: he had written about what good presidential leadership looks like.
Speaker 2: He didn't take a single senator with him to the
Speaker 2: peace talks, and he didn't take a single Republican. Republicans
Speaker 2: had won the Senate back in the nineteen eighteen election,
Speaker 2: and he knew full well the Senate would have to
Speaker 2: ratify the League of Nations, but he was so calm
Speaker 2: in his ability to just sort of push things through.
Speaker 2: He neglected to do the sort of ordinary political legwork
Speaker 2: and it failed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Reject going back to Freud's conclusions, Well, yeah, in addition
Speaker 1: to being responsible for the income tax. He also is
Speaker 1: responsible for the creation of the Federal Reserve as well.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yes, Federal Reserve. And he pointed, pointed Louis
Speaker 2: brandeis Louis Rights as the first chair of the Federal
Speaker 2: Reserve who went on to be a Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 1: So you know, all this got past what was his motivation?
Speaker 1: I mean, in terms of breaking it down, why was
Speaker 1: he in favor of creating the Federal Reserve and the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve Act in the first instance.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't want to get too abstract and philosophical,
Speaker 2: but Wilson had Wilson had studied in college under professors
Speaker 2: who had in turn studied and gotten their PhDs from
Speaker 2: German University, and so they brought back in the eighteen
Speaker 2: seventies eighteen eighties allowed these German Prussian mode of regulating
Speaker 2: the economies through pretty strong, you know, powers of the state.
Speaker 2: And Wilson, I think drank that wine pretty deeply, so
Speaker 2: to speak, in college. And so the idea of an
Speaker 2: unregulated economy was ironically sort of foreign to Wilson, I mean,
Speaker 2: just made sense that you had to get to regulate
Speaker 2: these things. But he thought that the Federal Reserve would
Speaker 2: be a good substitute for a national bank in terms
Speaker 2: of regulating inflation and dealing with either low prices or
Speaker 2: overinflated prices for industrial goods. So yeah, Reagan, I'm sorry, Wilson.
Speaker 2: Is a is all about government regulation of just about
Speaker 2: every avergect of the economy.
Speaker 1: Well, and you got that from the Germans. The only
Speaker 1: job to have in those days was a government job, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, every day was part of the government. If
Speaker 1: you didn't have a government position, then I guess society
Speaker 1: sort of looked.
Speaker 3: Down on you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Yeah, it it became a sort of manner,
Speaker 2: a matter of honor. Yeah, oddly enough, again because the Prussians,
Speaker 2: the Germans, especially the Prussians at that time, were an
Speaker 2: honor society. And since you could no longer earn that
Speaker 2: honor through sword fighting, I guess you had to do
Speaker 2: it by getting a job of the state and the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: So yes, we all know that happened as a consequence
Speaker 1: of the Prussian bureaucracy collapsed on itself. Anyhow, it's been
Speaker 1: an interesting little tidbit taste what we're going to get
Speaker 1: tomorrow night at seven pm. Empower Youamerica, Dot or where
Speaker 1: Christopher Burkeatt's going to break down more about the what
Speaker 1: I would argue failed presidency of Woodrow Wilson. I understand
Speaker 1: his wife, like Jill Biden, took over the affairs after
Speaker 1: he had a stroke. This was before the twenty fifth Amendment.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. Yeah, he had a stroke.
Speaker 2: And then despite the fact that his wife was basically
Speaker 2: taking over his affairs, he pushed really hard to get
Speaker 2: to be a reelected for a third term, but the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party rejected him.
Speaker 1: So, like Joe Biden, there's some parallels to be drawn.
Speaker 3: There a lot of parallels. Christopher.
Speaker 1: It's been great having you on the program this morning,
Speaker 1: and enjoy the seminar tomorrow night, and I'll encourage my
Speaker 1: listeners to again log in virtually. It's so easy to do,
Speaker 1: and it's so easy to register and empower you America
Speaker 1: dot org. Take care, Chris, great having any show this morning.
Speaker 3: Thanks, Brian, It's gonna be fine. Take care my pleasure. Folks.
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