1 00:00:16,399 --> 00:00:19,399 Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist 2 00:00:19,480 --> 00:00:22,760 Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the 3 00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:27,559 Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge. 4 00:00:27,960 --> 00:00:30,600 As always, you can email the show at radio at 5 00:00:30,640 --> 00:00:35,079 the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at fbr LST, 6 00:00:35,759 --> 00:00:38,679 make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and 7 00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:42,840 of course to the premium version of our website as well. 8 00:00:43,359 --> 00:00:48,119 Our guest today is former Republican Congressman and SEC Chairman 9 00:00:48,520 --> 00:00:53,719 Christopher Cox, author of the book Woodrow Wilson The Light Withdrawn. 10 00:00:54,439 --> 00:00:58,399 It is a compelling look at the darker instincts and 11 00:00:58,479 --> 00:01:02,719 beliefs of the twenty eighth president, a man in many ways, 12 00:01:03,439 --> 00:01:09,280 mister Cox may argue was superbly unsuited to the moment. 13 00:01:10,599 --> 00:01:12,280 Welcome to the Federalist. 14 00:01:11,959 --> 00:01:14,280 Speaker 2: Radio Hours, Sir, it's a pleasure to talk to you. Well, 15 00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:16,599 it's a pleasure to join you. Yeah. 16 00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:20,599 Speaker 1: This is a very interesting book in very interesting times. 17 00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:23,560 I think it's good to look back more than one 18 00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:28,680 hundred years at where this in a lot of ways, 19 00:01:28,959 --> 00:01:31,280 and we'll get into some other issues, but where this 20 00:01:31,439 --> 00:01:36,159 government is today in large part because of Woodrow Wilson, 21 00:01:36,359 --> 00:01:39,959 who was a big government president, was he not? 22 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:46,760 Speaker 2: Yes. I would say that our world today is influenced 23 00:01:46,879 --> 00:01:51,120 by Woodrow Wilson in many ways, not just governmentally, but 24 00:01:51,480 --> 00:01:55,159 societally and socially. One of the things that the book, 25 00:01:55,159 --> 00:02:02,200 of course, is centrally focused on, is the dramatic ending, 26 00:02:02,599 --> 00:02:08,319 successful ending to the seventy plus year struggle for women 27 00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:13,199 getting the vote. Woodrow Wilson stood a thwart that for 28 00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:17,520 his entire career until the bitter end. He was opposed 29 00:02:17,560 --> 00:02:20,000 to the Susan b Anthony then because of his views 30 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:22,840 on race. He did not want black women to vote, 31 00:02:23,560 --> 00:02:28,800 and the kinds of steps that he took using government power, 32 00:02:29,599 --> 00:02:34,639 for example, to segregate the federal workforce, had very long 33 00:02:34,719 --> 00:02:37,759 running consequences. That was something that was brand new after 34 00:02:38,479 --> 00:02:43,800 fifty years of integrated federal workforce that we introduced. Now 35 00:02:44,400 --> 00:02:50,080 these malignant policies, and you know, we're still dealing obviously 36 00:02:50,120 --> 00:02:54,960 with conflict because of racial discrimination and so on in 37 00:02:54,960 --> 00:03:02,759 our society. So Woodrow Wilson is influencial in ways that 38 00:03:02,919 --> 00:03:05,759 go well beyond you know, for example, the construction of 39 00:03:05,759 --> 00:03:06,840 the administrative state. 40 00:03:07,240 --> 00:03:11,039 Speaker 1: Indeed, Thomas would Row Wilson, of course, And that's a 41 00:03:11,159 --> 00:03:14,280 question I guess I'd like to get off right off 42 00:03:14,639 --> 00:03:19,120 the top. Why would Row? Why not Thomas Wilson. 43 00:03:20,080 --> 00:03:25,599 Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting, he adopted what had been a family surname 44 00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:29,800 and was his middle name as his first name right 45 00:03:29,840 --> 00:03:35,680 about the time that he was seriously entering into what 46 00:03:35,719 --> 00:03:39,039 he thought would be a political career, and he believed 47 00:03:39,080 --> 00:03:44,000 that Woodrow sounded more serious, sounded more dignified. He had 48 00:03:44,039 --> 00:03:47,680 been known not as Thomas but as Tommy for his 49 00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:51,280 entire life up to that point, including through college, and 50 00:03:51,319 --> 00:03:57,360 so it was his step into serious adult maturity, I think. 51 00:03:58,400 --> 00:04:02,039 Speaker 1: Well, as for as Wisconsin native, I can tell you 52 00:04:02,080 --> 00:04:05,800 there's nothing wrong with Tommy, given the success of Tommy Thompson. 53 00:04:06,319 --> 00:04:08,879 But those were different times, of course as well. And 54 00:04:09,599 --> 00:04:14,560 Woodrow Wilson began his political career kind of as a 55 00:04:14,719 --> 00:04:18,519 late bloomer. I mean, he was in academia for a 56 00:04:18,560 --> 00:04:22,759 long time. Obviously, at one point the president of Princeton 57 00:04:22,879 --> 00:04:27,000 who then made I don't know it was a somewhat 58 00:04:27,040 --> 00:04:30,519 surprising run for New Jersey governor. But to the point 59 00:04:30,639 --> 00:04:33,759 of your book, to the core of your book, he 60 00:04:33,879 --> 00:04:39,240 was the first Democrat elected since the Civil War first 61 00:04:39,319 --> 00:04:43,360 Southern I should not say Democrats, first Southern Democrat elected 62 00:04:44,199 --> 00:04:49,720 since the Civil War. How much did his Southern upbringing 63 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:58,319 post ante Bellum inform the kinds of his beliefs and 64 00:04:58,360 --> 00:05:01,759 the kinds of policies that he would bring to his presidency. 65 00:05:02,079 --> 00:05:05,360 Speaker 2: Yeah, you've started off with a very important question in 66 00:05:05,519 --> 00:05:11,519 understanding Woodrow Wilson, because Wilson's Southern Democratic background was the 67 00:05:11,560 --> 00:05:15,199 most profounded and during influence on his entire life's work. 68 00:05:15,920 --> 00:05:18,720 And that's true, I'd say, both as an academic and 69 00:05:18,839 --> 00:05:22,360 as a politician. You know, it's interesting when people think 70 00:05:22,759 --> 00:05:26,959 of Woodrow Wilson, they often recall, at least I do, 71 00:05:27,199 --> 00:05:32,160 from high school and history, American history, political cartoons of 72 00:05:32,160 --> 00:05:35,240 that day that featured Wilson as a schoolmaster, And we 73 00:05:35,399 --> 00:05:39,639 naturally remember him as president of Princeton University and briefly 74 00:05:39,959 --> 00:05:42,720 governor of New Jersey, as you've just alluded to, in 75 00:05:42,759 --> 00:05:46,959 other words, a man from the northeast. But Wilson was 76 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:50,040 in fact a Southerner through and through. He was born 77 00:05:50,040 --> 00:05:53,680 in Virginia, he soon moved his family moved to Georgia, 78 00:05:54,199 --> 00:05:56,879 where he lived until he was a teenager. He and 79 00:05:56,920 --> 00:05:59,839 his family then moved to South Carolina and four years 80 00:05:59,879 --> 00:06:04,360 after that to North Carolina. He started college in South 81 00:06:04,399 --> 00:06:08,600 Carolina at Davidson before he moved north to the College 82 00:06:08,600 --> 00:06:12,519 of New Jersey. But even then he returned to his 83 00:06:12,560 --> 00:06:16,279 family home in the South for the academic summers. When 84 00:06:16,319 --> 00:06:20,199 he graduated from college, he made a brief but very 85 00:06:20,279 --> 00:06:23,680 unsuccessful attempt at law school, and that was also in 86 00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:26,839 the South, at the University of Virginia. After that he 87 00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:30,240 moved back to Georgia, where he met his future wife. 88 00:06:30,279 --> 00:06:35,720 So even when eventually he started graduate school at Johns 89 00:06:35,720 --> 00:06:39,160 Hopkins in Baltimore, that was just south of the Mason 90 00:06:39,199 --> 00:06:45,279 Dixon line. So here he is a man in his 91 00:06:45,399 --> 00:06:48,600 late twenties and by the way, moving back home with 92 00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:51,680 his parents in North Carolina whenever there was an academic break. 93 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:55,040 So it really wasn't until he got his first paying 94 00:06:55,160 --> 00:06:58,000 job when he was twenty eight years old, as a 95 00:06:58,040 --> 00:07:02,639 teacher at Brnmar College outside of Philadelphia, that he actually 96 00:07:02,680 --> 00:07:04,439 moved his domicile to the North. 97 00:07:06,680 --> 00:07:12,639 Speaker 1: It's interesting because you know, this is a Southern gentleman. 98 00:07:12,759 --> 00:07:16,759 I believe he grew up with a very religious background, 99 00:07:16,839 --> 00:07:22,480 you know, faith based family father who worked in the 100 00:07:22,519 --> 00:07:27,240 trade if you will. And you know, and again very 101 00:07:27,319 --> 00:07:31,759 much shaped by Southern ideas, Southern values at the time. 102 00:07:31,879 --> 00:07:36,839 And let's be honest and contextual here. He was a 103 00:07:36,879 --> 00:07:41,120 person of his times, like so many others. And you know, 104 00:07:41,160 --> 00:07:44,879 we have seen over the last few decades in this country, 105 00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:48,720 in particular, you know, a complete vilification of people who 106 00:07:49,240 --> 00:07:52,720 had a mindset that obviously is much different than our 107 00:07:52,800 --> 00:07:57,000 day and age and society. But Woodrow Wilson took those 108 00:07:57,079 --> 00:08:03,839 notions of racism and true white supremacy to the nth degree, 109 00:08:04,199 --> 00:08:04,720 did he not. 110 00:08:05,839 --> 00:08:09,920 Speaker 2: He was more than a man of his time. And 111 00:08:09,959 --> 00:08:13,360 I think you're right to use that terminology because we 112 00:08:13,439 --> 00:08:19,800 do have to discard presentism when we are looking back 113 00:08:19,879 --> 00:08:22,360 more than a century. We don't want to judge people 114 00:08:22,399 --> 00:08:25,319 by the norms and the morays and the experiences we've 115 00:08:25,319 --> 00:08:28,480 had in our own time, but rather view them in 116 00:08:28,519 --> 00:08:33,519 their own context. And so in this book, what you 117 00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:39,080 will find is Woodrow Wilson compared to his peers, judged 118 00:08:39,120 --> 00:08:44,639 by his peers, some obviously completely supportive of what he 119 00:08:44,759 --> 00:08:49,360 was doing, others highly critical. There was great debate about 120 00:08:49,360 --> 00:08:52,399 these issues in his time, and he was really in 121 00:08:52,480 --> 00:08:59,720 the vanguard in terms of national politics of reimposing very 122 00:08:59,799 --> 00:09:03,639 race views on the federal government. His upbringing in the 123 00:09:03,679 --> 00:09:10,000 South coincided precisely with the Civil War and the years 124 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:13,919 of reconstruction that followed. His family were very much on 125 00:09:13,960 --> 00:09:18,360 the Confederate side. His father was a Presbyterian minister who 126 00:09:18,399 --> 00:09:22,639 preached to his segregated congregation that slavery was part of 127 00:09:22,679 --> 00:09:26,759 God's plan and that benefited black men and women and children. 128 00:09:27,559 --> 00:09:31,320 Slavery was something everyone should cherish, because he said it 129 00:09:31,519 --> 00:09:37,360 enriched the superior race of the Wilson family were waited 130 00:09:37,480 --> 00:09:41,360 upon by enslaved black servants. So Woodrow Wilson is the 131 00:09:41,440 --> 00:09:45,039 last American president to have grown up with enslaved people 132 00:09:45,080 --> 00:09:48,960 in his own household. In the run up to the 133 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:53,759 Civil War, his father broke with the Presbyterian Church because 134 00:09:53,840 --> 00:09:57,120 it had condemned slavery as a sin, and he was 135 00:09:57,159 --> 00:10:00,759 a leader in the breakaway Presbyterian Church, which they called 136 00:10:01,159 --> 00:10:04,480 the Presbyterian Church and the Confederate States of America, and 137 00:10:04,559 --> 00:10:09,000 that new Church Holy embraced slavery. When the war came, 138 00:10:09,960 --> 00:10:12,559 Wilson's father was a military chaplain with the rank of 139 00:10:12,559 --> 00:10:16,039 officer in the Confederate Army, volunteered in a Confederate Home 140 00:10:16,080 --> 00:10:20,279 defense unit, the Silver Grays. He turned the church into 141 00:10:20,320 --> 00:10:23,879 a hospital for Confederate soldiers, built a stockade around the churchyard, 142 00:10:23,919 --> 00:10:29,360 and that became a pow prison yard for Union soldiers. 143 00:10:30,480 --> 00:10:34,240 So fast forward through all of these years to the 144 00:10:34,320 --> 00:10:39,159 years of Reconstruction and the Republican Congresses in the North 145 00:10:39,240 --> 00:10:45,279 imposing military rule on the South and allowing black men 146 00:10:45,399 --> 00:10:49,159 to vote. You know, Wilson grew up in South Carolina 147 00:10:49,240 --> 00:10:54,279 with black leaders in the state legislature and so on, 148 00:10:54,840 --> 00:10:58,039 and he was horrified by all of this. So he 149 00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:04,960 was mayorated, as it were, in this culture of revulsion 150 00:11:05,519 --> 00:11:10,360 against domineering Republican Congress that had waged war against the 151 00:11:10,399 --> 00:11:17,759 South and then forced black voters on the white male 152 00:11:17,879 --> 00:11:23,080 leaders of the South. He kept these views until really 153 00:11:23,159 --> 00:11:26,399 until his death. He wrote about these things in this 154 00:11:26,519 --> 00:11:30,720 way while he was an academic at Princeton all the 155 00:11:30,759 --> 00:11:34,159 way through his presidency, and he took these views with 156 00:11:34,279 --> 00:11:37,879 him to the White House. And that I think is 157 00:11:38,399 --> 00:11:43,159 really important understanding Woodrow Wilson that he was a Democrat 158 00:11:43,200 --> 00:11:45,200 first and foremost because of race. 159 00:11:46,399 --> 00:11:48,360 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting and I want to get to that 160 00:11:49,440 --> 00:11:54,080 political mark as well. In modern day times. Because it's 161 00:11:54,120 --> 00:11:57,240 interesting and we'll get to this in a moment, but 162 00:11:57,279 --> 00:12:02,519 it's interesting that demic rats don't like to talk much 163 00:12:02,559 --> 00:12:07,440 about Woodrow Wilson these days for some reason. I think 164 00:12:07,519 --> 00:12:10,879 the reasons are clear you just laid out. Was he 165 00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:18,679 not also a proponent of the shameful and disdainful eugenics 166 00:12:18,720 --> 00:12:25,200 concepts of that time among certain populations of scientists so 167 00:12:25,279 --> 00:12:27,799 called Well, Wilson. 168 00:12:27,519 --> 00:12:34,279 Speaker 2: Was chiefly a proponent of what today we view very 169 00:12:34,279 --> 00:12:40,240 dimly as scientific racism. He wrote a book called The State, 170 00:12:41,519 --> 00:12:43,799 which was a survey of the world's governments. It was 171 00:12:43,840 --> 00:12:47,759 meant to be a college textbook, and in it he 172 00:12:47,879 --> 00:12:52,080 begins by classifying all the world's governments according to race, 173 00:12:52,639 --> 00:12:55,919 and he places at the top of his racial hierarchy 174 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:00,440 the Aryans. The Arians were superior in every respect. Below 175 00:13:00,519 --> 00:13:04,600 them came the Semitic peoples. Below them came the savages 176 00:13:04,679 --> 00:13:08,720 that we don't need to study. And he included Asians 177 00:13:08,759 --> 00:13:14,279 in this bucket. Wow, And the governments are not worthy 178 00:13:14,279 --> 00:13:17,480 of study. It's the Arians who are strong and masterful 179 00:13:17,519 --> 00:13:19,879 and superior, and they're the ones we should. 180 00:13:19,559 --> 00:13:22,720 Speaker 1: Study, sir. That I hate to interrupt you with that 181 00:13:22,720 --> 00:13:29,080 that sounds very familiar to what this world unfortunately experienced 182 00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:33,679 a few decades after Woodrow Wilson was in political power. 183 00:13:34,759 --> 00:13:38,799 Speaker 2: There's no question that there's a direct lineage of this 184 00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:45,080 European based scientific racism, if you will. It was something 185 00:13:45,120 --> 00:13:49,600 that was very popular in European universities, including or perhaps 186 00:13:49,720 --> 00:13:54,639 especially in German universities where Woodrow Wilson's professors at Johns 187 00:13:54,639 --> 00:13:58,519 Hopkins were trained. And of course we know how this 188 00:13:58,679 --> 00:14:02,960 metastasized within Germany itself within the space of a few decades. 189 00:14:04,120 --> 00:14:07,279 But to your point about eugenics, if you pick up 190 00:14:07,440 --> 00:14:09,759 min kof which is always a scary thing to do, 191 00:14:11,559 --> 00:14:16,039 and read what Adolf Hitler wrote before his rise to power. 192 00:14:17,039 --> 00:14:20,480 Much of what he talked about, besides, you know, the 193 00:14:22,759 --> 00:14:25,519 main point, which is that the Jewish people were responsible 194 00:14:25,559 --> 00:14:30,559 for so many bad things, was a eugenics solution to 195 00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:35,879 these things. People who were less fit needed to be 196 00:14:35,960 --> 00:14:44,240 dealt with in fairly extreme ways. Eugenicism of eugenics was 197 00:14:44,320 --> 00:14:49,679 something that started out as what everyone thought was benign. 198 00:14:50,639 --> 00:14:54,799 It was very popular, particularly among academic elites. The presidents 199 00:14:54,840 --> 00:14:59,840 of major universities throughout the Northeast all seemed to get 200 00:14:59,879 --> 00:15:05,960 in involved with eugenics. We have Oliver Wendell Holmes, of course, 201 00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:10,799 who notoriously endorsed the concept as a Supreme Court justice, 202 00:15:11,159 --> 00:15:14,639 and incidentally, two of the justices who voted with him 203 00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:19,799 in that notorious case in which he said three generations 204 00:15:19,799 --> 00:15:27,879 of imbeciles is enough and supported forced sterilization the tools 205 00:15:27,919 --> 00:15:31,480 of eugenics. Of two of the justices who voted for 206 00:15:31,519 --> 00:15:33,639 that were appointed by Woodrow Wilson. One of them. 207 00:15:34,679 --> 00:15:43,440 Speaker 1: Brandeis amazing and again a marker of the times, fortunately 208 00:15:44,559 --> 00:15:47,840 in so many cases. But it is interesting to me 209 00:15:48,159 --> 00:15:52,879 to note that he was a Democrat in the middle 210 00:15:52,960 --> 00:15:57,360 of the progressive movement led by a lot of Republicans 211 00:15:57,440 --> 00:16:01,440 at that time. I think of Lafollic from Wisconsin. Of 212 00:16:01,480 --> 00:16:07,240 course immediately comes to mind, Well Roosevelt, Yeah, sure, sure, 213 00:16:07,399 --> 00:16:12,480 so it was quite an island there. So how did 214 00:16:12,519 --> 00:16:20,159 Woodrow Wilson, this uh one term New Jersey governor Princeton elite, 215 00:16:20,919 --> 00:16:27,120 rise to the station of candidate for president, Democrat candidate 216 00:16:27,200 --> 00:16:31,360 for president and then ultimately President of the United States 217 00:16:31,480 --> 00:16:35,399 in the progressive movement time period in America. 218 00:16:37,799 --> 00:16:42,480 Speaker 2: He had some interesting contacts that he had made and 219 00:16:42,639 --> 00:16:46,840 nurtured throughout his years at the College of New Jersey, 220 00:16:46,879 --> 00:16:50,279 which later became Princeton University, of which eventually he was 221 00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:57,000 the president. He wrote some books that were commercially very successful. 222 00:16:57,360 --> 00:16:59,720 They weren't great works of scholarship, but they made him 223 00:16:59,759 --> 00:17:04,440 a lot of money through royalties. And his publisher at 224 00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:09,240 Harper and Brothers, George Harvey, who went by the honorific 225 00:17:09,319 --> 00:17:14,359 Colonel George Harvey, was very fond of this university president 226 00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:19,680 and decided that he should be a man in politics, 227 00:17:20,279 --> 00:17:23,920 perhaps senator from New Jersey, perhaps even president, and he 228 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:29,519 started promoting Woodrow Wilson as a potential president or as 229 00:17:30,480 --> 00:17:35,960 the ideal president, even before Wilson made any move himself 230 00:17:36,559 --> 00:17:41,160 to go into politics. It gathered a lot of attention 231 00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:46,319 and put Wilson on the map, so that when eventually 232 00:17:47,200 --> 00:17:51,079 he made the leap from academia to politics, something that 233 00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:53,759 he had always wanted to do. As I said earlier, 234 00:17:53,920 --> 00:17:57,480 when he was first getting out of college, he decided 235 00:17:57,559 --> 00:18:00,440 he wanted to be a US senator. The time, he 236 00:18:00,480 --> 00:18:03,839 thought he'd be a senator from Virginia. But this is 237 00:18:03,880 --> 00:18:06,400 a man who always wanted to be an elected Politics 238 00:18:07,359 --> 00:18:10,559 was his career, ultimate career ambition. So when Things got 239 00:18:10,640 --> 00:18:13,200 tough for him at Princeton when he got in a 240 00:18:13,359 --> 00:18:16,759 very serious contest with the Board of Trustees and lost 241 00:18:17,839 --> 00:18:24,200 vote of confidence, effectively from the board. He got out 242 00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:26,079 of dodge, you know, one step ahead of the sheriff, 243 00:18:26,480 --> 00:18:31,079 made the leap into politics. His friend George Harvey had 244 00:18:31,200 --> 00:18:35,200 arranged with the New Jersey Democratic bosses to get him 245 00:18:35,200 --> 00:18:40,079 the nomination, and at a convention in Trenton, where nobody 246 00:18:40,160 --> 00:18:44,759 had met the man, he became the nominee for governor. 247 00:18:44,759 --> 00:18:47,720 And this came after a string of Republican victories. The 248 00:18:47,720 --> 00:18:51,319 Democrats were quite desperate. The progressive movement was peaking at 249 00:18:51,359 --> 00:18:54,519 the time, and part of progressivism was to clean up 250 00:18:54,559 --> 00:18:57,759 the corruption in politics. So here was a man all 251 00:18:57,759 --> 00:19:00,960 the other Democrats that they had at hand, who had 252 00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:04,799 no record, and that meant also that he was never 253 00:19:04,839 --> 00:19:08,480 involved in political deals and was free of corruption. As 254 00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:12,000 he entered politics, he could also adopt as his platform. 255 00:19:12,039 --> 00:19:17,720 In that year of nineteen ten, the issues to azure 256 00:19:17,839 --> 00:19:21,839 he could become the perfect candidate that was riding the 257 00:19:21,920 --> 00:19:25,480 crust of this wave, and it required Wilson to drop 258 00:19:25,920 --> 00:19:29,000 several of the views that he'd held because he was 259 00:19:29,079 --> 00:19:33,200 not a classic progressive. When he entered politics, he critical 260 00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:36,559 of labor unions, critical of the initiative and the referendum 261 00:19:36,599 --> 00:19:40,440 and so on. And while those were issues in his campaign, 262 00:19:40,440 --> 00:19:43,799 he overcame them. It turned out nineteen ten was a 263 00:19:43,839 --> 00:19:47,319 Democratic year nationwide in New Jersey as well. And timing 264 00:19:47,400 --> 00:19:51,000 is everything, and so here he is. He's now governor 265 00:19:51,039 --> 00:19:53,720 of New Jersey, and George Harvey's pressing him for President 266 00:19:53,720 --> 00:19:57,799 of the United States. And you know, that's another tale 267 00:19:57,839 --> 00:20:01,599 that hangs there. But he ends up getting the Democratic nomination. 268 00:20:01,680 --> 00:20:05,400 And then how fortunate to have as his two opponents 269 00:20:05,400 --> 00:20:10,519 for president you not one, but two Republican presidents, feat 270 00:20:10,599 --> 00:20:14,319 Or Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Roosevelt of course, bolted 271 00:20:14,319 --> 00:20:17,200 the Republican Convention after losing the Taft started the Bull 272 00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:20,960 Moose Party. And so the Republicans end up in nineteen 273 00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:26,319 twelve getting a majority of the popular vote combined the 274 00:20:26,359 --> 00:20:29,880 two of them, and Wilson skates into the White House 275 00:20:29,920 --> 00:20:31,279 with forty two percent of the vote. 276 00:20:31,680 --> 00:20:35,720 Speaker 1: Yeah, you would think that would be a daunting list 277 00:20:35,759 --> 00:20:39,400 of opponents, and it was, but it worked in Wilson's favor. 278 00:20:39,480 --> 00:20:44,039 Of course. How remarkable past really is prologue, because you're 279 00:20:44,079 --> 00:20:47,359 talking about what was going on at the time, not 280 00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:50,599 just in New Jersey but elsewhere. You know, the bosses 281 00:20:50,680 --> 00:20:53,000 would meet and they would decide who the candidate was 282 00:20:53,039 --> 00:20:56,880 going to be. It was about as an anti or 283 00:20:57,200 --> 00:21:01,119 about as anti Democratic as you can possibly imagine. And 284 00:21:01,200 --> 00:21:04,559 of course, fast forward one hundred plus years and we 285 00:21:04,599 --> 00:21:07,079 have the same thing basically going on in the Democrat 286 00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:11,400 Party following Joe Biden's decision to step down. And remarkable, 287 00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:14,880 isn't it how things the more things change, the more 288 00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:15,640 they stay the same. 289 00:21:16,119 --> 00:21:21,319 Speaker 2: We can always learn from reading our American history. When 290 00:21:21,319 --> 00:21:24,119 I worked in the White House in the Reagan administration, 291 00:21:25,079 --> 00:21:28,799 occasionally issues would come up that would seem to be novel, 292 00:21:29,519 --> 00:21:32,920 and then I'd realized I worked for an organization that 293 00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:37,000 was two centuries plus old, and I could go into 294 00:21:37,039 --> 00:21:40,519 the White House library and look up, you know, when 295 00:21:40,640 --> 00:21:43,680 something like this happened before, and find an approach to 296 00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:46,480 deal with it. So truly, nothing new under the sun. 297 00:21:46,799 --> 00:21:49,519 And that's especially true when it comes to politics, because 298 00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:54,720 you know, politics is not manufacturing. Don't make anything, it's 299 00:21:54,839 --> 00:22:00,160 just human interaction, and ultimately, human beings have some very 300 00:22:00,200 --> 00:22:03,480 predictable traits and there are different kinds of personalities, but 301 00:22:03,559 --> 00:22:06,400 only so many. And when you mix and match in 302 00:22:06,440 --> 00:22:08,839 that way, you're going to get repetitive patterns, and we 303 00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:09,519 always do. 304 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:16,200 Speaker 3: Indeed, now the Hollywood liberals are obsessed about looting. The 305 00:22:16,240 --> 00:22:19,119 Watch Dout on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every 306 00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:21,960 day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the 307 00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:24,359 economy and how it affects your wallet. Some of the 308 00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:28,039 Hollywood elites have threatened to shoot people who loot their property. 309 00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:31,319 Where were they during the George Floyd riots? Celine Dion 310 00:22:31,440 --> 00:22:35,079 didn't mind looting during Hurricane Katrina because it wasn't her stuff. 311 00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:37,200 Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street, 312 00:22:37,240 --> 00:22:38,440 it's affecting you financially. 313 00:22:38,480 --> 00:22:39,039 Speaker 1: Be informed. 314 00:22:39,079 --> 00:22:40,960 Speaker 3: Check out the Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with 315 00:22:41,039 --> 00:22:44,279 Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 316 00:22:44,359 --> 00:22:49,200 Speaker 1: Our guest today is former Republican Congressmen and SEC chairman 317 00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:52,799 former chairman Christopher Cox, author of the book Woodrow Wilson 318 00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:57,079 The Light Withdrawn. It's a very interesting look at the 319 00:22:57,119 --> 00:23:00,799 real Woodrow Wilson, not the idealized one, of course, that 320 00:23:01,519 --> 00:23:05,119 has fallen out of fashion over the last decade. Or 321 00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:08,039 so in this country. But there was a time would 322 00:23:08,079 --> 00:23:11,960 Rowe Wilson was seen as, you know, the icon, one 323 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:15,839 of the icons of the Democratic Party in this country. 324 00:23:15,960 --> 00:23:19,279 Not so much so more because of the things that 325 00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:22,880 Christopher Cox lays out in his book. I want to 326 00:23:22,960 --> 00:23:26,440 get back to that in just a moment, but I 327 00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:30,079 would be remiss if we didn't get into the president 328 00:23:30,119 --> 00:23:33,680 who kept us out of war. You know, this was 329 00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:38,839 a time of great turmoil globally, the expanding idea of globalism, 330 00:23:38,880 --> 00:23:41,559 and as you point out in your book, would Row 331 00:23:41,559 --> 00:23:45,359 Wilson was nothing if not eventually a globalist, but he 332 00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:49,079 did campaign on the idea that America needed to stay 333 00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:54,160 put and stay out of the business of constant European squabbles. 334 00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:55,440 That changed, though. 335 00:23:56,359 --> 00:24:03,079 Speaker 2: It certainly did. He won election in nineteen sixteen unmistakably 336 00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:05,440 for the reason that he was the peace candidate, and 337 00:24:05,519 --> 00:24:08,920 yet within weeks of his inauguration he asked Congress for 338 00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:12,200 a declaration of war against Germany. It was quite a turnabout, 339 00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:16,000 and it was also a turnabout in Wilson himself. He 340 00:24:16,079 --> 00:24:20,680 became much more stern, much more intolerant of dissent. He 341 00:24:21,079 --> 00:24:25,039 very notoriously cracked down on the civil liberties of Americans 342 00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:29,160 in a way that stands out in sharp relief against 343 00:24:29,519 --> 00:24:34,200 the whole century that followed. He was really beyond the 344 00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:39,880 limits of the Constitution in depriving people of their rights. 345 00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:44,519 Some of these people, actually many of them were war 346 00:24:44,559 --> 00:24:49,680 protesters who came to Washington. They had supported Wilson. They 347 00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:54,319 came to the capital to protest after his turnabout, And 348 00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:58,279 of course the turnabout was in response to events, but 349 00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:01,519 those events actually had been relating well before the election, 350 00:25:02,599 --> 00:25:07,000 and so there was a great deal of loss of 351 00:25:07,039 --> 00:25:11,880 faith among his supporters. They wanted to march in the streets, 352 00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:14,000 they wanted to hold up signs and that sort of thing. 353 00:25:14,039 --> 00:25:19,200 And immediately Wilson clamped down. The same thing with the draft. 354 00:25:19,279 --> 00:25:22,119 We hadn't had a draft since the Civil War. Wilson, 355 00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:26,119 the historian, knew about the draft riots, and so there 356 00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:32,200 was going to be absolutely no protest about the draft either. 357 00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:34,839 And he controlled the DC government at the time. We 358 00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:39,119 didn't have home rule in Washington. Then. He had a 359 00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:43,000 couple of appointees on the three member commission that officially 360 00:25:43,079 --> 00:25:46,880 ran the city that were his journalist friends and supporters, 361 00:25:47,519 --> 00:25:51,119 and they were in intimate contact and at all times 362 00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:56,079 in making these decisions about no demonstrations whatsoever in the city, 363 00:25:56,920 --> 00:26:00,839 no protests, and so on. And it got worse as 364 00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:05,119 the war went on, and it got worse for women 365 00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,359 protesting for the right to vote in the same way. 366 00:26:07,799 --> 00:26:10,400 And of course we all know how they were all 367 00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,160 thrown jail and very brutally treated there. 368 00:26:14,599 --> 00:26:19,240 Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, and you know, you think about that time period, 369 00:26:19,279 --> 00:26:23,960 and again I hastened back to the point passed his prologue. 370 00:26:24,319 --> 00:26:26,640 The more things changed, the more they stay the same. 371 00:26:26,799 --> 00:26:30,519 With the sort of censorship that would Row Wilson engaged 372 00:26:30,559 --> 00:26:33,200 in and his administration engaged in. We've seen a lot 373 00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:36,160 of that, of course in this country, at an alarming 374 00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:41,279 rate over the last four years. So taking a page 375 00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:46,599 perhaps the Biden administration from the Woodrow Wilson administration, let 376 00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:51,759 us delve into the move toward the nineteenth Amendment, the 377 00:26:51,799 --> 00:26:55,519 Anthony Amendment, named after Susan B. Anthony, of course, who 378 00:26:56,319 --> 00:27:02,000 for years fought for the franchise for women to vote. 379 00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:06,079 As you noted at the outset of our conversation, Woodrow 380 00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:12,480 Wilson was dead set against all of that. Despite this 381 00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:16,920 this strong wave that had been pushing and pushing on politics. 382 00:27:17,759 --> 00:27:20,519 Why did he resist? How was he able to resist 383 00:27:20,559 --> 00:27:21,240 for so long? 384 00:27:23,039 --> 00:27:28,480 Speaker 2: Yeah, the movement for women having the vote, it has 385 00:27:28,519 --> 00:27:32,200 its roots at the very beginning of American in seventeen 386 00:27:32,279 --> 00:27:35,920 seventy six, and in fact, in New Jersey where Wilson 387 00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:40,359 was later governor. You know, women voted at first. That 388 00:27:40,559 --> 00:27:43,839 right was later taken away legislatively, but it was very expressed, 389 00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:48,519 and they used the words he or she in the law. 390 00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:54,880 So this history and to dates would row Wilson by many, 391 00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:59,400 many decades, long before he arrived on the scene. Really 392 00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:04,400 for a full country, Americans had been working for women's 393 00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:09,279 property rights, marital and family rights, and voting rights, and 394 00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:12,200 by the middle of the nineteenth century, when Woodrow Wilson 395 00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:16,480 was born, they were already having considerable success. It was 396 00:28:16,599 --> 00:28:19,799 after the Civil War, and this is the formative time 397 00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:23,599 for Wilson in his youth growing up in the South. 398 00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:27,119 As we were discussing after the Civil War, Republicans in 399 00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:32,119 Congress drafted the Reconstruction Amendments, and women's voting rights were 400 00:28:32,519 --> 00:28:35,680 seriously considered for inclusion in both the fourteenth and the 401 00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:40,160 fifteenth Amendments, and there were alternatives to those amendments as 402 00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:43,519 they were finally approved, that were very expressed about women 403 00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:46,680 having the right to vote. This was all debated at 404 00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:51,640 the time, and at the same time Union generals appointed 405 00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:57,720 by Grant that were running the territories of the West 406 00:28:58,519 --> 00:29:04,920 moved for women's voting rights in those territories, and that 407 00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:05,640 actually happened. 408 00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:09,039 Speaker 1: So the first women voting in. 409 00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:15,960 Speaker 2: America in in modern times I mentioned the earlier times 410 00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:20,119 were in Wyoming and then in Utah. And this happened 411 00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:26,240 during Reconstruction. It was something that Wilson wrote about in 412 00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:31,519 his histories, that is to say, Reconstruction, but he absolutely 413 00:29:31,559 --> 00:29:36,559 turned away from writing about women's voting rights only the 414 00:29:36,599 --> 00:29:39,759 fact that black men were being allowed to vote, and 415 00:29:39,799 --> 00:29:42,160 that was the thing that he really cared about. So 416 00:29:42,839 --> 00:29:46,880 he stood athwart the Ante Amendment because it was going 417 00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:52,880 to federalize enforcement and it would have again seen, just 418 00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:57,680 as he had seen during Reconstruction, interference with white Southern 419 00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:01,480 male rule and specifically credit rule in the South under 420 00:30:01,559 --> 00:30:05,640 Jim Crow. That was his basis for opposing the Anti Amendment. 421 00:30:06,319 --> 00:30:10,720 The Anti Amendment, of course, had its origins in this 422 00:30:10,759 --> 00:30:16,200 Reconstruction period as well. 423 00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:18,319 Speaker 1: And he was particularly against He was against the right 424 00:30:19,599 --> 00:30:23,880 for women to vote, but he was particularly against black 425 00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,720 women voting. I think you've laid that out, but a 426 00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:28,920 further explanation of that. 427 00:30:29,319 --> 00:30:34,000 Speaker 2: Yeah, So Wilson did not have a constant view when 428 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:35,960 it came to women in the way that he did 429 00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:40,799 when it came to race. His views on women's proper 430 00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:47,319 role and whether they should be permitted in active civic 431 00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:51,839 roles outside the home and so on changed over his 432 00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:56,799 life as the society around him changed. So when he 433 00:30:56,839 --> 00:31:00,000 was governor of New Jersey, he said he was absolute 434 00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:02,759 opposed to women voting. And that's a position that he'd 435 00:31:02,759 --> 00:31:06,599 held throughout his life to that point. But during his 436 00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:09,680 time in the White House, as stayed after state was 437 00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:14,640 granting women the right to vote, that became an untenable 438 00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:18,240 political position, and so he changed and his new position 439 00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:22,799 was states rights. He said that he was up to 440 00:31:22,839 --> 00:31:25,200 the states to decide this. That of course left the 441 00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:29,559 South untouched because the Jim Crow states were never going 442 00:31:29,599 --> 00:31:34,440 to do it, and that satisfied him. What he most 443 00:31:34,599 --> 00:31:38,599 did not want to see was more black voters, or 444 00:31:40,039 --> 00:31:44,720 black voting at all, that Jim Crow might otherwise prevent. 445 00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:51,359 So that's where he ended up his final position and 446 00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:54,920 here we're racing to the truly interesting story at the 447 00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:59,240 end of the book about how even after the House 448 00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:03,359 of Representative voted by two thirds for the Anthony Amendment, 449 00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:08,079 and then it goes to the Senate and Wilson makes 450 00:32:08,079 --> 00:32:11,519 a speech to the Senate in support of the Antony Amendment, 451 00:32:11,599 --> 00:32:15,480 so seemingly now he's on board. At the very end 452 00:32:15,599 --> 00:32:20,359 after that, when the Anthony Amendment failed by two votes 453 00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:24,400 in the Senate, he got on board with Southern senators' 454 00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:28,000 plans to get rid of that federal enforcement piece, to 455 00:32:28,039 --> 00:32:33,640 rewrite the Anthony Amendment that's been introduced in Congress year 456 00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:35,720 after year after year after year, going all the way 457 00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:38,039 back to the nineteenth century. And he's going to change 458 00:32:38,079 --> 00:32:41,759 this venerable language so that the Jim Crow states get 459 00:32:41,799 --> 00:32:44,440 to be in charge, and that way they could have 460 00:32:44,519 --> 00:32:48,440 only white women voting. And that almost made it through 461 00:32:48,519 --> 00:32:52,519 in the Lame Duck when Democrats had their last gasp 462 00:32:52,559 --> 00:32:55,400 at control in the Congress, having lost it in the 463 00:32:55,480 --> 00:33:00,599 nineteen eighteen midterm elections. It's a very forty thing for 464 00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:04,640 posterity that that effort failed, but wood Row Wilson was 465 00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:05,400 on board with it. 466 00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:10,799 Speaker 1: It was like the bargain of the Hayes election, you know, 467 00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:16,599 to get basically Reconstruction out of the South, to get 468 00:33:16,759 --> 00:33:22,599 enforcement of the federal laws and the constitutional amendments that 469 00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:28,720 you know was changing the country everywhere at the South, 470 00:33:29,359 --> 00:33:34,119 and you had this sort of arrangement that was hoping 471 00:33:34,599 --> 00:33:38,039 to keep the elements of Jim Crow in the Deep 472 00:33:38,119 --> 00:33:41,279 South is for as long as possible, to the exclusion 473 00:33:41,319 --> 00:33:44,319 of women voting. Once again, this is all, as you noted, 474 00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:49,839 very steeped in the traditions the Moreys of wood Row 475 00:33:49,839 --> 00:33:51,559 Wilson growing up in the South. 476 00:33:52,039 --> 00:33:58,400 Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does all tie back to reconstruction. When 477 00:33:58,559 --> 00:34:04,079 the fourteenth Amendment was being considered by a Joint House 478 00:34:04,279 --> 00:34:08,880 Senate committee, the coach, the House co chair was Sattis Stevens, 479 00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:14,840 a big abolitionist. They produced a first draft that included 480 00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:20,320 men and women in its protections for voting rights. So 481 00:34:20,679 --> 00:34:23,960 Fattias Stevens is someone who Wilson wrote about said that 482 00:34:24,039 --> 00:34:29,920 he was not a committed abolitionist really, but he was 483 00:34:30,119 --> 00:34:34,840 just wanted to make sure that Republicans could rule over Democrats. 484 00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:37,039 He was a partisan. And so when he said the 485 00:34:37,079 --> 00:34:41,639 same thing about Charles Sumner and about other obviously very 486 00:34:41,679 --> 00:34:47,000 committed abolitionists in the Congress. He was very cynical about it. 487 00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:52,760 So then we, you know, fast forward to not very fast, say, 488 00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:57,480 eighteen sixty eight, and we have Samuel Palmeroy of Kansas 489 00:34:57,519 --> 00:35:01,320 and George Julian of Indiana entered seeing the first constitutional 490 00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,920 amendments dedicated solely to women's suffrage. These two men are Republicans, 491 00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:13,760 and another reason to not like Republicans, because they're constantly 492 00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:20,679 trying to expand towards what Wilson derisively termed as universal suffrage. 493 00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:25,000 He wanted only the elites to vote, only people who were, 494 00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:30,400 in his view, worthy of it, but certainly not what 495 00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:35,760 he called ignorant negroes. So then we have what later 496 00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,440 became the Susan B. Anthony Amendment by name, but in 497 00:35:39,519 --> 00:35:43,519 terms of the text, the very words that now are 498 00:35:43,559 --> 00:35:47,000 in the Constitution that was first introduced in eighteen seventy 499 00:35:47,039 --> 00:35:51,119 eight by Susan B. Anthony's good friend, Aaron Sargent, a 500 00:35:51,159 --> 00:35:56,159 Republican senator from California. So for a long time this 501 00:35:56,360 --> 00:36:02,079 was Republicans versus Democrats, North versus South. You know, black 502 00:36:02,119 --> 00:36:07,440 people voting or women having rights versus white male supremacy, 503 00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:10,519 and Wilson was on the latter side. 504 00:36:12,079 --> 00:36:16,480 Speaker 1: As a historical footnote and an aside, Thaddeus Stevens had 505 00:36:16,679 --> 00:36:20,559 arguably the worst hair piece of any congressman in the 506 00:36:20,599 --> 00:36:24,559 history of this country. And while we speak of that, 507 00:36:24,679 --> 00:36:30,440 you served some time in Congress, can you mention the 508 00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:34,280 worst hair pieces you have seen in that fail that. 509 00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:38,440 Speaker 2: I was going to go immediately to Jim Traffickan, right, Yes, 510 00:36:38,559 --> 00:36:44,800 of course, the legendary Ohio member who had some trouble. 511 00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:48,239 Speaker 1: With the law and some trouble with the hair accouterment 512 00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:50,639 as well. Thank you for. 513 00:36:53,639 --> 00:36:56,800 Speaker 2: I was about to say, this is a clear example 514 00:36:56,800 --> 00:36:59,559 of where we have to discard our presentism and not 515 00:36:59,679 --> 00:37:05,840 judge people buy her standards. Yes, they were their dental hygiene, Oh. 516 00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:08,679 Speaker 1: Sure, the hygiene in general, it was. 517 00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:09,039 Speaker 2: It was. 518 00:37:09,159 --> 00:37:11,280 Speaker 1: It was a much different time. Let's let's just say 519 00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:14,599 there wasn't a lot of deodorance going around back in 520 00:37:14,639 --> 00:37:19,079 those days. Yes, exactly, exactly. 521 00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:21,679 Speaker 2: But then when you mentioned Jim Traffickan, all of a sudden, 522 00:37:21,679 --> 00:37:25,719 we're in the twenteenth century, so maybe it is a presentism. 523 00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:29,000 Speaker 1: We're getting close. Anyway, We're getting a lot closer. Uh, 524 00:37:29,199 --> 00:37:34,639 back to the suffrage issue. Isn't it amazing that widow 525 00:37:34,679 --> 00:37:38,159 Wilson had such powerful women in his life? His mother, 526 00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:42,960 two wives, and my my, one of my closing questions 527 00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:45,440 will be about his second wife and just how powerful 528 00:37:45,559 --> 00:37:48,119 she became. But these are powerful women in his life, 529 00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:51,639 and yet he carried this idea that women should not 530 00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:52,760 have the right to vote. 531 00:37:53,239 --> 00:38:00,679 Speaker 2: Yeah. And of course Edith Wilson has been in the 532 00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:05,639 news of late because you know, she presided over a 533 00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:10,599 situation in which her husband was mentally and physically impaired 534 00:38:11,159 --> 00:38:12,599 and incapacitated. 535 00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:13,360 Speaker 1: Yes, and. 536 00:38:15,519 --> 00:38:20,760 Speaker 2: Covered it up, you know, through extensive efforts and raised 537 00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:26,119 questions about who's really running the government. Entire books had 538 00:38:26,159 --> 00:38:29,239 been written about this subject, and it really is fascinating 539 00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:33,039 to speculate about maybe Edith was the first woman president, 540 00:38:33,159 --> 00:38:36,639 or maybe she was the machi Avlian first lady who 541 00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:40,360 secretly manipulated the federal government while her husband was incapacitated, 542 00:38:41,679 --> 00:38:44,559 or even you know, a female Rasputin who convinced the 543 00:38:44,599 --> 00:38:47,360 helpless invalid to agree to her plans for the country. 544 00:38:48,360 --> 00:38:51,840 I think I think all of that is overmuch. Edith 545 00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:54,920 Wilson can be criticized for other things which I can 546 00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:57,840 go into but I would absolve her of being a 547 00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:01,440 power hungry, illegitimate president of in the shadows. I say 548 00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:05,400 this because that's not what she did. First and foremost, 549 00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:09,239 she was concerned about her husband's health, and so what 550 00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:12,840 she did was keep work away from him. Her great 551 00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:16,079 sin was keeping the truth away from the American people. 552 00:39:16,639 --> 00:39:22,679 And Wilson's great sin, even in his impaired circumstances, was 553 00:39:23,599 --> 00:39:29,000 not recognizing that he should have stepped down. Of course, 554 00:39:29,039 --> 00:39:32,760 the reality of what had happened to Wilson was far 555 00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:35,079 worse than anyone in Washington, let alone the rest of 556 00:39:35,119 --> 00:39:41,039 the country could imagine. Immediately after his major stroke in 557 00:39:41,079 --> 00:39:45,639 October nineteen nineteen, anyone who just looked at him could 558 00:39:45,679 --> 00:39:49,599 tell something was terribly wrong. His left arm and leg 559 00:39:49,679 --> 00:39:53,039 were paralyzed, the left side of his face drooped. He 560 00:39:53,199 --> 00:39:58,320 suffered from acute digestive problems that indicated the stroke extended 561 00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:02,719 to his central nervous system. The damage from it, the 562 00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:04,960 weakness and the muscles on the left side of his 563 00:40:05,639 --> 00:40:12,159 tongue is jaw, and his parents made it difficult to 564 00:40:12,199 --> 00:40:17,760 swallow and therefore interfered with his speech. He had had 565 00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:20,679 an earlier stroke that degraded. The vision in his right eye. 566 00:40:21,599 --> 00:40:25,519 Now the vision in his left eye was impaired. So 567 00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:30,000 here he is. He's got double vision, frequent dizzy spells. 568 00:40:30,039 --> 00:40:32,800 He can no longer read, he can't sit in a 569 00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:37,400 chair to eat, he can't sign his name, his memory 570 00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:42,039 is faulty. You know. Faced with all of this, Edith 571 00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:46,360 decides to cover it all up and pretend that the 572 00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:50,800 president's just fine, and she got the White House physician 573 00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:52,000 to be her ally on this. 574 00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:57,239 Speaker 1: Again, the past is present in many ways, and that's 575 00:40:57,280 --> 00:41:00,639 exactly what you're talking about. You know, the discussions about 576 00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:06,920 Joe Biden's president, Joe Biden's cognitive state and his fitness 577 00:41:07,039 --> 00:41:12,159 to serve. We didn't have, and I think that there 578 00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:16,360 is evidence to suggest exactly what you talked about, that 579 00:41:17,079 --> 00:41:20,480 Edith Wilson was very much concerned about the health of 580 00:41:20,519 --> 00:41:27,119 her husband. She was not necessarily fully acting as president, 581 00:41:27,159 --> 00:41:30,920 although there were some incidents in that time where you 582 00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,519 think that's really not the business of the first lady, 583 00:41:35,039 --> 00:41:38,039 but she did cover it up. That's different from what 584 00:41:38,119 --> 00:41:42,320 we've experienced, in my personal opinion, over the last four 585 00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:46,880 years in this country, where we had a inex you know, 586 00:41:47,159 --> 00:41:52,840 a White House staff, aided and abedded by I believe 587 00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:56,800 in accomplice media that covered this up. What do you 588 00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:01,800 what do you think of the I think the understandable 589 00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,880 comparisons between what ro Wilson and Joe Biden in terms 590 00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:08,199 of their time, their ladder time in office. 591 00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:12,440 Speaker 2: Yeah, many people have drawn, you know, in print, in 592 00:42:12,519 --> 00:42:18,360 our eds and analytical pieces, parallels between the Wilson situation 593 00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:23,719 and the Biden situation. But there are some obvious, big differences. 594 00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:28,800 One is the relative transparency of the presidency today. So 595 00:42:29,519 --> 00:42:34,039 Joe Biden, you know, couldn't hide for four months without 596 00:42:34,079 --> 00:42:39,159 ever being seen in a photograph, but Wilson was able 597 00:42:39,199 --> 00:42:43,239 to remain in seclusion in that way for over four months. 598 00:42:45,679 --> 00:42:48,199 We also have to keep in mind I went through 599 00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:54,639 all of the details of Wilson's physical inability to function, 600 00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:59,519 as well as you know, his mental capacity, including memory 601 00:42:59,519 --> 00:43:05,599 being tom finished. But you know, I did that because 602 00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:08,800 that was much more extreme than anything that even yet 603 00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:11,920 has happened to Joe Biden. And as he gets older, 604 00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:17,039 so the Wilson thing is made even more extreme when 605 00:43:17,039 --> 00:43:22,840 you consider to me the truly remarkable fact that he 606 00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:27,920 had been absent from America physically for six months before 607 00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:31,639 all of this. He decided after World War One that 608 00:43:31,679 --> 00:43:34,119 he was going to go to Europe and he spent 609 00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:38,880 a full six months Europe and transit back and forth 610 00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:41,880 by ship at a time when there was, you know, 611 00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:45,400 almost no communication across the Atlantic except for Morse Code, 612 00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:49,440 and so you know, he had no idea what was 613 00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:52,400 going on in America and he lost touch with the 614 00:43:52,400 --> 00:43:54,239 country he was supposed to be in charge of. His 615 00:43:54,320 --> 00:44:00,440 cabinet could barely reach him. He didn't understand contextually what 616 00:44:00,519 --> 00:44:04,280 was happening of no situational awareness about the country's problems, 617 00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:08,840 which were major at the time, runaway inflation, of labor problems, 618 00:44:09,599 --> 00:44:12,960 race riots, all these things happening at home. To mention 619 00:44:13,039 --> 00:44:15,239 the Anthony Amendment, which is at the tipping point, and 620 00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:18,599 everybody's demanding the president's help and he's not providing it. 621 00:44:18,679 --> 00:44:23,000 So the country had no president for half a year 622 00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:26,719 before all of this, and then Wilson gets knocked out 623 00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,280 of commission for the balance of his presidency all the 624 00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:35,199 way through nineteen twenty. That's really extraordinary. Yeah, it absolutely is. 625 00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:38,840 Speaker 1: You want to talk about an absentee landlord that is 626 00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:42,760 yet right there, although there are plenty of Americans, and 627 00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:45,440 I can understand their point of view on this. I 628 00:44:45,519 --> 00:44:48,599 share it to a great degree that we've had a 629 00:44:48,679 --> 00:44:52,800 president missing in action over the last four years in 630 00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:56,360 this country. That's a conversation perhaps for a later time. 631 00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:00,880 You've been very generous with your time. Final question I 632 00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:05,280 have for you is, after all that you've explained, you've 633 00:45:05,360 --> 00:45:08,719 laid out in your book, your extensive research, what is 634 00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,000 Woodrow Wilson's ultimate legacy. 635 00:45:13,559 --> 00:45:18,159 Speaker 2: You know, in the intervening century, he has been variously 636 00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:22,400 heralded as a progressive hero vilified as a racist who 637 00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:24,920 kept black men out of Princeton when he was president, 638 00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:28,559 and then as president of United States, segregated the federal workforce. 639 00:45:29,079 --> 00:45:33,800 I'd say that to twenty first century minds, those two 640 00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:39,320 characterizations are inconsistent. One can't be a progressive hero in 641 00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:43,239 our minds today and a white supremacist at the same time. 642 00:45:44,239 --> 00:45:47,199 But while that's true today, it was not true in 643 00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:52,119 Wilson's time. It's taken many decades for historians and academics 644 00:45:52,119 --> 00:45:55,760 to square this circle and in the process discover who 645 00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:59,559 was the real Woodrow Wilson. For the first fifty years 646 00:45:59,679 --> 00:46:03,920 or so, Wilson's racism wasn't even discussed, let alone his 647 00:46:04,199 --> 00:46:08,760 long standing opposition to women voting and especially to the 648 00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:13,760 Susan B. Anthony Amendment. It was nineteen fifty eight before 649 00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:19,199 Arthur Walworth, who wrote a two volume Pulitzer Prize winning biography, 650 00:46:19,599 --> 00:46:22,480 even broach these topics, and then just and in the 651 00:46:22,559 --> 00:46:29,800 nineteen nineties of the modern biographies treated race and gender seriously, 652 00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,960 but they weren't considered central to his presidency. So I 653 00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:38,960 think what has emerged is not yet in the popular consciousness. 654 00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:43,239 It's only been in academia that the entirety of Wilson's 655 00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:47,880 record in domestic and foreign policies being re evaluated in 656 00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:52,000 light of his prejudices, and that scholarship is providing a 657 00:46:52,039 --> 00:46:56,400 new view of Wilson's international and domestic record that's shot 658 00:46:56,480 --> 00:47:01,400 through with racial bias. So my takeaway from what was 659 00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:06,800 fourteen years of research on this book is that that 660 00:47:07,079 --> 00:47:09,840 was especially true when it came to women's voting rights. 661 00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:12,599 It was the leading domestic policy issue that had reached 662 00:47:12,599 --> 00:47:15,039 a tipping point by the time Wilson arrived in Washington. 663 00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:18,519 He opposed the Susan B. Anthony Endment because it would 664 00:47:18,559 --> 00:47:21,400 bring with it federal enforcement of voting rights everywhere in America, 665 00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:25,519 including the Jim Crow States, where black citizens were largely 666 00:47:25,719 --> 00:47:31,000 prevented from voting. So this is a way for us 667 00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:36,199 to understand the Wilson presidency in not just a new light, 668 00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:40,199 because all of these things were there all along, but 669 00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:47,360 in a more fulsome light, a more complete picture. I 670 00:47:47,519 --> 00:47:50,840 just closed by saying, there was a Gallop poll taken 671 00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:53,320 at the beginning of the twenty first century, and it had 672 00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:56,599 asked the American public to name the most important event 673 00:47:56,679 --> 00:48:02,320 of the twentieth century. Sixty one sixty six percent chose 674 00:48:02,519 --> 00:48:04,960 women getting the right to vote, So, you know, two 675 00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,559 thirds ahead of landing a man on the moon, fall 676 00:48:08,599 --> 00:48:11,519 of the Union, World War One, even in the Great Depression. 677 00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:15,480 Only World War Two ranked higher. And yet this has 678 00:48:15,519 --> 00:48:18,559 not been part of the Wilson story until now. It's 679 00:48:18,679 --> 00:48:21,199 it's been more than a lacuna. It's a gaping hole. 680 00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:23,880 And as it turns out, I'd say that aspect of 681 00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:26,480 the Wilson story is the most interesting. 682 00:48:27,119 --> 00:48:29,920 Speaker 1: I agree, and that is why we didn't get into 683 00:48:30,039 --> 00:48:34,519 what has so long been, you know, the narrative legacy 684 00:48:34,519 --> 00:48:37,360 of Woodrow Wilson, and that is his quest for lasting 685 00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:40,239 peace through the League of Nations. But some of what 686 00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:42,920 you just talked about is a guy who was so fixated, 687 00:48:43,079 --> 00:48:46,239 so obsessed with this notion of the League of Nations, 688 00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:51,639 his League of Nations, that he absolutely because he was 689 00:48:51,679 --> 00:48:55,000 in Europe for so long and so disconnected from what 690 00:48:55,239 --> 00:48:58,760 was going on in his own country. You know, there 691 00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:02,760 was growing distakee for that at all because of what 692 00:49:03,639 --> 00:49:06,039 America and the world just had gone through with the 693 00:49:06,039 --> 00:49:09,519 Great War, so to speak. They didn't want any more 694 00:49:09,559 --> 00:49:13,360 of that, and so that created his obsession, created an 695 00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:19,519 absolute see change in American government, in leadership. But I 696 00:49:19,559 --> 00:49:25,760 think you're absolutely right. The legacy that is really coming 697 00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:32,920 out about Woodrow Wilson is a his massive expansion of 698 00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:36,960 the federal government and the control of the federal government 699 00:49:37,119 --> 00:49:41,159 in the lives of Americans, but also how he viewed 700 00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:51,639 certain Americans and how those policies reflected truly anti progressive 701 00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:59,920 the small p notion of American politics. Fascinating individual, certainly fast, 702 00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:03,519 sinating book, and a great conversation. I really do appreciate 703 00:50:03,559 --> 00:50:05,519 your time today, sir well. 704 00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:08,880 Speaker 2: And I really appreciate the discussion. This is for me, 705 00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:12,239 of course, the most interesting topic in the world. Having 706 00:50:12,239 --> 00:50:14,679 spent so much time in having the book out there now, 707 00:50:15,079 --> 00:50:19,400 and I hope listeners have a chance to enjoy it themselves. 708 00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:21,960 Speaker 1: They can find it just about anywhere. Thanks to my 709 00:50:22,039 --> 00:50:27,880 guest today, former Republican Congressman SEC former Chairman Christopher Cox, 710 00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:32,480 author of the book Woodrow Wilson, The Light Withdrawn. You've 711 00:50:32,519 --> 00:50:35,079 been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. 712 00:50:35,159 --> 00:50:39,119 I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll 713 00:50:39,159 --> 00:50:42,320 be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of 714 00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:59,519 freedom and anxious for the fray.