One gets the sense that Berg wants readers to draw parallels between Wilson's time and the present day-- for example, between Wilson, perceived as an intellectual, beloved by liberals for his rhetorical gifts, loathed as a socialist by obstructive conservatives, and Barack Obama, perceived, beloved, and loathed on the same terms. But Berg disrupts his own presentation here. He does very little to demonstrate Wilson's intellectual heft, preferring to quote broad statements of principle rather than thoughtful, nuanced arguments. And Wilson's religiosity, which is mentioned sparingly in the text but reinforced by overwrought biblical chapters titles and epigraphs, brings to mind parallels to another recent president who launched foreign wars. So (adhering for the moment to the popular image of the recent presidents) which was Wilson really: a rigorous intellectual like Barack Obama or a crusading moralist like George W. Bush?
Beats me. A great biography would have helped resolve the issue, but Berg misses or ignores key points at which Wilson's thoughts and his moral instincts are possibly in conflict. Wilson proudly disclaimed political patronage and cronyism-- then gave in to it after getting elected. On social issues like race relations and (until 1918) women's suffrage, he claimed to prefer gradual state-by-state change, but his economic programs were sweeping and federal. Did he ever justify the difference? Berg quotes a suffragette who confronted Wilson on this point. The president's response was a prickly "I do not care to discuss that." Nor, apparently, does Berg. Then there's the matter of World War I. Berg goes to great lengths to emphasize Wilson's reluctance to enter the war, his understanding of its horrors, his efforts to pursue peaceful neutrality. Then, as the US enters the war, he quotes Wilson's rhetoric about a grand struggle for the fate of the very world from which the country could not afford to absent itself. Berg makes no effort to explain this comparatively abrupt move from ambivalence to ardor; one is left to imagine that one day Wilson smacked his forehead and said, "Duh-- there's a moral element!" Nor does he explore how Wilson's wheeling and dealing at Versailles, or his interventions in Latin America, fit into his devotion to self-determination. Indeed, he barely discusses Latin America at all; at one point I was startled to discover that the US had invaded Haiti. Perhaps I missed a glancing mention of that elsewhere, but it's obvious that Berg generally doesn't know what to do with gaps between Wilson's rhetoric and his policies.
It's not that I demand a cynical interpretation of Wilson; it's that I demand an interpretation, rather than a lot of quotes that raise as many questions as they answer. Had Berg integrated Wilson's contradictions into a coherent theory of his ideology or personality, this would be a better book, even if I wasn't personally convinced by the theory. Berg isn't afraid to be negative about Wilson under certain circumstances. He particularly bats the administration around over the Espionage and Sedition Acts, as well he might. But then those laws, like Wilson's inflexible hostility to a former friend who turned against him over the former's plan to reform Princeton, demonstrate the one flaw allowed in Berg's conception of Woodrow Wilson: vindictive, self-aggrandizing behavior brought on by excess of noble passion. Wilson more or less admitted to that himself, and I don't think a good biography lets a subject dictate the presentation of his personality. Berg ought to have addressed, if only to refute, the possibility that self-pity, self-delusion, and hypocrisy played a greater role in Wilson's life than the man could ever have admitted, that his ideas are inextricably wound up with his psychological idiosyncrasies. This has as much to do with national history as with individual biography; when it comes to politics, personal quirks can have devastating effects. Berg presents the conflict over Senate ratification of the Versailles treaty as a battle between Wilson's stubborn support and Henry Cabot Lodge's politicized opposition. This is compelling as human drama, but what about the treaty itself? Were Wilson's basic ideas tenable? These are not insignificant issues, and Berg never acknowledges them.
Other problems of superficial presentation further weaken Wilson. Berg offers a fair amount of historical background, but much of it is overly general: I still have no real sense how trusts operated or how Wilson reformed their operation. And the end notes are formatted in a way that saves space but makes them useless for actually locating the sources of individual claims. But the largest flaw of a book that ends with a declaration of Wilson's enormous influence on the stormy present must be its disinclination to consider what that present tells us about him. Wilson believed (or said he believed) he was fighting a war to end war, creating an international organization that would ensure widespread peace. But the idea he unleashed, that the United States should participate and participate zealously in wars in which its stake is moral rather than actual, has drawn the country into what seems instead an endless cycle of conflict. Berg paints a poignant picture of the end of Wilson's life, as both his health and his hope that the United States would join the League of Nations were destroyed. It's a very sad story of crushed ambitions and small pleasures, moving even to someone with limited sympathy for the man. But surely Wilson, demoralized as he was by his final years, would be yet more horrified to see what the world looks like a century after his first inauguration. Horrified-- by a world of his own making. That is the true tragedy of Woodrow Wilson, the gap between what he dreamed and what he made, and the failure to examine how it came about means that despite taking up 750 pages, this biography doesn't even scratch the surface.
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