by A. Scott Berg
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. 818 pages.
reviewed by MICHAEL PARKER
Woodrow Wilson is best remembered as the impassioned advocate of the League of Nations. Coming before the U.S. Senate in 1919, he spoke eloquently of America’s responsibility to join his proposed concert of nations to end international aggression. “Dare we reject it,” he asked, “and break the heart of the world?” For Wilson, leadership of the world community in the League was America’s special destiny: “It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the way. The light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else.”
A. Scott Berg, whose “Lindbergh” won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for biography, provides a luminous portrait of our 28th president; its brisk-paced and sweeping narrative rivets the reader’s attention to the last page.
Berg vividly details Wilson’s unlikely career trajectory from Princeton academic to U.S. president. As president (1913-1921), Wilson championed causes of the Progressive Movement: tariff reduction, the establishment of a federal reserve, the elimination of child labor, an eight-hour work day, antitrust legislation and women’s suffrage. He fought to keep the U.S. out of WWI, but once in, the idealistic Wilson sought to make it a “war to end all wars.” Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” laid out lofty war aims: open agreements, self-determination for all peoples and a league of nations. France’s Premier Georges Clemenceau quipped, “God was satisfied with Ten Commandments. Wilson gives us fourteen.”
Wilson was one among seven American presidents who were Presbyterians. Among these, Wilson was arguably the most clearly identified as a Presbyterian. His father and maternal grandfather were Presbyterian ministers; Wilson was conspicuously devout, regularly attending Sunday services and reading a chapter of the Bible every evening. Moreover, his speeches were infused with the language of morality and idealism, motifs sustained by his faith in an overruling providence. His religiosity, however, was not always welcome; New Jersey Democratic boss James Smith spoke for many in sneeringly referring to Wilson as “the Presbyterian priest.”
Berg underscores this religious theme by giving his chapters biblically inspired titles such as Ascension, Providence and Eden. Curiously, however, there is little real examination of Wilson’s religious beliefs. There is an equal dearth of careful, hard-hitting analysis of some of the more troubling aspects of Wilson’s administration: the numerous interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America; the policies that led the U.S. into war with the Central powers; the issues involving race that plagued his presidency; and most important from the hindsight of a century, his belief in America’s need to play a leading role in the community of nations.
Rather than political and economic scrutiny, Berg is more interested in the human story. Much is made of Wilson’s personal life — especially his romance with Edith Bolling Galt and the tragedy of losing the battle for the League of Nations. Berg’s biography is an enjoyable and moving introduction to Wilson the man and president, but it leaves the reader eager for a deeper probing of one of the 20th century’s most complex, controversial and influential political figures.
MICHAEL PARKER is a professor of church history in a Presbyterian seminary in the Middle East.
