i'd like to introduce our speakers this evening. ambassador joel davis is a

member of the wilson house advisory council. he was appointed on february 21st in in 2018 to be ambassador. extraordinary. and plenipotentiary of the united states to the gabonese republic and to the democratic republic of and principe. he retired from the foreign service in january 2020, having served since 1987, and he joined, our woodrow wilson house executive or advisory council and it has been really a pleasure to have him on with us doing our diplomatic chats and of course tonight being a moderator for the discussion with mr. david frum. he is the author of ten books, most tropical trap trump apocalypse restoring american democracy. that was published in 2020. his first book, dead right, won praise from william f buckley as the most intellectual experience in a generation and from rich in

the new york times as the smartest book written from the inside about american conservative movement in the national review. he was hailed for his history of the 1970s. how we got here as an audacious act of revisionism, written in a voice and style so original it deserves be called a revolutionary. in her review of frum's 12 novel patriots, arianna huffington said frum is someone who fearless fully speaks his mind regardless of where the chips may fall. so it's no he's able to convey so much truth in his fiction. his memoir of his service, the george w bush administration, the right man, was a york times bestseller, as was his 2018 book. trump foresee the corruption of the american republic. david frum has been active in republican politics since his the first reagan campaign of

1980. from 2014 through 2017, he served chairman of the board of trustees for leading uk right, a center right think tank policy exchange from. 22001 to 2002. he served as speechwriter and special assistant to president bush. he holds a b.a. and an m.a. in history from yale univ or c and a law degree from harvard, where he served as president of federalist society. so with that, welcome our speaker and our moderator. thank you. all. thank. i almost never speak from a prepared text, but i was assured that this would be a very lively audience. so i undertook to keep my opening remarks to minimum 6 minutes and i wanted to be able to time those 6 minutes. so i wrote it out to be sure

that i hit the mark. also, as some you may know, this talk was postponed. we've had some very sad events in my wife and i and my family's personal, so i'm not quite at my best and again, i thought i'd better have the backstop a written text, you know, and i'm failing to operate the microphone. these 6 minutes are going to address the same question that my editors at the atlantic posed to when i told them two years ago that i would like to write a piece for the 100th anniversary of the death of president wilson, which is why would you want to do that. why bother? and so this these 6 minutes, i'm going to devote to the question of why i bothered, then we can go into whatever other topics you wanted. why did i bother woodrow wilson once ranked among the greatest of american presidents surveys of historians in 1948 and 1962 rated him fourth after washington. lincoln, franklin roosevelt. harry truman lavishly praised

wilson. richard nixon wilson so much that he used what he mistakenly believed to be woodrow. woodrow olsson's own desk as his own. in fact, the so-called wilson desk. the white house inventory was so named for henry wilson ulysses grant second term vice president, but nobody had the nerve to tell nixon that over the past two decades, however, wilson's once lofty reputation has collapsed his name has been scrubbed from schools and other places of honor, including at princeton, the university. he almost single handedly, elevated from mediocrity to greatness. now many of the charges levied against wilson are true. he was an anti-black racist. his administration did impose a much more formalized and radical segregation upon the federal workforce. he failed to act against the wave of pogroms that convulsed american cities in the summer of 1919, just in the city of chicago 38 dead, two thirds of

them black, hundreds injured, maybe 2000. who lost homes again, almost all of them black of the greatest challenge on the greatest challenge of his presidency, the first world war, the wilson record is mostly one of failure over the in 1916, wilson tried to negotiate a compromise peace between the allies and the central powers didn't happen. he to prepare for the war. he opposed he opposed the war so declined to prepare for it so that when war did come in april 1917, the united states, his leadership was unready result. the united states did not begin to field significant forces in the first world war until some mid-summer 1918, 15 months after wilson declared war. by contrast, within 15 months of the american entry into the second world war, the united states had won the battles of midway and guadalcanal and stood on the verge of clearing all axis forces from north africa. wilson's peacemaking fared even worse than his war, making the treaty of versailles and the

league of nations. i recall today, as monuments to wrecked hopes and doomed ambitions. so why raise a voice against against the condemnation of later generations? here's why. the generations that elevated wilson, the people who worked. on the scene and active from the 1940s to the 1990s perceived his as acutely as we as we do. if anything, they perceived those failures more acutely since they had personally paid the price in blood and suffering for the failure of peacemaking in 1919. but they also understood it again much more acutely than we. what wilson was trying to do during woodrow wilson's presidency. the united states, the greatest of the world's great powers. how should that power be used? some americans of wilson's day believed that the power should not be used at all. such americans like wilson's former secretary of state william jennings bryan, wanted the united states to set a moral

example to the rest of the world, but otherwise remain apart from that rest of the world. other americans of wilson's day wanted the united states to use its new power the way other great powers had used their power before by building great navies, amassing colonial empires, and generally asserting america's national interests on america's national terms. this was the view of wilson's fiercest republican adversaries like theodore roosevelt and henry cabot lodge. wilson almost among the leading figures of his day, recognized something that brian roosevelt and lodge could not or would not see the something he recognized was a truth that has wisely guided the united states from the time of franklin delano roosevelt until only just a few years ago, modern technology had shrunk the world to small. the first of the lesson he learned was that modern technology shrunk the world too small, and america's interest in that world had spread too wide for the united states ever to achieve security by standing

apart as people like brian wished. on the other hand, countries that sought security by dominating others as imperial germany tried in 1914 would only surround themselves with multiplying numbers of enemies. the pursuit of security domination was an inherently self-defeating enterprise, even for the mightiest nation. wilson foresaw that the united states could find security for itself only if it delivered, securing for other like minded countries. america, american power. it would be resented and sooner or later and overthrown if it served only ends. american power would be accepted and reinforced by allies. if that power contributed to the welfare of others, americans and their partners and would achieve collective security or they would enjoy no security at all. this is a lesson that the americans in the 1940s learned through pain that they sought to teach to the next generation. that the americans of the

postwar struggled to apply and the americans of the 2020s are once again arguing over. woodrow wilson gained fame in the first place. as an educator, his greatest contribution as president was educational to he himself was unable live the lesson he taught. that happens often enough in education, and it does not detract from the truth power of the lesson. woodrow wilson wrote more memorable phrases than any president after abraham lincoln. to my mind the most important phrase to clark, his typewriter was this from war message of april 1917, the world must be made safe for democracy. i invite you to weigh those words in your mind for a moment and. then think what? he did not write. he did not write. the world must made democratic. he would. he did not write that because the proposition have frightened him as delusionally utopian. but nor did he write. the world must be made safe for americans because that claim would have would have offended

him as dangerous. selfish. what concerned most with this war hating president so reluctantly and and often incompetently took his country to war for was to preserve the possible liberty of democratic development for all peoples who saw it in full awareness of the sacrifice that preservation could cost. that's a message that today's americans again need urgently to hear. the crass and narrow nationalism that dragged the world's most advanced into the first world war and then thwarted projects to prevent the second that self harming stupidity stalks us in the 2020s from moscow to beijing to tehran to palm beach. enemies of democracy are discovering common interests and common purposes. we return to the legacy of woodrow wilson not as a manual, but as an inspiration and a warning of the hazards of other paths than his.

so. thank you so much. this not only did you write a fantastic piece in the atlantic, but now elaborating on it really gives a lot more substance. and we appreciate very much so what we're going to do is give you all a chance now to participate and benefit from the knowledge, expertise that david has on on this topic. and as he already indicated, any other topic you might have and my job will be to make sure that every one of you who wishes to partici speak gets an opportunity. so i ready see one hand. so let's let's get going. yes, i can volunteer to submit a one month. six weeks ago the new york times had an article about it and

association of historians writing presidents and wilson was 15th with 16. where would you say he should be? or how do you view the i don't know. if you read article or the survey. so i've never liked this parlor game because i don't understand quite what it means because what it implies is that there's some way to rate the skill of a president apart from what the president sought to do and that's not completely nonsense, is such a thing as managerial expertise in the presidency, and some presidents are better at it and some were worse. but then you the fact that probably one of the most incompetent managers among all the presidents was franklin delano roosevelt. so if if we downgrade, probably certainly the most important of the 20 century, but probably one of the i think most people say one of the three or four most important. but he was a terrible manager,

herbert hoover great manager. so i you can't make this game value and then what you're just doing is smuggling in your values by another name. so i don't want to play the parlor. what i would say is i wilson had many of execution and he tended to, um, because his intellectual facilities were so faculties were so enormous. he tended to be unaware or indifferent to the skills he did not have the lack of executive background is his lack of skill as a negotiator. he tended to underwrite those and he made it because he didn't understand so well. he made serious, serious mistakes like traveling to europe to negotiate the peace treaty himself. anyone has ever bought a car, understands the value of having the in the back room. so the idea that you would go europe and be the negotiator yourself, that was was reckless. so yeah, in many ways a poor administrator, many the stories

about segregation that were those were those were not actually wilson's own initiatives initiatives of other people who were important to the democratic party who had got him the nomination and whom he then negligently let run their departments any which way. not clear that he was opposed the segregation project, but nor was he as enthusiastic about it as, say his postmaster was, or josephus daniels of the navy department. so we had a kind of hands off approach that served him ill very often. so i don't want to play the parlor game, but what i the thing i want to insist is that there's something in this presidency that we need and that we especially need now, i must say one more thing about the lesson, because i have a very different view of why wilson's post-presidency, why the piece was such a failure. from the usual view, the usual view emphasizes the league of nations and the structure of treaties and from my point of view, the most important job that was faced in 1920 was to

reconstruct the world economically, financially, especially financial. the first world war was not as economically devastating as the second because the cities of europe were, for the most part intact. but it was financially was all the combatants were monstrous in debt. and there was a cycle of debt where germany, because of the reparations agreements owed debts to france, belgium and combatants, france and italy. the two major allied parties own enormous debts. britain and britain. odets the united states. the united states would not lend very much to france and not little to france and nothing to italy. so they borrowed from britain. britain borrowed, from the united states and and so we had this cycle of debt that that could only be managed if the countries of europe and especially ran massive trade surpluses with the united states, if they ran massive trade surpluses, then they could service their debt. and you could have a kind of you could get the cycle of financial stability and growth. so the first thing that happened when wilson lost power and he

wilson's party lost power was his successors imposed rounds of tariffs in 21 and 23, which made it impossible for the war ravaged countries of europe to export to the united states, especially germany, which made it difficult them to service their debts, which meant the only way they could get the dollars they needed for, food and for investment was by borrowing. and that built that added to the cycle of war debt, the cycle of civilian of the 1920s. and this was the kindling out of which the great depression burst into flame. so wilson didn't think about those kinds of issues. he was not a financial, but he did understand the importance of trading and freedom and. that was something that americans had not understood before. wilson when it didn't matter. so much and was something they forgot after. wilson it made the difference between financial stability and great depression, between the second world war and some kind of peace. and so we need help. we need we need it. we need his mistakes. we need his example. we need his lessons. we need his vision. and so for the 15th that that's

not the president we need to know about. now, he's a president that up whose message for our time is much more compelling than that number would suggest. thank you. the risk of you considering is a parlor game. i consider wilson as well to be a true visionary, but i to know how you would recommend in terms of him being president, you had a wonderful little six minute synopsis there about collective security. yeah, that, of course, many of the united nations about it adopted 30 years later. he was way ahead of his time. you could say the same thing about fdr regarding social services. you can. this is part of a broader human. how do you rank in terms of being christians and a president who sort of was out of place, was trying to get everybody to focus on something that was important, that seemed to face that many years later. well, i think the most precious thing about them and are many passages from his speeches where you can see this is he was

developing this idea that the what had gone wrong in the 19th century was a quest for security on the european continent. bye by competition, probably army upon, army, navy, gates, navy, each trying to be the biggest, the strongest, and each looking for security that way in each, of course, of the end, discovering only insecure rity, culminating in catastrophe. and he had a vision that maybe if we all pooled our security with, we wouldn't need all of these armies, navies, to feel secure if we had more trust. and so that was his prescient vision. i mean, the particulars of it, like the league nations, was not his idea. he had not been that keen on it at the beginning and one of wilson's deficiencies was in many ways it was much more favored the league by moderate republicans like taft, like william howard taft and elihu root than it was by wilson and democrats and. wilson somehow managed to alienate all the potential supporters of his project by his

intransigence and his other his other character flaws. but i don't see the league was not the answer. people in the 1940s who value the united nations more highly than it would prove. look very highly of the league. i to my mind the two great visions where there are aspects of the league that work more like nato was, a collective security organization, not a world talking parlor, and and then this idea that free trade was going to be a tool, peace as well as a as well as a tool of economic well-being. um, in your article, you briefly mention american midnight also, but could you talk a little bit about what you thought about the book and yeah, i found it very difficult to read where well, other books and not yeah. well. i mean he did a great job

reviving the suffering of many people who were in history. and there were stories he told that i think were harrowing and that deserved be told but i had to i two main problems of the book the first was if you read the book all the way through not really a book about woodrow wilson but the publicity matters are about woodrow wilson. and so what? so what you have is wilson had warned one of the reasons wilson was so reluctant to go to war was that wilson understood the culture of hysteria that grows up in wartime and, what and this is a phenomenon of american history of the i think americans who don't know their own past will say what happened in the oppression in 1918 was uniquely a uniquely harsh. and that's not true. that's not true. what what happened? it was very much in line with what happened during the civil war. it very much in line with the even worse domestic repression that happened during the american revolution, which

histories were written by the winners and the super winners. so i spent my summers on a road called loyalist parkway in ontario, and they remember. but. but the the the level wilson knew that this repression coming and he dreaded it. and many of the incidents in the book are entirely about state and local officials or corporate corporations unleashing violence on union leaders. it has nothing to do with him and and in the america of 1917, the president even if the president had wanted to do about it, the tools didn't exist to do anything about it. and my other problem with the book is i think it fails to reckon with the severity of the what was unleashed by the anarchists, the communists and other domestic terror groups of the period that they weren't that the people who were so reactive, so heavily in 1919 were not reacting to nothing on

wall street. a bomb went off in 1919. that was the worst domestic terrorist attack killed. i forget how many people, but the worst until the attack on oklahoma city in the 1990s, bombs were sent the attorney general mitchell, a pacifist and a quaker was radicalized when a bomb detonate ended in his house and nearly killed his wife and young, young children around the corner. from your the bolshevik revolution of 1917 was a rightly appalling and terrifying thing that that of course people had been through the destabilizing experience of the war want to ensure it never ever in their own countries where they imagined it could. so so i don't think so. hochschild has a review of the response, but he neglects the stimulus that created the response and he allows he does not do this himself, but he allows, the unwary reader to attribute to to wilson personally things were happening because of the climate of fear. much of it justified.

i'm going to what part of part of your article? a part of the text of your article is this idea of looking back. yeah. at at these world personages and then developing a completely different opinion to the point of as you point out, changing names in schools and so forth. do you, through this process, do you have a thought on how people who have these concerns can express themselves without tearing down? yeah the past? i would say i have one word of advice about how to interpret the figures of the past. it is humbly so right now. i've been on a bit of a reading kick about the career, life and career of josephus daniels, who is, of course, woodrow wilson, secretary of the navy, and there's a biography of him from the university of north carolina. he wrote a couple of memoirs. i wrote the memoir or the memoir of his service in mexico. so daniels is known to history because by the accident that he

was the secretary of the navy who abolished the rum ration in the u.s. navy and and to cope to compensate for the abolition of the rum ration he the policy of free unlimited cups coffee which until then sailors had had to pay for. and that is the origin of phrase a cup of joe. it is named for him. um. because he was. he was a strong teetotaler. so josephus daniels was the liberal's liberal of the first third of the 20th century. he was an adversary of corporate power. he was a, he was an exponent, always of more reform. whatever wilson was, he wanted to do more. he wanted to go faster. he was always worried that wilson was too cautious, so conservative. he gave franklin delano roosevelt his start. roosevelt's. he was the only man. what franklin delano roosevelt ever called boss when franklin delano roosevelt was assistant secretary of the navy josephus daniels, and promoted roosevelt in force, reward was appointed ambassador mexico during the aftermath of the mexican revolution, where he urged a very conciliatory approach to

nationalization of american property and american oil companies, where he urged the mexican to authorize visas for -- fleeing europe and where he advocated he privately abdicated the states should arm the spanish republic, but at a minimum that mexico should open its doors to refugees. the spanish republic, a liberal liberal liberal in 1898, as a young newspaper editor, josephus daniels personally incited the racist pogrom that that in wilmington, north carolina that destroyed black political power. the state of north carolina killed maybe 60 people, may dozens homeless and he did it knowing the full malice of what he was doing. and he remained to his less forcefully in later years than at the beginning. a segregationist so how do you understand this? now, one way to understand it is he was partly good and partly bad, but if you want to understand it historically, he would say it was possible for these things to coexist in people. and one of the examples i give

in the longer article, because today we say, okay, want to interpret people on on the matrix of where they stood on particular issues. many of the people who are the staunchest voices of equal rights black americans in the 1890s were bad in other ways, and i cite the example of henry cabot lodge who wrote the strongest black voting rights bill that was ever. that was advanced between reconstruction and the 1960s. the lodge, when he was a member of the house, the lodge bill of 1890 something, i think 1890 zero. i forget he was a powerful advocate of black voting rights. he also connived in, covered up and excused an appalling massacre in. the city of new orleans of italian italian people were accused of a political crime, were acquitted by a jury lodge. they were then the mob was formed. it said the jury was acquitted them because of mafia influence. a crowd broke into the cell and lynched a dozen of these people.

and lodge defended the lynching as salutary. and of course, was very anti-semitic and of course was a tremendous reactionary in all kinds other issues. so the world, the past looks different. and the lesson i would take from this is to understand that to the future. the world of the present will look different and a lot of things that cohere naturally in. the politics of today, a lot of things that seem to make sense will look arbitrary and continue it from the point of view of 50, 80 years from now and a lot of things that we think of as forward looking and noble and and humane are may look very different. you know that i think there are many of today that will that will look, in my opinion, quite ill 50 or 80 years from now. and advocated by some of the most conscientious and humane and progressive people there are so hum, judge, not lest you be judged or show that the compassion that you want from the future show to the past and i think one of the things that makes american history such a

benign and supportive force in american life is there are many countries where i studied the french revolution. people are still arguing about, you know, danton versus robespierre or, you know, napoleon's coup that are people in the 2020s are partizans about events of the 1790s in america. we until recently we tended to teach everybody who was good and we were everybody was great. we have this thing called the founders. and the fact that they disagreed and often hated each other, you know, we they get blurred together and that that is a contribution to create that we the americans have used their often in often blurry knowledge of the past to build national unity in the present. and i think that that is something that you don't want to overdo it. you do want to be alive to the differences between people and, you know, sophistication and, detail and your knowledge of the past and not flattening all the people of the 1780s into this

seem homogenous group of founders who agreed with one another, but also not using not weaponizing the past, not using it to attack your country in the present. you know, this is a pretty amazing society in which to live. and none of us in this room built it. we all inherited it. so we owe gratitude to those built our lives alive. oh three so clearly we don't often talk of that. yes, you do write right the right you know i'm in you mentioned comic yeah and this vision going forward because this is europeans are freaking out yet you know whether or not trump gets reelected that this whole idea of native you know the whole wilsonian vision going forward. do you have faith in it? do you see if it will continue, do you see how it would be implement it? yeah. i mean, we're all you know, rolling the dice that trump won't get reelected.

but how do you speak to keeping it alive in our generation going forward? well, it's a strange irony of history that, although wilson did not literally coined the phrase america first, he was the first politician to use it. he used it in his campaign of 1916. and what he meant by it was that he was offering a middle path between what he saw was a wall street and a republican party that was too attached to england and ethnic lobbies in the united states especially, he would single out the germans. he did not say the irish, but he had them very much in mind. although they're such an important part of the coalition, you could never say anything about it. but that's what he was thinking of. who are to anti-british and he want to say, we a middle path that is neither too pro-british. no too anti-british and that is america first. and his slogan was then by the america first committee of the 19 4041 period to mean either neutral ism or outright sympathy with fascism. and then it was used by donald trump to mean whatever criminal project donald trump had. you know that.

so, so. but trump trump trump is so ignorant of his debts that he doesn't pay them and he's ignorant of them. he doesn't understand that he owes a debt to woodrow wilson president his supporters are probably most despise. but what would say you say, do i believe in this? i believe as you know more than i believe in anything i says, this is the if there's if there's if i'm going glug glug glug down with the ship, it's collective security and free trade. that's what i'm going glug glug down, down, down are those are my two fund. i mean i will everything else i is contingent subject to change you know you negotiate hate it with those two things because you know the the lesson that people should have learned from the first world war before the first world war, there was this idea that great powers balanced other there's this balance of power and the balance of power would remain stable just through

me and that was true until it stopped. it was never all that true and it stopped being true. and some american thinkers who hate wilson like, henry kissinger, have tried to revive and, glamorize and legitimize and do revisionist history on the success of the balance of power. but even in the 19th century, there's war upon war. war, many of them, especially on the and war, the franco-prussian war, the wars in spain. i didn't keep the peace that well but it never worked as well as what we've had since 1945, which is that one power become so that it says to the others, we will give you your security for free, free and. you don't need to worry about. we will protect you. you can focus on other. you don't have to fear your neighbors because of your in france. you don't need to feel fear. germany. germany you don't need to fear because neither of you can possibly act without. if we say no. and and the result was donald trump always said it. it's it's such a defect of the

post 1945 system that germany doesn't pay for an army anymore and japan doesn't pay for navy. so that was not an oversight. it was not a design defect. that will japan. you don't need a navy anymore. give you the security. you concentrate on something productive germany. you don't need an army to your neighbors. you concentrate on something. we will provide the security and under that ambit of security we had this extraordinary era of world economic growth. again, not without wars and conflicts. and when the trump you is an america can be selfish and it can be domineering. and the others will have no choice but to submit. but that's not what happens in history when a great power is selfish and domineering. it calls into being a coalition of others that that defeated. you know, one of the great questions in american domestic history and it's a question that has resonated through all of through so many is why did the

roman empire fall? americans as the architecture of the city proclaims, americans identify with rome and they've inherited a historical tradition that said rome fell because of a lack of virtue, there was some internal defect. yeah, my own view has always been the roman empire fell because it became aggressive toward all of its neighbors, that the neighbors invested in building more competent societies, the so-called barbarians who became that they formed kingdoms, they acquired roman level military technology, they copied roman drill, they mastered the romans could do. and then they drove them down because the romans were a threat, because no matter how strong are you're never as strong as all your neighbors put together. and what donald trump is inviting is doom for united states. he's inviting a world in which everybody combines against america and what wilson in his stumbling way with his many mistakes offered, was a world in which everyone looked to america and everyone said, this is a great the americans are offering us. and their power is our security and therefore we welcome their

power. donald trump envisions a world in which everyone fears american power and our and and an american power becomes a threat to their security. and they then combine the united states sooner or later to go one second. before i do, i, i do hope that what you just said you will have an opportunity to repeat in a greater public fashion, because i think not enough people in the united states understand the significance of what you've just described as to the relationship. the united states with other countries, the world, and the contribution, a result that the united states has made to keeping the world a much safer and and freer place. i think that's a great idea. i'll do just that. good parts of woodrow life, presidents are very public and parts of it are more private as a student of wilson's history, i've combined a couple of things related to that, and i think it's interesting that the time

when he was falling in love with his second wife, the woman who would become his second wife, was also the time of the sinking of the lusitania. and so he was he was in that spring, you know, like a person and again, sort of in love and with the possibilities of love and facing this horrible beginning of world war one in europe and think it's interesting to think how those influences affected in sort of a lasting way. he was i think the weakest that he made the telegram to the germans saying you know you can't sink our boats and then theodore roosevelt was like oh he sent a telegram, a strongly worded telegram making a joke out of it. but that was same weekend that he was beginning a love affair in letters to his second wife. and it's interesting to me that that weekend i mean he was with the second wife when he got news

of the lusitania sinking. and then they were having a date in rock creek park and said, i have to leave you now. you go write a speech, want you to give to the congress about the lusitania. it's all very commingled in his personal life. and i just thought was interesting and maybe inviting should reflect on his personal life. and as it relates to his public as well. well that is a fascinating reflection. the part of his personal life that i think about the most is not that lovely, romantic, but his for his profound capacity, for quarrel, quarreling and hatred and that he he if he would form these very occasional intimate male friendships which would always end with them offending him in some way, somewhat serious, like the falling out he had with his friend at princeton. sometimes much less so. and then he broke the person and never spoke to them again and refused any reconciliation. and i think that that is the

outlook of someone who's going to be a great peace negotiator. there's a story told about franklin delano roosevelt. i've never quite been able track it down, and i have a bad feeling it may not be authentic, but it's so it's it feels so that it should be authentic. but i won't, i won't do the build of the punch line of the story. is that an, an aide says to is cautioning roosevelt against indulging some vindictiveness and roosevelt franklin says to this probably apocryphal story. are you telling me that the president of the united states cannot indulge teeny weeny little personal animosity and the aide in the story? no, sir. not even one. and that whether it happened or not, that's great advice. no personal animosities to what today's problem is. tomorrow's friend, today's friend tomorrow's problem. and you and presidents have problems. they don't have enemies and they

have to absolutely every every enemy make is one less avenue you have achieve success and so on that i think that was that capacity for calling was wilson's undoing he could not he could not especially he was building toward peace. he could find ways to make allies of people who should be allies. and he, instead of splitting the coalition against him. he had a very dangerous for uniting the coalition him and making it even bigger. bigger. and then of course, there was the lack of recognition of his own limits, which is which which is he really should have stepped down in october of 1919. he really should have. and and thomas, who is the author of the two best jokes by any vice. had, i mean, if you can write the man who said what this country needs is a good five cent cigar. i think there were depths in that man and at least as deep the depths in harry truman and

and and sorry and wilson really should have stepped down and again how would the history of the world be different better if he had recognized, you know, i'm disabled and i need to concentrate on my recovery and i need to be it's not the modern day. you don't have to be. you're not as forced as you are in the tv and radio and social media to be as candid. but he has his ill was not concealed. people knew about it and it had a real crippling effect. and many of the worst abuses i was in the palmer raids and things like that happened while the president was disabled and i think it's quite doubtful whether he was even aware them, much less, much less what would have happened had he tried to stop. but i do want to make one comment about the love letters. they're really worth reading reading. i take your point about equality. uh, woodrow wilson and, his negotiating skills, but anybody who could write letters the way he was writing to his future wife, there's an aspect we have to that's looking into.

but this is not my question, which will come in second. but i do want to point out that i think most have a problem with recognizing their limits and their flaws. i think that's sort the of wall street territory. but most human beings. yes. but mostly for most human beings, it doesn't affect everyone. lots of people. um, i, this is not so much who. first, i want to go back to your sort of fairly impassioned statement, free trade and. i, i'm sorry, and collective security. i mean, if donald trump were to drop dead of cheaper than this sort of system tomorrow, you still an entire republican party which is i mean, the fact that for example which does not believe in that is more even worse things they you the fact that they cannot themselves together to give money to ukraine the fact that they cannot get themselves together to make any criminal what's

going on in the middle east and effective in terms of dealing with that situation regardless of how one feels about one side or the other and it you know i mean it's sort of like this disease that has spread down into the body politic. and what happens it's not so much what happens whether or not even if trump loses, we're still dealing with this for a generation. well, i. i am to lapse here into general punditry, because we have this wonderful room and this wonderful setting. but what point to is the problem of personality and in history that there are a lot of people especially there are very strong antiwar partizans who want to say donald trump didn't matter. and all these things that are happening the republican party. now, i'm not saying you say that, but there and and i but if donald trump agrees, if donald trump had if the attorney

general of the state of new york had been vigilant about financial fraud a decade ago and donald trump were incarcerated in 2016 then, i think things would have been i don't have many of these ideas. they would have been there. they would got purchase on the robert f kennedy's and, the alex joneses. but if if hillary clinton had won in 2016. and and then republican had won in 2020 as likely would have happened. i don't think it's been any question with the attitude that person, whoever that person was would have been toward a russian attack on ukraine. and there would be no backing in in the congress, whether it was republican or democrat. i mean, you have solid majority for 80, 80 ukraine. i so donald trump introduce this now how the path out will be different because now that outlook has grip on the republican party. a number of people have become convinced that it is key to their future and you and russian

propaganda has gotten a hold inside the parliamentary, not just on the, you know, tock lunatic fringe, but on the but but within the parliamentary republican party, especially in the house and even in some of the senators. so it's a real it's a real problem. but the way back. with the public administering the lesson that is so richly merited here. and the thing i want to point out to people, when they get frightened is donald trump flew into the presidency in 2016. if you look at the vote, the presidential elections of the 21st century, the 20, 20, 26, two major party candidacy time, that's 12 of those 12 people, donald trump ranks 10th and 11th in a share of the popular vote. only john mccain running the midst of the worst financial crisis since the great depression and the worst military trauma. vietnam only. as for a third term of his party only he did worse. trump got than john kerry less

than mitt romney than hillary clinton less than al gore. trump then proceeded to lose the house of representatives in 2018 to lose the presidency by 7 million votes in 2020, to lose the senate. of his insistence on making the senate a referendum about 2020. he won in 2022. the republican party, the worst midterm up and down the ballot for the out since the 1930. it's really because it's not they do so badly in the house of representatives and. lose a senate seat and lose to governorships. they lose four state legislative chambers. i don't think that has happened since since the thirties for the out party. and i think they're heading toward driven as much by abortion as by trump's personality, heading toward another shellacking in 2024. and i think at some point they it's not that these defeats are not collective security and free trade, but the kind of people will and the kind of lessons learned will be strengthening for the people who believe in

collective security and free trade. i hope that's okay. yeah. would just like to ask a little bit about his legislative accomplishments, but just we haven't talked about yet. how much did clinton as a president influence by congress pass and first term or would any of enable to pass the same bills? the federal trade commission, the federal reserve, so on and so forth. and did he shape the presidency going forward in relationship to congress? yeah. so it's a a fascinating question. so wilson, this is now going to be an opinion because we're talking about counterfactuals. wilson was not a hands on legislative. he was not a driver. he was not like lyndon johnson pulling the levers of power in congress. so his great domestic achievements in the first term were the of congress. but that congress only existed because wilson had won the election of 1912. and when you say could any

democrat have done it well who are we talking because the range of ago because wilson had his most important political achievement was the party his party was really a very reactionary party that was uninterested in these kinds of domestic reforms and was very nervous about the idea of a national bank. if there's one thing that defined what it meant to be a democrat for the hundred years before 19, the creation the federal reserve as you were against this kind of thing so so much of his party was too conservative, too jeffersonian. and the people who were not the bryants were too terrifying, too respectable opinion. and it seems kind of bizarre. but brian was thought of as a kind of a wild man. i mean, a dangerous radical and a threat to property and civility and wilson was, somebody who'd come from the conservative wing of the democratic, had opposed brian. then, thanks to his first wife, who was also a very deft political manager for once in his life, was not quarrelsome

and won the support of brian in time for the election of 1912. and so we well, no other democrat would have been in that very likely no other democrat could have achieved the coalition that he did. and is reassuring to more conservative minded voters. but lobbying is driving for more progressive minded voters as he was. so i don't it wasn't that he was working, although he spent more time on capitol hill than any president before and and more than most sense but i don't think he was really making the deals but what he did was achieve a united that could do it and create the coalition that would find a way to solve a problem like the federal reserve, which i won't waste your time here. but why? it was so such tiny little eye of a needle to thread those days but and the solution they came up with which was really messy and of crazy and which we're still struggling with, is why does that both the board of governors and presidents and and the governors higher than the presidents. how does that make any sense but

in the end here that was the price for champ. but if clark had won the nomination in 1912, none of this would have happened. i, i wonder if i could say to peter and ask you and you are very welcome to define the question about three. are you didn't you can tell me? no, i didn't. you know, i mean, is it a question about wilson or would be? yeah. about you. let's talk about wilson, if you don't mind. yeah, yeah, not quite. yeah. say yes. my question is to, what degree, if any, do you think are now several military beginning with vietnam. iraq, iran, etc. etc. has

contributed to this america first dissatisfaction with engagement with the world and a lack of interest in nato and etc. yeah, if you believe this has influenced politics to what it has to, it has to have done because politics is influenced by everything that happened before and the iraq experience, although i think it's more complicated than the way americans choose to remember it, but the way americans choose to remember it is is complete, is great discouragement to being active in the world and especially in the middle east. so we went through but you see these cycles that korea very discouraging americans were used to wars ending with the surrender ceremony, the deck of the battleship missouri and then korea, which ends in a kind of stalemate. and it takes long time for americans understand, actually, we sort of want and, you know,

we we save the part of south korea that we started with and turned it into a successful and the same thing as vietnam is vietnam was a searing experience more terrible than iraq. but americans recovered their self-confidence and their willingness commit. and i think after iraq recovered self confidence. and think of wilson as as it is going to count like we're 5 minutes away from that of the the the air version of me. and i think that that would have happened after after iraq and still will i think for reason i remember talking to an important european politician shortly after donald trump elected and i said, okay, believe the united states will get through this, but will you ever trust in

europe, the united states ever again? and this politician said, yes, we will, because we don't have any choice. and and what happens? we go through the cycle of of overconfidence and under confidence that we believe we can do. we try something it doesn't that something doesn't work out and then we believe we can do nothing. and then we reminded that if the united states does nothing, the world system doesn't balance itself. and then the clamor others and. i think one of the harms done by donald trump is that. with slight, slightly better management and slightly better because there are some mistakes by the biden administration the ukraine could have won its war by now, or at least in fact, it's so much pain on the russians that we would be negotiating very favorable terms if there had been a success in ukraine in 2023 or even this time in 2024. i think that would gone far to remind americans of, yes, you had a you know, just as vietnam was succeeded by the military of

the eighties and nineties. so iraq was succeeded by these. and so you're on this you're on this bandwidth between, you know, overconfidence, which is the product of what america feels good about, and then withdrawal, which leads to catastrophes, which, of course, which has the world some in america back because there no stability without american guarantees and there was a question that the regulatory state that you remarked on a few moments ago survived for over 100 years, survived and thrived, notwithstanding legislative sniping and the disapproval of george will it now appears to be maybe at jeopardy at the supreme court. yeah and i wonder if you could comment that so so. so we're talking about a case that is pending that there's pending for the supreme court that will take up the question of what is called chevron deference. chevron name for the oil company. so this is an important supreme court case in the 1980s where

the supreme court of that time, a conservative republican majority, said when an administrative agency does something, the court should show a lot of deference to that agency. and that is it looks like it's about to be overturned. and the courts are going to give a lot deference to the administrative agencies. now, i personally would very much like to believe that there is more to the story than in the eighties. republicans said it to win the presidency and be weak in the courts. and in the 2020, some republicans had to lose presidency and be strong in the courts. i would like to believe there's more to it than that, but i do not, in fact believe there's more to it than that so. so i think but i think they're going to it's going to be like striking down roe versus they're going to strike down chevron. and then everyone is saying, my god, what did we just do and the question i would invite anyone who's on the republican side who's thinking about the benefits of getting rid of chevron so how often do you, a member of congress want to vote against have a vote on the degree flammable permissible flammability of children's.

because the correct to that question is not zero. right? we don't want to say no children's pajamas should ignite under any circumstances because then they're going to be made of lead. so you want to say you want to have them be very rare, but not zero. but when you vote for the standard, very rare, your opponent going to attack you that you voted to allow certain number of children to be burned alive. and and one of the reasons you defer all these things to administrative is because every day the administrative agencies make cost decisions that not perfect and that accept some risks and some costs and. the congress doesn't want to have its fingerprints on it, and they make millions of these decisions. so, you know, how you know the how how much how many particles per million of paint must a painter's facemask intercept before saving seven? does congress want to vote that to the federal courts?

want to have hearings on all of these matters? don't think they do what would roberts is really heading toward is look, we want is the right to strike down administrative actions that we personally don't are sick. so that's what we most of them are just going to go through fine and everyone this can be one that's going to bug us and we want to have we want to have the power to stop it. i just don't i mean, that's what they're going to do. but i think later courts are going to rapidly discover when we said we want to have that power, really actually we were mistaken. we didn't mean and we don't want to use it very often. we're going to find some way think chevron in some other form is ultimately going to return because what has happened, it all just looks so crass and because it is crass and opportunistic. yeah, of course. wilson had a first wife and smart daughters. yeah. so can you address the issue of his very slow reluctance to support voting rights for women? yeah. um. and the second wife also maybe

too smart for her own good like that because she was the one who said, well, there, there are two options here. either he resigns in front of in favor marshall or i become president and and however much david from will enjoy the five cent cigar joke in my opinion i am much better than the marshall and so i'll have the power and that was probably a hazard. my reading of that was it started with his romantic victorian ideas of what women were like and and over idealization that also had it as a form of evangelization. but as the issue became more and more i think it was about his determination to balance between the briony eat the urban and the southern wings of his party. he was looking for a sweet spot between those because the the western radicals course wanted votes for women and indeed many the western states had votes for women long before the federal

level did. as you know, the southern conservatives were interested in votes for women if they could racially coat it because they thought here is a way of recruiting a larger of white votes. if if you could make sure that the women voted were white, but the big city machines hated votes for women. and so wilson was just looking for, i think, the time he was president. he he was not thinking about this anymore within the sentimental way that, when he had said some of the really malevolent about voting for women, he said earlier in his life, this point, i think he was about is all about his task of balancing interests within a party. you know, as you all know, the moment wilson's gone from the scene, that party rips itself to shreds at the convention of 1924, where tammany southern conservatives and western progressives take 100 plus ballots to agree a candidate and then lose in a then and then split over whether the party. should condemn or not the ku klux klan. it was a it was always a very unstable and so he was very cautious about balancing those

kinds of issues that could blow apart as coalition coalition says. well, actually, it was a follow up on the chevron deference. and so you seem to be suggesting that the court going to reach a conclusion that future will correct or at a right perhaps, but like, doesn't the supreme court have the to process the very that you were just putting in this audience and find a way to skate on chevron deference and kind of leave it. yeah pretty much into what john roberts who is has had a long on hating chevron deference and wanted to get rid of it. so i think that's a real crusade his but yeah will they will they punt altogether. i doubt it because i think he wants it i think he wants the ability to intervene in select regulatory matters and and i mean look, he's a very smart man and he's probably anticipated. but i don't think. you think you anticipated then the flood of regulation. i think you had no idea how many

of these there were. and many are going to be heading not just to the supreme court, but to every one of the lower federal courts and soon you're doing nothing but reviewing the flammability of children's pajamas, the permeable liberty of painters, masks and nothing else gets done. and so i think they will they will overreach initially as as they did on on. dobbs then over time, the courts will ways to get this stuff off their docket because they won't want to do it. and that's the thing about the whole thing about the administrative state and there's a right wing school of criticism of the administrative state that, you know, there's a lot of articles about this and some of them are quite but, you know, you can say, look, you can be serious about this and say what we're going to do is get rid of modern society, not have flat flammability standards for children's pajamas. you can try that and see what the voters of that or you can say, well, you can say, oh, we're going to try to have like a modern society, but get congress to pass all these standards. good luck with. that and or are eventually going

to fall back on. we need something like administrative agencies because they're millions of tiny decisions government means needs to make somebody has to be some standard congress doesn't want to do. the courts are incompetent. the voters will not accept that it not be done they're not going to live in the 19th century. they want the children's put out pajamas not to burst into flames flames. and so you need something like this and there's no way around it except with very eloquent non specific articles in the claremont of books. you know, i'll just give you a very quick example. yesterday, epa put out put out their rulemaking on pbs, you know, four parts per trillion. yeah, you know this congress wanted this idea that far 4 trillion is too much or too little. yeah, i think. is there a question back here? yeah, i think this might be the last question that took to where we'll take these two. we'll start with you, sir, and then we'll go to the back as the last question. yeah one small correction, the 19th amendment, almost all new

for the former confederate states, except for vermont and connecticut, which said afterwards, yeah, famously, mississippi probably got around two years for women during the reagan administration. but yeah, they're urban machines. the tammany i just oh, no. yeah. and we have a question in the back, please. oh, yeah. you mentioned that. first of all, i agree with the point you've made in several books, trump is a clear and danger. and there's no doubt about. but you tied him to an america first to the idea that there's going to be a challenge america coming countries are unhappy with how what we're doing and we're doing it but isn't the the real come from russia and china

and and that is 20 plus years old and i didn't see where that really tied trump maybe you could explain that yeah look look if you want to do is balance china without war. it seems to me that that your policy looks something like this to simplify it a little the first thing is you want to always alive the possibility of a better relationship, the hand of friendship must always be out. even as you prepare for it, you prepare for the worst, but you never give up, hoping the best and most important, you never give up publicly asking for the best. and so that means a smiling face to turn toward the world. and at least you know on people, to people things and that's not to say that you are gullible about it, but you recognize that you know tough talk is an insidious thing and you end if you if in the olden days we

wouldn't the cbs local affiliate in schenectady to be owned by a foreign state. the idea that the ticktalk is owned by a foreign state is something that you know, the united states has a legitimate right to to stop. but you never give up on that. you don't provoke and quarrel. you mean you drive the other party into being the quarrelsome party? and then second, you just for china, you have the same view for is we we tried very hard with russia in the 1990s. we did do that. there comes a point where it becomes impossible but you try and china is trying to sell you especially try because i personally haven't given up hope that the chinese could yet find a positive path forward. i mean, the achievements in reducing poverty and development these great things that have made the human race happier and better and talked about of millions of people who are better off. so that's a real thing. but the second thing is you look at the map, you know, china's strategic problem is it's surrounded by all these islands that hate and are locking in its navy and want as many of those islands to be as friends of

yours as possible. and that means avoid trade wars with those on that string islands or peninsulas from korea down to vietnam and thailand and singapore. you want to be on good terms with all of them. and what do those countries have to do? they have to export live. so that the trump trade policy is completely at odds with the with this supposedly the trump security policy. and there's another thing that you also have to do and and that is what is being this very day with the visit of the chinese prime minister to washington dc is unlike in europe and asia, the united is japanese. i'm sorry, what did i say? chinese. i'm a japanese. sorry. okay. so they went to black salt, by the way, for lunch yesterday. if any of you had trouble getting around, that's. yeah, that's why i said. i was going on. yeah, well, look no accounting for taste. yeah. japanese prime minister always

wanted to go, i guess. i don't know. i. it's washington. it's not new york, but in europe, the united states built a network of societies each which have relationships each other. whereas in asia, the relationships are bilateral. there's u.s., thailand relationship. there's a us, japan, there's a u.s., korea relationship. and these relationships do not mutually reinforce one another. and so one of the big jobs that for a 21st centuries to try to make those relationships more mutually reinforcing japanese are working very hard on building it. u.s., japan, philippines trilateral relationship and and the korea puppis is going to be very difficult but very important and all of that the great danger to all that our trade our trade barriers because the one the thing that will allow you to bring into being some kind of common pacific balancing system against the worst possibilities. china is if all of these countries understand we all want a relationship with the united states is we want to sell to the united states and and right and

that's the best hope for breaking out of this series of multiple bilateral relationships which the united states has right now, which fine but not as good as what could be so i think that look, there are things that republicans can learn from democrats and democrats can from republicans. democratic foreign policy tends to be too clever, complicated for his own good, and it can sometimes use a good dose of bracing simplicity and republican foreign policy can be too simple for its own good and can sometimes use an injection of democratic complexity. but the trump policy took the the republican virtue vice of some of its to a dangerous extreme. it just wasn't going to work. it was only going to make enemies and a as the united states is, it needs friends, too. and real friends. i think we can.