We don’t have presidential opinion polling for 1920 or 1921 so we don’t know what Woodrow Wilson’s approval ratings were when he left office on March 4, 1921, but I would wager that if Gailup had been polling the American people back then, that Democrat would have then had approval ratings rivaling those of the currently outgoing incumbent.
One measure we do have is the result of the 1920 presidential election. The year, James Cox, the candidate of Wilson’s Democrats had the lowest popular vote percentage (34.5%) of any major party nominee in a race with no significant third party candidate. He even ran behind Herbert Hoover in 1932 and Jimmy Carter in 1980, incumbents running for reelection during the two worst economic crises of the last century.
Last fall, the candidate of George W. Bush’s party ran a full ten points ahead of Davis.
In 1916, Wilson won reelection with a popular vote margin nearly identical to that of Geroge W. Bush in 2004, though the Republican did win a majority of the popular vote.
While both men, Bush and Wilson, leave office largely out of favor with the American public, both espoused an idealistic foreign policy, centered around the notion of promoting democracy abroad. Compare Wilson’s Fourteen Points to Bush’s Second Inaugural Address. The essence of those points, “free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination” is not much different than the broad outlines of Bush’s foreign policy goals.
History has held Wilson in higher regard than did the American people when he left office. And I daresay, it will offer a similar opinion of George W. Bush. Both led our nation to victory in foreign wars and may well have been undone, in part, by their idealism. Neither will join the pantheon of the great, or even the “almost great” presidents, but neither will they be relegated to the list of presidential failures.
True Presidential failures are few. James Buchanan (predecessor to Lincoln) is commonly cited. Jimmuh Carter. Hard to think of others. Aaron Burr as a Vice Presidential failure.
Your analysis of 1920 forgets that it was the first presidential election in which women were allowed to vote. That probably skews the results since half the population was voting for the first time in 1920.
So, Martin, are you saying that women voted disproportionally for the GOP in 1920?
Not Wilson Presidency, but Weimar Republic. History will remember President Bush as the man who created the conditions for Barack Obama’s rise to power… and hold him in contempt for that, because it didn’t have to be that way.
Are the words “torture” and “gulag tactics” flagged to be filtered?
let’s see.
One little election tidbit. Wilson may be the only winning candidate (in 1916) to not win his home state (New Jersey).
My understanding is that Wilson was fairly antiSemitic as well.
Are the words “torture†and “gulag tactics†flagged to be filtered?
Given that Democrat Party members fully support and endorse Saddam Hussein’s actual and proven use of torture and gulag tactics on a massive scale, refused to enforce, stop, or even charge Saddam with war crimes, and flew to Baghdad themselves to propagandize for and claim that Saddam Hussein did not practice torture, it is proven that Democrats are nothing but anti-American hypocrites who will fully support torture when it helps their leftist allies and when they are bribed with billions of dollars in oil revenues.
Given that Democrat Party members fully support and endorse Saddam Hussein’s actual and proven use of torture and gulag tactics on a massive scale,
Really, NDT? Democrats suck like any other political party in this country, but that’s a bit over the top.
refused to enforce, stop, or even charge Saddam with war crimes, and flew to Baghdad themselves to propagandize for and claim that Saddam Hussein did not practice torture, it is proven that Democrats are nothing but anti-American hypocrites who will fully support torture when it helps their leftist allies and when they are bribed with billions of dollars in oil revenues.
“proven”? You mean it’s not possible, that despite the torture, etc., going on, that people who opposed the war thought (perhaps wrongly) would make things worse?
You mean it’s not possible, that despite the torture, etc., going on, that people who opposed the war thought (perhaps wrongly) would make things worse?
I believe the Obama mantra is that torture is never justified, should never be ignored, and should be stopped in all instances, regardless of price.
What you’re saying is that allowing torture is justified if it prevents the loss of American lives and money. That’s a highly rational position to take, but unfortunately, it’s not the Democrat Party one.
#3 – Dan, from what I recall during my Political History and Statistics class back in the day, the first wave of female voters following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment voted for Warren G. Harding, the Republican nominee on the presidential ballot.
The reasoning behind this sociological shift was that the suffragettes’ rationale that since Wilson (a Democrat) and his administration was dead-set against the women’s vote until after World War I, the newly minted voters would go and support the Republican candidate.
Women, like blacks, would support the GOP until FDR’s reign – uh, I mean administration – when he appointed Frances Perkins as his Secretary of Labor (first woman in a Cabinet position – and not ironically, the last in line to the presidency at that time). Also, his wife Eleanor was another impetus in women supporting the Democrats.
Just FYI.
Regards,
Peter H.
He may be vindicated on foreign policy but his communistic ideals will always be wrong.