Episode 67 — Woodrow Wilson: Ideas in Power, War on His Doorstep

pplpod Episode 67 tracks Woodrow Wilson’s path from Princeton reformer to New Jersey governor to 28th President remaking the federal toolkit—and then steering the nation through World War I. We unpack the Progressive slate: the Underwood Tariff, the Federal Reserve Act, the FTC and Clayton Antitrust, and a presidency that expanded federal capacity while entrenching segregation in the civil service. Abroad, it’s neutrality tested, “He kept us out of war” undone by U-boats and Zimmermann, mobilization on an industrial scale, and the Fourteen Points that tried to recode world politics. We sit with the contradictions: civil liberties crushed under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, the Red Scare’s chill, and a peace vision that stalled at home as the Senate killed the League of Nations. The final act—stroke, Edith Wilson’s gatekeeping, and the 19th Amendment’s ratification—leaves a legacy both foundational and fraught: a scholar-president who changed the machinery of government and paid for his ideals in blood and backlash.