It's seven oh six here at fifty five car CD talk station. Happy Monday to you Christopher Smith and coming up in the next segment to the Smith Event. In the meantime, please welcome to the fifty five Carcy Morning show Man. He's gonna be doing it Empower You seminar tomorrow evening seven pm. Empower You America dot org. It's virtual only. All you need to do is go empower you America dot org and just register and log in
at seven pm. Christopher Burkett. He's Associate Professor of Political Science and director of Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on American political thought, including the American Founding and the Progressive Era. Author of numerous articles in his area of expertise, Welcome to the program. It is a pleasure to have you on. Christopher Burkcat.
Good morning, Brian, Thank you glad to be here.
Pleasure and pleasure talking about Woodrow Wilson, probably one of the least liked presidents among my listening audience. We have him to thank for the income the income tax, don't we we.
Do, among a number of other things.
Yeah, So now my understanding is that part of Woodrow Wilson. The presidency really wasn't yet I don't want to say that powerful, but an equal, coequal branch of government. It wasn't sort of like the imperial presidency that we seem to that that he created and and and used and used the authority they office the president to accomplish a lot. Was very activist along those lines. In what ways did Wilson transform the nature of the office that had real long lasting implications.
Yeah, so he of course, Sorry, the Spanish American War had a big impact on increasing the president's powers with regard to foreign policy, But it was really Wilson who who came up with a sort of blueprint or a vision for what the president should be domestically in terms of taking the lead and formulating policy sees and pushing laws,
pushing Congress to pass reform laws. And the unique thing about Wilson, long before he was president, he was a college professor, as you know, and he had been writing about what he thought presidential leadership should be like for about thirty years before he ever became involved in politics. So as an undergraduate student, a graduate student, and then a college professor and president at Princeton, he was really laying out a kind of blueprint for what he thought
presidential leadership should look like. And then, of course he's elected the office, and so he shaped the idea of the powers of the president both from a kind of academic and theoretical standpoint, and then had a chance for two terms to try to put those ideas into practice. So really a unique figure in that sense.
Well, he was an academic, as you know, but it wasn't he, if I can boil it down in a simple terms, wasn't he pretty much full of himself in the sense that he thought x everts in government knew better than what the day to day folks living their lives knew by way of you know, making decisions.
Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah.
So he always claimed that, look, democracy is inevitable. We're going to have democracy in this country. But what you really need to make democracy work is really strong executive leadership, because, as he famously wrote, in democracies, and especially in American democracy, the people are what he called rigidly unphilosophical, which was this sort of nice way of saying people just aren't capable. The people aren't capable of governing themselves.
Well, I just I have a profound disdain for people who have that mindset, my friend, I really do.
Yeah, well a lot of people do. And you mentioned he was described him a sort of full of himself. A lot of people may not know this, but Simund Freud did a psychoanalysis of Wilson after he passed away and found that he was one of the most extreme cases of messianic complex.
So yeah, he was.
He was absolutely confident in his that he was He had this vision of where the United States should go, of what our constitutional government should look like, and he was unshakable in his faith that he could reform transform American politics into this this great vision of of democracy as he understood democracy.
So well, he's also a racist too, I understand he was.
Yeah, And he uh infamously resegregated Washington, d C. In terms of you know, people working for the civil service and bureaus and things. And his argument was, uh, we're just not We're just not there yet, sort of historically we were not ready. We're getting ahead of ourselves. Someday maybe we can have you know, perfect desegregation, and but not yet. So yeah, he was, yeah, not a not a very popular move today.
On Wilson's part, No, I understand a lot a lot of people were really thrilled with his view of women either. I guess he would have been one of those guys that would have denied women the right to drive since he didn't want them to have the right to vote.
Yeah, he was very He was a luke warm is a generous term to describe his his sort of agreement to let the amendment go forward right in it amendment, But yeah, he was. He was not a very strong supporter of that, for the same reasons that he was in favor of segregation. He argued that women just weren't ready yet to exercise political equality. We're just not there yet. So someday maybe, but not in his not under his watch.
So well, I guess. Also interesting from his his foreign policy standpoint was a little different than and transformative. I know, he was responsible in large part for the creation of the League of Nation that was a failed exercise.
Yeah.
So when Wilson, you know, Wilson ran for reelection in nineteen sixteen, and he ran on this platform of neutrality, right, we weren't going to get involved in World War One, And then a year later, he flip flops and said, oh, now we've got to get involved. And I think the reason he did that was because he saw an opportunity if the United States were to get involved in the war, that would give him a footing in the peace talks. Eventually, that would allow him to push for the creation of
the League of Nations. And so when Wilson went over to Paris for the peace talks during the Armistice at the end of World War One, he was pushing to get the League of Nations created. He made a big mistake, which is sort of ironic, given him all the things he had written about what good presidential leadership looks like. He didn't take a single senator with him to the
peace talks, and he didn't take a single Republican. Republicans had won the Senate back in the nineteen eighteen election, and he knew full well the Senate would have to ratify the League of Nations, but he was so calm in his ability to just sort of push things through. He neglected to do the sort of ordinary political legwork and it failed.
Yeah.
Reject going back to Freud's conclusions, Well, yeah, in addition to being responsible for the income tax. He also is responsible for the creation of the Federal Reserve as well.
Right, yeah, yes, Federal Reserve. And he pointed, pointed Louis brandeis Louis Rights as the first chair of the Federal Reserve who went on to be a Supreme Court justice.
So you know, all this got past what was his motivation? I mean, in terms of breaking it down, why was he in favor of creating the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Act in the first instance.
Well, I don't want to get too abstract and philosophical, but Wilson had Wilson had studied in college under professors who had in turn studied and gotten their PhDs from German University, and so they brought back in the eighteen seventies eighteen eighties allowed these German Prussian mode of regulating the economies through pretty strong, you know, powers of the state. And Wilson, I think drank that wine pretty deeply, so
to speak, in college. And so the idea of an unregulated economy was ironically sort of foreign to Wilson, I mean, just made sense that you had to get to regulate these things. But he thought that the Federal Reserve would be a good substitute for a national bank in terms of regulating inflation and dealing with either low prices or overinflated prices for industrial goods. So yeah, Reagan, I'm sorry, Wilson. Is a is all about government regulation of just about every avergect of the economy.
Well, and you got that from the Germans. The only job to have in those days was a government job, right, I mean, every day was part of the government. If you didn't have a government position, then I guess society sort of looked.
Down on you.
Yeah, that's right, Yeah, it it became a sort of manner, a matter of honor. Yeah, oddly enough, again because the Prussians, the Germans, especially the Prussians at that time, were an honor society. And since you could no longer earn that honor through sword fighting, I guess you had to do it by getting a job of the state and the bureaucracy.
So yes, we all know that happened as a consequence of the Prussian bureaucracy collapsed on itself. Anyhow, it's been an interesting little tidbit taste what we're going to get tomorrow night at seven pm. Empower Youamerica, Dot or where Christopher Burkeatt's going to break down more about the what I would argue failed presidency of Woodrow Wilson. I understand his wife, like Jill Biden, took over the affairs after he had a stroke. This was before the twenty fifth Amendment.
Yes, that's right. Yeah, he had a stroke.
And then despite the fact that his wife was basically taking over his affairs, he pushed really hard to get to be a reelected for a third term, but the Democratic Party rejected him.
So, like Joe Biden, there's some parallels to be drawn.
There a lot of parallels. Christopher.
It's been great having you on the program this morning, and enjoy the seminar tomorrow night, and I'll encourage my listeners to again log in virtually. It's so easy to do, and it's so easy to register and empower you America dot org. Take care, Chris, great having any show this morning.
Thanks, Brian, It's gonna be fine. Take care my pleasure. Folks.
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