I've been hearing pundits call the Bush Admin's style "Wilsonian"

[LittleClarkie]

as in Wilsonian interventionalism.

Hey, historians! What say you? Is that an accurate assessment?

[Fovea]

1. I would say definately Wilsonian

but particularly post-stroke Wilsonian.

[LittleClarkie]

7. Is that when Wilson went a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs

I've been hearing that what Bush is doing now is nuthing compared to how Wilson was. One of my friends seemed to figure that made it okay. Oh well, it's all happened before. That's just how politicians are during war time.

Riiiight.

[jonnyblitz]

2. i believe peggy noonan called him "churchillian" also

i think it was peggy noonan..i could be wrong, I know somebody did in the past. :shrug:

[applegrove]

3. Peggy also called his latest State of the Union Speech "GRANDIOSE".

Psychopaths are grandiose.

[existentialist]

11. I don't know about Peggy Noonan,

But I do know that the neocons are fond of Churchill, and make frequent (in my opinion, unjustified) comparisons with Churchill.

Churchill was conservative, but he was also both decent and smart--I certainly would not consider Bush either decent or smart.

Also Churchill was far from being Wilsonian as discussed elsewhere in this thread. I remember one of his famous quotes:

"The only thing more difficult than fighting a war with allies, is fighting a war without them."

[jonnyblitz]

16. she might have been referring to a particular speech he gave

as being "churchillion", its very vague in my memory. It might have been on hardball with a bunch of pundits after a state of the union address or something..:shrug:

[TahitiNut]

15. More like "chinchillian"

... but without the fur.

[jonnyblitz]

17. lol..

:spank:

[JohnLocke]

4. It's bullshit.

They're trying to compare Wilsonian foreign policy ("We must make the world safe for democracy") with Bush foreign policy ("hey, let's attack random countries!"). It's implicitly comparing World War I and the so-called "War on Terror."

Notice how they never mention the League of Nations or anything...

[LittleClarkie]

9. Or how what we did in WWI lead directly to WWII

I wonder if Iraq will be the new Germany? Let's see if we leave that kind of vacuum. Actually, we already did, in Afghanistan. Let's not help them rebuild or anything. Nah, that won't have ramifications.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. There are a lot of similarities to Wilson. None of them good.

Wilson had a huge hard-on to get into WWI, and harshly suppressed any criticism of that war plan. Some very bad things happened then, things not much differrent from what the Chimperor is up to now.

[existentialist]

13. I also remember that Wilson upset a great many people

by almost entirely keeping the Republicans out of the peace negotiations. It was pretty much "My way or the highway" (though I doubt anyone at the time used the phrase) both at home and abroad. Wilson thought he knew best, and anyone that thought differently would be excluded from the process.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. Yep. Sound familiar?

[existentialist]

6. When they say Wilsonian

I believe that what the historians mean is that they both take (took) the attitude that they absolutely knew what was best, and wanted to cooperate with the world so long as the world looked at things the same way that they do (did), but they are (were) both incapable of accepting that someone else might actually have legitimate reasons to disagree on matters of policy.

If this is correct, then I certainly believe that the Bush Administration is Wilsonian in that sense.

[Alcibiades]

8. It is if you take inconsistency to be Wilson's hallmark

as in when he ran on the "He kept us out of war" platform, only to get us into it a year after the election. Reminds me of Bush's pledges not to engage in foreign wars without a clear reason or exit strategy, and never for nation building, only to get us into a war of choice without a clear reason or exit strategy and then proceed to "nation building" i.e., unwanted occupation.

Of course, to make that comparison, you'd have to overlook the fact that getting into WWI arguably was in the national interest, whereas getting into Iraq certainly wasn't, and you'd have to overlook Wilson's plans to end war through the League of Nations versus Bush's unilateralism.

[pamela]

10. Maybe they mean Mr. Wilson?

:shrug:

[wake.up.america]

12. As inept as Wilson was, I think Wilson, if he were alive, would take...

exception.

[1932]

18. Wilson had to convince the US to go to war.

The war was about shipping lanes, but it was also about fighting for nacsenent democracies of working people (France and the UK) and against monarchy and imperialism.

Conservatives in the US didn't want to fight in the war because they thought there'd be more money in a Europe in chaos.

So, Wilson had to build an argument to overcome that conservative impulse.

So, the difference in the US is that, with Iraq, Bush didn't have to build a consensus to go to war. The corporatocracy wanted it, so he didn't have the hurdle Wilson had. Furthermore, unlike WW1, which was a war to protect nascent democracies no matter what the corporatocrcay thought, Iraq was a war where the money for the corporatocracy was in an imperial invasion that has no intention of creating a real Iraqi democracy (the US wants something like Saudi Arabia, where a lot of oil money goes to hiring US companies to pillage the country with development projects).

[wli]

19. far more Hitlerian than Wilsonian n/t

[ISUGRADIA]

20. Wilsonian too I'd say in the denial of civil liberties

during wartime and patriotic zealotry.

Language too...

WWI:Americans renamed sauerkraut "liberty cabbage"
Iraq War: French Fries "freedom fries"

A good article about the insanity of that time:

http://hnn.us/articles/335.html

" But the 20th century's legal foundation for homeland security was laid during 1917 and 1918 when the United States entered and fought in World War I. Congress passed espionage, sabotage, and sedition Acts to ferret out spies, saboteurs, alien enemies (Germans) and others suspected of disloyalty, including the press and those who opposed the government's policies.

Much as President Bush has asked Congress for more authority to act decisively, during World War I President Wilson took command of telegraph and telephone systems, issued executive orders governing war policies and managed an emergency reserve fund. Wilson and the Congress authorized the Post Office to censor private mail, magazines and movies."