We cannot afford to put up any longer with such legislation as we may happen upon.
Woodrow Wilson
The Public Record
Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, he was born in Virginia and raised in Georgia before moving to New Jersey, where he became a prominent political figure. Wilson was a key leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for reforms such as antitrust legislation and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. His presidency is also noted for significant events such as the United States' involvement in World War I and his efforts to promote the League of Nations, an international organization aimed at preventing future conflicts.
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We must have legislation which has been definitely forecast in party programmes and explicitly sanctioned by the public voice.
Instead of the present arrangements for compromise, piecemeal legislation, we must have coherent plans from recognized party leaders, and means for holding those leaders to a faithful execution of their plans in clear-cut Acts of Congress.
What, now, are the new problems which have been prepared for our solution by reason of our growth and of the effects of immigration?
The establishment in the United States of what is known as ‘ministerial responsibility’ would unquestionably involve some important changes in our constitutional system.
It is thus that, whilst all real power is in the hands of Congress, that power is often thrown out of gear and its exercise brought almost to a standstill.
Being held off from authoritative suggestion in legislation, the President becomes, under ordinary circumstances, merely a ministerial officer; whilst Congress, on its part, deprived of such leadership, becomes a legislative mass meeting…
The prerogatives of the Crown are still much greater than the prerogatives of the presidency; they are exercised, however, not by the wearer of the crown, but by the ministry of the Crown.
They are efficient because we are above all things law-abiding.
But there is not in England the same certainty as to what the law of the constitution is.
But once thus compacted and embodied, our nationality is safe.
The only way in which we can preserve our nationality in its integrity and its old-time originative force in the face of growth and imported change is by concentrating it; by putting leaders forward, vested with abundant authority in the…
These problems are chiefly problems of organization and leadership.
We have not simply to conduct, but also to preserve and freshly adjust our government.
But we must reckon our power to continue to do so with a people made up of “minds cast in every mould of race,--minds inheriting every bias of environment, warped by the diverse histories of a score of different nations, warmed or chilled…
Events which are fuel to the passions of one section may be but as a passing wind to another section.
A merchant’s shipments do not multiply because he studies history.
A man’s farm does not yield its fruits the more abundantly in their season because he reads the world’s news in the papers.
Activity of mind is not necessarily strength of mind.
Is he better able to judge because they fill him with a delusive sense of knowing everything?
We have had abundant experience of our own by which to reckon.
This is sovereignty:--to sit at the helm and steer, marking out such free courses for the stanch craft as wind and weather will permit.
Politics is the life of the State, and nothing which illustrates that life, nothing which reveals any habit contracted by man as a political animal, comes amiss in the study of politics.
View society from what point you will, you always catch sight of some part of government; man is so truly a ‘political animal’ that you cannot examine him at all without seeing the points--points of his very structure--whereat he touches…
Approach the life of States by such avenues, and you shall be convinced of the organic nature of political society.
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