During his first term as president, Barack Obama has been compared to a number of predecessors. The current favorite, of course, is Lincoln, given the hit movie. But whether it's Lincoln or Roosevelt or Kennedy or Johnson, the comparison is typically meant to be flattering, likening Obama to activist presidents seeking a more powerful federal government.
But the most striking parallel is seldom mentioned and terribly troubling. That would be the intellectual and political kinship between Obama and Woodrow Wilson.
Let's begin with a seeming superficiality. Wilson was the only president to hold an earned doctorate degree. While Obama lacks that credential, he is like Wilson an Ivy Leaguer with both an advanced degree and a reputation for intellectual prowess.
Like Obama, Wilson burst upon the national scene. A professor and college president -- as opposed to a professor and community organizer -- Wilson held no elective office until winning the governorship of New Jersey in 1910. Two years later, he won the White House. By comparison, Obama's four years in the U.S. Senate made him a seasoned politician.
Once in the Oval Office, each man based his presidency on a similar assumption, namely that the president, and only the president, represents the general will of the country. Both also presumed that history is moving in a statist direction. Both deemed that what Wilson called the "administrative state" -- or government by experts and bureaucrats -- is a good thing, and both sought to hasten this ever-evolving, and ever-progressive, process along.
The original "Progressive" movement was largely concerned with domestic policy. Wilson confided to his "man Friday," Colonel Edward House, that it would be the height of irony if his administration became consumed with foreign policy, given his lack of expertise and interest in that area.
Well, look what happened. By 1914, the Great War was underway, and by 1917, America was in it. This truly was a watershed in American history. A country peopled by those fleeing European conflicts was now going to send an army to save Europeans from themselves. Suddenly, Wilson was very much a foreign-policy president, and he moved quickly to use his war powers to enhance the very administrative state that he had promoted as a progressive.
What does all this have to do with Obama? Let's hope not much. And at first the parallels seem minimal. In 1914, America was not a world power with global interests. Today it is. Unlike Obama, Wilson assumed the presidency when Americans were just beginning to feel their oats and expand their ambitions. Today, we are tired of the burdens of world leadership.
