120 e lusive v ictories
believes he spoke for the people of the United States and more broadly
for the entire world, only to be undone by politicians at home and
abroad who sought instead their own narrow interests. On the other
side are those who insist the president might have achieved most of
what he sought, but his self-defeating personality attributes, specifi cally
a stiff -necked refusal (magnifi ed by his ill health) to compromise with
those who opposed him, led him to throw away a rare opportunity to
transform America’s international role.
I suggest that he gravely underestimated the diffi culty of the peace-
building tasks he set for himself—vision without awareness of obstacles
does a leader no credit. At the same time, his rigid approach exacer-
bated a problem all wartime presidents face when fighting ends:
Congress moves quickly to restore the institutional balance with the
White House that war has tipped in favor of the Oval Offi ce.
Peace-building preoccupied Wilson from before the United States
entered the war through the November 1918 armistice. In comparison
with Lincoln, who deferred postwar planning to the end of the Civil
War, with unfortunate consequences, Wilson appreciated that Amer-
ican involvement would be justified by the kind of peace he could
fashion. Not only did he articulate a transformative agenda for postwar
order but his administration also promoted it both at home and abroad.
Th e Creel Committee, for example, engaged in vigorous international
propaganda activity, making certain that Wilson’s speeches about the
postwar international order and self-determination received wide
notice.
In addition, the president and his aides did not take it for granted
that things would fall neatly into place once the shooting stopped. Th ey
understood the unsettled conditions and social turmoil that the war
had provoked across Europe and beyond. Under Colonel House’s over-
sight, American experts from various fields had started as early as
September 1917 to prepare reports (called the American Inquiry) about
the many territorial and governance issues that would have to be
confronted at the end of the war. Wilson stood confident as he
prepared to attend the peace conference in Paris in December 1918 that
the combination of American military and financial power, global
public opinion, and the moral force of his vision would assure a suc-
cessful outcome.