w aging w ar to t ransform the w orld 129the American people to take his side and perhaps the infl uence of public
opinion on the Senate. Just as important, he failed to take into
account that Congress would reassert its prerogatives in peacetime,
refusing to delegate its authority over the decision to go to war to an
international body. Others shared responsibility for the treaty defeat—
at some point Lodge became more interested in scoring a political
victory over the president than in fi nding a constructive solution, while
Senate Democrats should have followed their instincts to compro-
mise. But the lion’s share of the blame rested on Wilson.
Th e defeat of the peace treaty accelerated the inward turn in Amer-
ican politics. Wilson’s eff ort to alter the popular mind-set to embrace an
expanded global role was curtailed by the short period of American
participation in the war, by his extended absence while negotiating the
treaty (a hidden price of his hands-on role), and by the collapse of his
health. In truth, his rhetoric during the League fi ght had veered toward
panic mongering about the Bolshevik menace and attacks on the patri-
otism of his opponents. None of this did much to promote a new
public commitment to sustain international order. After the Republican
triumph in 1920, Lodge and President Warren G. Harding depicted the
results as a popular repudiation of the League. Th e voters probably
intended no clear signal (voters often do not), but winners frame the
interpretation of an election outcome, so the message stuck. Americans
would return to “normalcy,” as Harding put it, and that included a
refusal to be much troubled by what happened on the other side of vast
oceans.
Wilson as Prism: Revisiting Some Puzzles of Wartime
Presidential Leadership
Wilson’s actions before the United States entered the First World War
cast a diff erent light on one of the puzzles posed by wartime presi-
dential leadership. In a political system designed to check executive
power, how is it that presidents have been so easily able to lead the
nation into war? Earlier I pointed to the key role of presidential ini-
tiative in deploying military forces in a manner likely to bring on a
clash of arms. For instance, once Lincoln decided there was no alter-
native to war against the secessionist South, he sent supplies to Fort