Member of the wilson house Advisory Council. He was appointed on february 21st in in 2018 to be ambassador. Extraordinary. And plenipotentiary of the United States to the gabonese republic and to the democratic republic of and principe. He retired from the Foreign Service in january 2020, having served since 1987, and he joined, our Woodrow Wilson house executive or Advisory Council and it has been really a pleasure to have him on with us doing our diplomatic chats and of course tonight being a moderator for the discussion with mr. David frum. He is the author of ten books, most tropical trap trump apocalypse restoring american democracy. That was published in 2020. His first book, dead right, won praise from William F Buckley as the most intellectual experience in a generation and from rich in the New York Times as the smartest book written from the inside about American Conservative Movement in the national review. He was hailed for his history of the 1970s. How we got here as an audacious act of revisionism, written in a voice and style so original it deserves be called a revolutionary. In her review of frums 12 novel patriots, Arianna Huffington said frum is someone who fearless fully speaks his mind regardless of where the chips may fall. So its no hes able to convey so much truth in his fiction. His memoir of his service, the George W Bush administration, the right man, was a york times bestseller, as was his 2018 book. Trump foresee the corruption of the american republic. David frum has been active in republican politics since his the first Reagan Campaign of 1980. From 2014 through 2017, he served chairman of the board of trustees for leading uk right, a center right think Tank Policy Exchange from. 22001 to 2002. He served as speechwriter and special assistant to president bush. He holds a b. A. And an m. A. In history from yale univ or c and a law degree from harvard, where he served as president of federalist society. So with that, welcome our speaker and our moderator. Thank you. All. Thank. I almost never speak from a prepared text, but i was assured that this would be a very lively audience. So i undertook to keep my opening remarks to minimum 6 minutes and i wanted to be able to time those 6 minutes. So i wrote it out to be sure that i hit the mark. Also, as some you may know, this talk was postponed. Weve had some very sad events in my wife and i and my familys personal, so im not quite at my best and again, i thought id better have the backstop a written text, you know, and im failing to operate the microphone. These 6 minutes are going to address the same question that my editors at the atlantic posed to when i told them two years ago that i would like to write a piece for the 100th anniversary of the death of president wilson, which is why would you want to do that. Why bother . And so this these 6 minutes, im going to devote to the question of why i bothered, then we can go into whatever other topics you wanted. Why did i bother Woodrow Wilson once ranked among the greatest of american president s surveys of historians in 1948 and 1962 rated him fourth after washington. Lincoln, franklin roosevelt. Harry truman lavishly praised wilson. Richard nixon wilson so much that he used what he mistakenly believed to be woodrow. Woodrow olssons own desk as his own. In fact, the socalled wilson desk. The white house inventory was so named for henry wilson Ulysses Grant second term Vice President , but nobody had the nerve to tell nixon that over the past two decades, however, wilsons once lofty reputation has collapsed his name has been scrubbed from schools and other places of honor, including at princeton, the university. He almost single handedly, elevated from mediocrity to greatness. Now many of the charges levied against wilson are true. He was an antiblack racist. His administration did impose a much more formalized and radical segregation upon the federal workforce. He failed to act against the wave of pogroms that convulsed American Cities in the summer of 1919, just in the city of chicago 38 dead, two thirds of them black, hundreds injured, maybe 2000. Who lost homes again, almost all of them black of the greatest challenge on the greatest challenge of his presidency, the First World War, the wilson record is mostly one of failure over the in 1916, wilson tried to negotiate a compromise peace between the allies and the central powers didnt happen. He to prepare for the war. He opposed he opposed the war so declined to prepare for it so that when war did come in april 1917, the United States, his leadership was unready result. The United States did not begin to field significant forces in the First World War until some midsummer 1918, 15 months after wilson declared war. By contrast, within 15 months of the american entry into the Second World War, the United States had won the battles of midway and guadalcanal and stood on the verge of clearing all axis forces from north africa. Wilsons peacemaking fared even worse than his war, making the treaty of versailles and the league of nations. I recall today, as monuments to wrecked hopes and doomed ambitions. So why raise a voice against against the condemnation of later generations . Heres why. The generations that elevated wilson, the people who worked. On the scene and active from the 1940s to the 1990s perceived his as acutely as we as we do. If anything, they perceived those failures more acutely since they had personally paid the price in blood and suffering for the failure of peacemaking in 1919. But they also understood it again much more acutely than we. What wilson was trying to do during Woodrow Wilsons presidency. The United States, the greatest of the worlds great powers. How should that power be used . Some americans of wilsons day believed that the power should not be used at all. Such americans like wilsons former secretary of state William Jennings bryan, wanted the United States to set a moral example to the rest of the world, but otherwise remain apart from that rest of the world. Other americans of wilsons day wanted the United States to use its new power the way other great powers had used their power before by building great navies, amassing colonial empires, and generally asserting Americas National interests on Americas National terms. This was the view of wilsons fiercest republican adversaries like Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. Wilson almost among the leading figures of his day, recognized something that brian roosevelt and lodge could not or would not see the something he recognized was a truth that has wisely guided the United States from the time of Franklin Delano roosevelt until only just a few years ago, modern technology had shrunk the world to small. The first of the lesson he learned was that modern technology shrunk the world too small, and americas interest in that world had spread too wide for the United States ever to achieve security by standing apart as people like brian wished. On the other hand, countries that sought security by dominating others as imperial germany tried in 1914 would only surround themselves with multiplying numbers of enemies. The pursuit of security domination was an inherently selfdefeating enterprise, even for the mightiest nation. Wilson foresaw that the United States could find security for itself only if it delivered, securing for other like minded countries. America, American Power. It would be resented and sooner or later and overthrown if it served only ends. American power would be accepted and reinforced by allies. If that power contributed to the welfare of others, americans and their partners and would achieve collective security or they would enjoy no security at all. This is a lesson that the americans in the 1940s learned through pain that they sought to teach to the next generation. That the americans of the postwar struggled to apply and the americans of the 2020s are once again arguing over. Woodrow wilson gained fame in the first place. As an educator, his greatest contribution as president was educational to he himself was unable live the lesson he taught. That happens often enough in education, and it does not detract from the truth power of the lesson. Woodrow wilson wrote more memorable phrases than any president after abraham lincoln. To my mind the most important phrase to clark, his typewriter was this from war message of april 1917, the world must be made safe for democracy. I invite you to weigh those words in your mind for a moment and. Then think what . He did not write. He did not write. The world must made democratic. He would. He did not write that because the proposition have frightened him as delusionally utopian. But nor did he write. The world must be made safe for americans because that claim would have would have offended him as dangerous. Selfish. What concerned most with this war hating president so reluctantly and and often incompetently took his country to war for was to preserve the possible liberty of Democratic Development for all peoples who saw it in full awareness of the sacrifice that preservation could cost. Thats a message that todays americans again need urgently to hear. The crass and narrow nationalism that dragged the worlds most advanced into the First World War and then thwarted projects to prevent the second that self harming stupidity stalks us in the 2020s from moscow to beijing to tehran to palm beach. Enemies of democracy are discovering common interests and common purposes. We return to the legacy of Woodrow Wilson not as a manual, but as an inspiration and a warning of the hazards of other paths than his. So. Thank you so much. This not only did you write a fantastic piece in the atlantic, but now elaborating on it really gives a lot more substance. And we appreciate very much so what were going to do is give you all a chance now to participate and benefit from the knowledge, expertise that david has on on this topic. And as he already indicated, any other topic you might have and my job will be to make sure that every one of you who wishes to partici speak gets an opportunity. So i ready see one hand. So lets lets get going. Yes, i can volunteer to submit a one month. Six weeks ago the New York Times had an article about it and association of historians writing president s and wilson was 15th with 16. Where would you say he should be . Or how do you view the i dont know. If you read article or the survey. So ive never liked this parlor game because i dont understand quite what it means because what it implies is that theres some way to rate the skill of a president apart from what the president sought to do and thats not completely nonsense, is such a thing as managerial expertise in the presidency, and some president s are better at it and some were worse. But then you the fact that probably one of the most incompetent managers among all the president s was Franklin Delano roosevelt. So if if we downgrade, probably certainly the most important of the 20 century, but probably one of the i think most people say one of the three or four most important. But he was a terrible manager, Herbert Hoover great manager. So i you cant make this game value and then what youre just doing is smuggling in your values by another name. So i dont want to play the parlor. What i would say is i wilson had many of execution and he tended to, um, because his intellectual facilities were so faculties were so enormous. He tended to be unaware or indifferent to the skills he did not have the lack of executive background is his lack of skill as a negotiator. He tended to underwrite those and he made it because he didnt understand so well. He made serious, serious mistakes like traveling to europe to negotiate the peace treaty himself. Anyone has ever bought a car, understands the value of having the in the back room. So the idea that you would go europe and be the negotiator yourself, that was was reckless. So yeah, in many ways a poor administrator, many the stories about segregation that were those were those were not actually wilsons own initiatives initiatives of other people who were important to the Democratic Party who had got him the nomination and whom he then negligently let run their departments any which way. Not clear that he was opposed the segregation project, but nor was he as enthusiastic about it as, say his postmaster was, or Josephus Daniels of the navy department. So we had a kind of hands off approach that served him ill very often. So i dont want to play the parlor game, but what i the thing i want to insist is that theres something in this presidency that we need and that we especially need now, i must say one more thing about the lesson, because i have a very different view of why wilsons postpresidency, why the piece was such a failure. From the usual view, the usual view emphasizes the league of nations and the structure of treaties and from my point of view, the most important job that was faced in 1920 was to reconstruct the World Economically, financially, especially financial. The First World War was not as economically devastating as the second because the cities of europe were, for the most part intact. But it was financially was all the combatants were monstrous in debt. And there was a cycle of debt where germany, because of the reparations agreements owed debts to france, belgium and combatants, france and italy. The two major allied parties own enormous debts. Britain and britain. Odets the United States. The United States would not lend very much to france and not little to france and nothing to italy. So they borrowed from britain. Britain borrowed, from the United States and and so we had this cycle of debt that that could only be managed if the countries of europe and especially ran massive trade surpluses with the United States, if they ran massive trade surpluses, then they could service their debt. And you could have a kind of you could get the cycle of Financial Stability and growth. So the first thing that happened when wilson lost power and he wilsons party lost power was his successors imposed rounds of tariffs in 21 and 23, which made it impossible for the war ravaged countries of europe to export to the United States, especially germany, which made it difficult them to service their debts, which meant the only way they could get the dollars they needed for, food and for investment was by borrowing. And that built that added to the cycle of war debt, the cycle of civilian of the 1920s. And this was the kindling out of which the Great Depression burst into flame. So wilson didnt think about those kinds of issues. He was not a financial, but he did understand the importance of trading and freedom and. That was something that americans had not understood before. Wilson when it didnt matter. So much and was something they forgot after. Wilson it made the difference between Financial Stability and Great Depression, between the Second World War and some kind of peace. And so we need help. We need we need it. We need his mistakes. We need his example. We need his lessons. We need his vision. And so for the 15th that thats not the president we need to know about. Now, hes a president that up whose message for our time is much more compelling than that number would suggest. Thank you. The risk of you considering is a parlor game. I consider wilson as well to be a true visionary, but i to know how you would recommend in terms of him being president , you had a wonderful little six minute synopsis there about collective security. Yeah, that, of course, many of the United Nations about it adopted 30 years later. He was way ahead of his time. You could say the same thing about fdr regarding social services. You can. This is part of a broader human. How do you rank in terms of being christians and a president who sort of was out of place, was trying to get everybody to focus on something that was important, that seemed to face that many years later. Well, i think the most precious thing about them and are many passages from his speeches where you can see this is he was developing this idea that the what had gone wrong in the 19th century was a quest for security on the european continent. Bye by competition, probably army upon, army, navy, gates, navy, each trying to be the biggest, the strongest, and each looking for security that way in each, of course, of the end, discovering only insecure rity, culminating in catastrophe. And he had a vision that maybe if we all pooled our security with,