31: 1. The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson and the Split over the League of Nations David Pietrusza 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents The 1920 election followed President Woodrow Wilson's debilitating stroke in October 1919, which left him perpetually frail. The
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🗓️ 27 October 2025
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Summary
David Pietrusza
1920: The Year of the Six Presidents
The 1920 election followed President Woodrow Wilson's debilitating stroke in October 1919, which left him perpetually frail. The core issue became the League of Nations, which Wilson championed but the Republican Party bitterly contested, ultimately causing public skepticism. Wilson held fierce opposition to former President Theodore Roosevelt, who died in January 1919. Roosevelt had detested Wilson's neutrality regarding German aggression. Despite his frail health, Roosevelt would have been the unstoppable Republican candidate had he lived. Wilson reacted to news of Roosevelt's death with shockingly hateful language, revealing the depth of his personal animosity toward his predecessor.
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| 0:00.0 | 1920, the year of six presidents. I welcome David Petrucia, historian of this and presidential elections on either side of it, but this is the election of 1920. |
| 0:11.0 | And it begins with the tragedy. It is the night of 1st October, 1919 at the White House, 1st October to 2 second October. The first lady, Edith, hears a sound, |
| 0:27.5 | and she rushes into the president's bedroom. He's sitting at the edge of his bed, |
| 0:32.3 | Bordra Wilson. He's reaching for a glass of water, but can't quite manage it. Why? Several days before, a stroke comes to him, and he's been raced back to the White House from a speaking tour. |
| 0:45.3 | He needs help to get into the bathroom. His wife helps him, and then she rushes to the phone to call Dr. Grayson, |
| 0:53.3 | because something's happened to the president, something in addition. |
| 0:58.5 | She hears a thump, and she discovers Woodrow Wilson, unconscious on the floor of his bathroom, and helpless. |
| 1:06.0 | I welcome David Petrucia to help us tell this story of from that moment, everything changes in American politics. |
| 1:15.6 | Woodrow Wilson is frail the rest of his life. |
| 1:18.8 | He dies in 1924. |
| 1:21.0 | But his legacy at that moment becomes a dominant story in the election of 1920. |
| 1:26.8 | And every election since then, because it's about the election of 1920 and every election since then because it's about |
| 1:30.3 | the League of Nations. David, congratulations and a very good evening to you. The League of Nations |
| 1:37.3 | at that moment, what was it to the electorate looking to the campaign of 1920? What was it to the Republicans? What was it to the Democrats? |
| 1:46.9 | Good evening, David. Well, it's a bunch of things to a bunch of people, to that fellow on the |
| 1:54.8 | bathroom floor in the White House, Woodrow Wilson. It's the Alpha and Omega. It's the big issue. |
| 2:00.5 | It's his, it's his crusade in Europe, as Dwight Eisenhower would title a book a few decades later. |
| 2:08.2 | To the other parties, particularly the Republican Party, it's a vexation. |
| 2:14.2 | The party is split very badly because you've got the isolationists who want no part of it under any way shape form or reservation. |
| 2:26.3 | There are the reservations who say, well, we could go in if you tweak this and we didn't have to be bound to go to war over Ireland or Mesopotamia or Montenegro or somewhere. |
| 2:38.2 | And then there's the all-in guys who say, |
| 2:41.7 | where for Wilson and where for internationalism and where for it end to war. |
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