The evils of his second term far outweigh any accomplishments (of course this is subjective on whether or not you believe said accomplishments were good) he achieved in his first term. Getting the US involved in wars it had no business being involved in (cue the OMG BUT THE GERMANS WERE MILITARISTIC NATIONALISTIC WAR MACHINES WHO WANTED TO INVADE EVERYTHING ON THE PLANET AND MUST'VE BEEN STOPPED FOR THE SAKE OF DEMOCRACY! poster), suspended civil liberties at home, made his own voter base targets (German Americans) for government endorsed discrimination, segregated the Federal Government (well, that was happening in the first term as well), appointed Alexander Mitchell Palmer as Attorney General (arguably his worst crime), his unwillingness to negotiage on the League of Versailles with Congress (it really needed reservations), giving Free Republic supporters the finger after giving his word he would bring up Irish Independence at Versailles, jailing Eugene V Debs, arresting people who protested World War I etc. etc. etc.
And this is just the stuff I thought of off the top of my head.
Woodrow Wilson was rightfully regarded, at the end of his day, as his generation's equivalent of George W Bush. Given his impressive HP resume, I would agree with the summation. For those of you who are like BUT BUT INCOME TAXES! BUT BUT FEDERAL RESERVE! BUT BUT PROGRESSIVISM! I will say that anybody and their grandmother who would've been president from 1913-1921 was just as likely to sign those into law. Let's not act like it was pure Wilsonian ingenuity that got those into law or that without Woodrow Wilson those laws would've never happened. Hell, Wilson RAN as the pro-business candidate ("If America is not to have free enterprise, he is not to have freedom of any sort.") and ended up going the opposite way of what his campaign rhetoric indicated (except on tariffs, which he did reduce).
However, while the accomplishments of his first term could've been passed (Income Tax was a holdover from Taft, who was also a lot more zealous on trust busting than he is given credit for) by most electable nominees, there is a very serious argument to be made that none of them would've done what Wilson did in his second term (well, maybe Roosevelt, minus the whole segregation of the federal government bit). Really though, I think this speaks best about Wilson's tenure:
excellent post fleshing out the points I made.. Wilson was kind of a faux "progressive"
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