[Ticonderoga34]

Conrad Black isn't a leftist. He's a Canadian Conservative. In US terms he's more or less a Nixonian. Hence the big book he wrote on Nixon, and hence (maybe) his ending up in prison. As a Nixonian, he pretty much accepted the historical interpretation current in his formative years of Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt as great men. Hence his massive book on FDR and hence this article.

While I disagree with Black about Wilson -- he really does overdo it -- I appreciate that he's bringing a different point of view here that might make people think and reconsider opinions that have become automatic and unthinking lately.

Nowadays it's become as commonplace and automatic to damn Wilson as it once was to praise him, and when that happens, maybe it's a good idea to consider whether we've gone too far

I recall vaguely that Nixon was a big fan of Woodrow Wilson. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it seems like that I read that somewhere.

[Hostage]

Nixon was not a conservative.

[x]

Nixon used what he thought was Wilson's desk (and had listening devices installed in it). Apparently it wasn't actually Wilson's desk, but Nixon didn't know it at the time.

You can read Nixon's remarks on the opening of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars here:

Along with most Presidents of the past half century, I have long been a student of Woodrow Wilson.

Nixon's Quaker mother was a great admirer of Wilson, and he definitely tapped into that. Popular culture in the 40s was saturated with the idea that we could have avoided WWII if only we'd listened to Wilson, and Nixon, like many in his generation, picked up on that notion and clung to it.

A lot of Nixon's interest in foreign policy related to Wilsonian grand schemes for peace building. He wanted to build international institutions and some kind of system to ensure peace, and he saw Wilson as a precursor. Garry Wills's book on Nixon pursues the idea that Nixon was the last Wilsonian liberal.