Bitter Rivals Henry Cabot Lodge and Woodrow Wilson
Bitter Rivals: Woodrow Wilson and Henry Cabot LodgePolitical rivalries define American government. The dual-party system by nature sets up partisan rivalries between members of all three branches of our government - rivalries that have at times pushed our government to progress and at other times slowed it to a grinding halt. The contrasting backgrounds and resulting political ideologies of Woodrow Wilson and Henry Cabot Lodge created a modern rivalry that defined American foreign policy in the twentieth century. Woodrow Wilson's religious background and academic pursuits shaped his personality into one characterized by impatience. Born in Virginia in 1856, Wilson grew up around strict Calvinist doctrine in the Presbyterian church (Lafeber 269-270). This theology served as the foundation for all of Wilson's endeavors, as he believed he was "guided by God's will" (Lafeber 270). The future President's first career path was law, but Wilson's inability to excel in the field bred in him distaste for the profession. Wilson hastily abandoned any thoughts of being a lawyer and pursued an academic career in political science. His refusal to give his law profession time to prosper represents a larger trend in Wilson's behavi
If Lodge did act out of spite against Wilson and his 14 Points, the result of a newly-intensified personal rivalry was an intentional act made by Lodge to take power away from the President. The rivalry addressed for the first time the role of Americanism in foreign policy and whether the United States has innately superior qualities that entitle it to its large international influence as a world superpower. The rivalry between the two politicians escalated with Wilson's introduction of his 14 Points for Peace after World War I. The different backgrounds from which Wilson and Lodge arose to attain political power led them both to support American entry into World War I but pushed them away from one another in terms of foreign policy after the war's conclusion. The threat of the increasing difficulty in pleasing all of Massachusetts' many peoples forced Lodge to be steadfast in his own. Similarly, the twentieth century has been dominated by the question of America's role internationally - as a "police" watchdog or more concerned strictly with national interests - and Wilson and Lodge's rivalry was the first to address the issue in detail in a twentieth-century context. While Lodge had to fight the "silver-spooned boy" stereotype on the Senate floor and on the campaign trail, he felt immense responsibility to the citizens of Massachusetts who elected him to his seat (Widenor 49). Lodge was "thoroughly disgusted" with this concept, and while his foreign policies were not isolationist (Widenor 318), his foreign policy ideology conflicted with Wilson's over the issue whether America should be "policeman of the world". Wilson also had to concede to make Germany responsible for war reparations and to prevent the country from demilitarizing to gain French approval of the Fourteen Points (Lafeber 321).
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