AHC: Woodrow Wilson Wank

Your goal, is to wank the Wilson presidency as much as possible. Ideas...

-Earlier entry into WWI
-A milder Treaty of Versailles, WWII prevented; OR getting to the other extreme, have a harsher Treaty of Versailles, Wilhelm II convicted in Nuremberg-style trial and executed by firing squad. :eek:
-Get the US to join League of Nations
-A more effective League of Nations
-No stroke during his second term, survived beyond 1924
- A third term in 1920
- 4th term in 1924, or even a 5th term in 1928 :D
- 1929 wall street crash managed better or prevented; no Depression or only a short recession

or, having him altering the system fundamentally :

-As an academician he seemed to favoured parliamentary system for the US. Get him to change the presidential system in the US to a more parliamentarian one like in the UK :p

Happy wanking!
 
Have him die in 1914, and Thomas Marshall takes over. Much better guy for the presidency at the time, and butterflies those nasty interventions in latin america and Russia, and the first red scare that made people utterly despise him for 30 years.
 
Upon Ellen Axson Wilson's death in 1914, Wilson himself enters extreme depression. Days go by after her funeral when he is not seen outside the White House. And inside, things aren't much better. He sits at his desk, barely able to rouse himself to any sort of activity at all, staring out the window.

In the meantime, the situation along the Mexican border worsens. Secretary of State Bryan is fundamentally useless, apart from making a few pious proclamations. Frustrated, Secretary of War Garrison orders a punitive expedition to secure the border and capture Villa if at all possible. Led by General John Pershing, US forces invade the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora, conducting systematic searches for Villa. Reward posters offering sizable sums of money-more than enough to make any of the locals comfortable for years-go up. It would seem the US may be on the verge of accomplishing the objective when Wilson, roused briefly out of lethargy by Bryan, calls it all off, orders Pershing to return, and fires Garrison. Within two weeks after US troops return home, the town of Nogales, AZ is burned to the ground, while the corresponding town of Sonora, Mexico, is untouched.

In Europe, war began in late July 1914 after the assassination of Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Wilson pays little attention to the events apart from declaring that the US should be neutral and take no sides. Secretary Bryan, in a speech at Louisville, declares that America should remain behind "the great moat of the Atlantic". In a move to demonstrate strict American neutrality, Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels orders all US ships in the Atlantic to return to their home ports immediately (a move that has assistant secretary Franklin Roosevelt seething). Between them, Bryan and Daniels draft a policy wherein the navy becomes a glorified coast guard.

By early 1916, the nation is getting fed up with this approach with Mexico and the moat mentality formulated by Bryan. Charles Evans Hughes wins the Republican nomination, and chooses Herbert Hadley as his running mate. Wilson does little on his own behalf, leaving the campaigning to Bryan and others. But that experience does little good: Wilson, labeled by many as "the ghost in the White House", is swept from office in the 1916 elections.

He returns briefly to Princeton but finds too many memories there. Finding a post as president of the University of Virginia, Wilson moves to Charlottesville in late 1917. However, the depression that seized him in 1914 still has a grip, and he is not much more than a figurehead. On 22 September 1918, he suffers a massive stroke while at his desk, and is dead within 24 hours.

To this day, Wilson is looked on as a classic "what might have been" figure. The best guess by many historians is that he would have been a competent president during peacetime, but the problems with Mexico and the situation in Europe could have had a counterbalancing effect. Overall, historians generally agree that he probably would rank somewhere in the same neighborhood as James Polk at best.
 
His stroke kills him, and now President Thomas Marshall pushes entry into the confirmation of the Treaty of Versailles and entry into the League of Nations in memory of their fallen leader. With a stronger leader in the White House than groundwork is laid to prevent those reforms and policy initiatives from being pulled out after 1920. Wilson's legacy is secured and it makes it harder for him to be dismissed by future generations.

I have a google doc sketching this out for an actual in depth TL that I'd want to pursue.
 
His stroke kills him, and now President Thomas Marshall pushes entry into the confirmation of the Treaty of Versailles and entry into the League of Nations in memory of their fallen leader. With a stronger leader in the White House than groundwork is laid to prevent those reforms and policy initiatives from being pulled out after 1920. Wilson's legacy is secured and it makes it harder for him to be dismissed by future generations.

I have a google doc sketching this out for an actual in depth TL that I'd want to pursue.

People would still hate Wilson for his interventions, causing the red scare/doing nothing to stop it, and the espionage and sedition acts. There are reasons why the election of 1920 was a landslide, Wilson had brought the country closer to a police state than any of his predecessors.

But America as a member of the league of nations would be very interesting...
 
A few thousand votes in California to the other way, and Wilson loses the 1916 election despite winning the popular vote. Then, by 1920, Hughes is unpopular, Wilson is "the rightful winner of 1916", and he beats Hughes in a landslide. The 1920s economy is as good as OTL, and Wilson gets reelected in 1924.
 
Top