Free The Illusion of Victory by Thomas Fleming Page B

Congress, Wilson’s long-deteriorated relations with the press and the oncoming 1920 elections. The secretary’s attitude grew even more negative when he discovered the men Wilson had chosen to take with him in the American delegation.
    Tumulty—and many other Wilson men—saw this delegation as crucial to their hopes for an enduring peace. A treaty would have to win the advice and consent of two-thirds of the GOP-controlled Senate. Tumulty urged Wilson to include at least one prominent Republican in the delegation. He proposed Elihu Root. Along with being the grand old man of the GOP, Root had been secretary of war under McKinley and secretary of state under Roosevelt, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize for improving U.S. relations with Latin America and Japan—and a public backer of a league of nations. Wilson dismissed him as too conservative. 5
    Attorney General Gregory, one of the cabinet members most dismayed by Wilson’s midterm election appeal to the voters, next told the president there was only one way to repair the political damage inflicted by the November disaster. He had to invite not one but two prominent Republicans to join the peace conference delegation. Gregory gave him the names of two senators, one a former secretary of state, and four other prominent members of the GOP, including Root and former president Taft, who was also a supporter of a league of nations. Wilson rejected them all. 6
    Instead, Wilson chose Colonel House as one of the peace commissioners, a gesture that needlessly elevated his alter ego to official status, ruining the role he played best, backstairs negotiator and adviser. Secretary of State Lansing was included because the British and French were bringing their foreign secretaries. Since Wilson already disliked him, Lansing was worse than useless from the start. As a third commissioner, the president chose General Tasker Bliss, a faceless nonentity to most Americans. Like House, Bliss was already in Paris and could have served just as well as an unofficial adviser. For a Republican spokesman, Wilson selected Henry White, a genial old man with long diplomatic experience—but who had been retired for ten years and had no political power whatsoever inside the GOP. 7
    White’s choice infuriated the Republicans. William Howard Taft said he was “more of an Englishman than an American.” white had never played a part in the councils of the GOP. Much of his adult life had been spent abroad. In the Senate, the Republicans expressed outrage and opposition in scathing oratory. There was talk of sending a committee of senators to Paris to report on the peace conference independently.
    George Harvey, one of Wilson’s earliest backers, was now publishing a weekly devoted almost entirely to criticism of the president. At one point during the war, there was a serious discussion at a Wilson cabinet meeting about suppressing the publication. Harvey contrasted Wilson’s delegation to President McKinley’s choices for negotiating a peace treaty at the end of the Spanish-American War. He had chosen two prominent Republican senators and the leader of the Democratic minority.
    Harvey put Wilson’s choices in three columns to underscore their insignificance.
Woodrow Wilson
President
Himself
Robert Lansing
Secretary of State
The Executive
Henry White
None
Nobody
Edward M. House
Scout
The Executive
Tasker H. Bliss
Soldier
The Commander in Chief
    In short, Wilson had appointed himself four times. 8
    Henry Cabot Lodge praised Harvey’s assault, but urged fellow Republicans not to attack Wilson’s decision to go to Europe. He was sure the trip would add to the president’s political woes. He also did not object to the choice of Henry White, who was a personal friend. Instead, he persuaded White to meet with him and other GOP senators and made surethe elderly diplomat conferred with Elihu Root and Theodore Roosevelt as well. Lodge gave White a long memorandum on his own peace ideas. He dismissed a