“I wish there were some great orator who would go about and make 
men drunk with this spirit of self-sacrifice . . . whose tongue might 
every day carry abroad the gold accents of that creative age. . . .”

    These rousing words of academician Woodrow Wilson 
foreshadowed the role oratory would play in his own political 
career—a career that saw him triumph on his domestic agenda 
largely through his inspirational message but fail in his most 
cherished dream, the League of Nations, when words were not 
enough.

    Robert Kraig’s path-breaking study of Wilson’s political 
philosophy of the oratorical statesman traces the classical 
influences on him as a young man, the development of his full-
blown scholarly philosophy of oratory, and his use of rhetoric as 
governor of New Jersey and president of the United States.

    In the process, Kraig reopens the question of how effective 
Wilson’s effort for international cooperation might have been had 
illness not struck him down.

_________________________________________________________

ROBERT ALEXANDER KRAIG is presently political director of the 
Service Employees International Union–Wisconsin State Council. 
He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.


Number Nine: Presidential Rhetoric Series


What people are saying about this book

"Kraig deftly draws the reader in and delivers an effective apologia for 
a man history has both canonized as a model for future presidencies 
and demonized as a racist and outrageous interventionist."—Rhetorical 
Review, June 2006

"Scholars interested in presidential rhetoric should not hesitate to 
purchase Woodrow Wilson and the Lost World of the Oratorical Statesman. 
Kraig has done a masterful job of using a wide variety of primary 
documents to support his claim that oratory was a, if not the, crucial 
component in Wilson's understanding of a national leader."—Quarterly 
Journal of Speech, November 2005