The Poltergeist of Woodrow Wilson

Richard Nixon wanted Woodrow Wilson’s old desk brought out of storage and into Oval Office .

Frida Ghitis : We still live with the consequences of Wilson 's fuzzy thinking.

She says Wilson should be remembered for his foreign policy, not his retrograde views on race.

Ghitis says Wilson was a romantic idealist whose ideas weren’t fully formed or fully formed.

Frida Ghitis: Wilson 's vision for the League of Nations was not well thought out.

She says Wilson failed to see reality of the way the world organized.

Ghitis says Wilson was incapable of compromise, and his inability to deal with Republican gains cost him.

He says Wilson 's ideals were resuscitated in the wake of World War II , reincarnated in organizations like the United Nations .

Wilson himself seemed to understand the stakes, telling one Senator in 1918 : “I am playing for one hundred years hence.” More than a century later , it can be argued that, far from losing, Wilson ’s ideas have won out—and we are largely the worse for it..