Woodrow Wilson theorized extensively on what constitutes good government. As the only political scientist who descended from the ivory tower to occupy the presidency, he is a good specimen for political scientists wishing to compare theory and practice in one of their own, and professor of government Brian Cook ties them together to argue that they are relevant to public management today. He has a hard time making something out of this, however, because “Wilson's ideas and practices and their aftermath have left Americans with an ambiguous legacy” (237).

Wilson was intolerant of opposition to what he thought was best for others, worshipping the state as a centripetal force, an organic “higher form of life” which would bring together all the warring and fragmented interests in society in one noble, national purpose – ultimately, war. To the historically aware reader, his vision of the political leader as the “single organ of communication between the whole Nation and the Government which determines the policy of that nation” (48), with administration as its main form of action, ominously evokes how organicism became the “good government” of one people, one empire, one leader in its European home in the 1930s and 1940s.

Wilson also viewed the constitutional separation of powers as an inconvenient and outmoded barrier to effective “modern” government, and came to see the strong presidency as the preferred locus for developing “statesmanship,” or political leadership. This led to growth in the power of the executive, which has continued ever since.

At times Cook seems prepared to admit the extent to which such thinking is alien to the traditions of American political culture which, “especially as shaped by the Constitution, was bound to resist … modernization … through administrative improvement” (198), but his interpretation of how to draw the right line between “state domination” and “unrestrained pursuit of private gain” is oversimplified, failing (or refusing) to consider the ways in which class interests appropriate the state's power for their own ends. “Wilson treated interest-based politics as a sort of delusion that was transcendable under the guidance of the statesman” (46). This book sets one wondering to what extent similar beliefs are shared by public-management practitioners today.

Cook pursues an ambitious ultimate goal, identifying the legislature as the right habitat for reviving an extinct species, the wise man who is at the same time a leader of men. For this purpose, on the evidence the author painstakingly gathers, Woodrow Wilson is not a good exemplar, although Cook, who glosses over the repressive anti-dissent legislation of the Wilson years as “intermittent dark clouds in the otherwise bright sky” of his accomplishments (142), seems very reluctant to dim his evident enthusiasm for “Wilson's political brilliance” by resolving the ambivalent conclusions to which this book points.