"I wish there were some great orator who would go about and make men drunk with this spirit of selfsacrifice . . . whose tongue might every day carry abroad the gold accents of that creative age in which we were born a nation; accents which would ring like tones of reassurance around the whole circle of the globe."
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,...