Henry Cabot Lodge and the search for an American foreign policy

Henry Cabot Lodge has often been depicted as an almost one-dimensional figure, a man whose actions were dictated entirely by personal vindictiveness and intense political partisanship. This intellectual biography traces the evolution of Lodge's thinking about foreign policy and relates his political stands to his ideas. Professor Widenor shows that Lodge held and acted on a fairly consistent set of beliefs concerning America's role in the world. Those beliefs, which had their origins in Lodge's Federalist sympathies and which the author dubs "the Rooseveltian solution," had a strong idealistic component—a conclusion that invalidates the usual distinction between a "realistic" Lodge and an "idealistic" Wilson. No student of American foreign policy, whether "Wilsonian" or "Rooseveltian" in sympathy, will be able to view either the debate over American entry into World War I or the struggle over the League of Nations in quite the same light after reading this book.