Woodrow Wilson was widely admired as a writer, a scholar, and an educator more than two decades before he became president. His first book, Congressional Government (1885), criticized the influence of Congress and argued that the president—as the highest elected official of the land—had the authority to set the political agenda of the nation.

Wilson immediately acted on this belief when he was elected president in 1912. He called a special joint session of Congress to spell out his agenda, the New Freedom. He began by concentrating on reducing tariff rates (taxes on imports). When legislation on tariff reform began to slow down in Congress, Wilson called what can be considered the first modern presidential press conference; his suggestion to reporters that big business interests were unduly influencing congressmen against tariff reduction was reported in newspapers and helped rally support for his program from...