Perhaps the greatest source of historical misconception about Woodrow Wilson is the methodological compartmentalization of his mentality into two distinct components, the “moralistic” and the “realistic” or “commercialistic,” as if they were discrete and mutually exclusive. From this point of departure, if one thinks or acts “moralistically,” he cannot be considered capable at the same time of thinking and acting “realistically,” at least not consistently: If one is a “moralist,” his political behavior can be considered as deriving only secondarily, if at all, from an understanding of, or a serious concern for, the affairs of political economy.

According to this approach, wherever Wilson is perceived to have spoken or acted for the “little man,” “democracy,” “liberty,” “individual opportunity,” and the like, he was “liberal” and moralistic; wherever he is perceived to have spoken or acted for corporate interests, economic expansion abroad, and the like, he was “conservative,” “commercialistic,” “expedient,” or realistic. Where Wilson supported measures promoting large corporate interests at home or abroad, he is considered to have forsaken his moralism, to have been driven by political expediency, personal egoism, or implacable social and economic forces, or to have gathered the unintended consequences of a misdirected moralism. In this view, Wilson the moralist is generally considered the true type, and Wilson the realist, the deviant.