I have three takeaways from this very solid account of General Leonard Wood, a man who was fairly well known in his own time but who is largely forgotten a century later.
First, his forceful personality, arrogance, charisma, and ruthless ambition led to not only his greatest triumphs, but also his most significant disappointments. Wood was blatantly partisan, shamelessly self-promoting, and leaned heavily on his political network. He owed much, for example, to his friend Theodore Roosevelt (Wood commanded the famous Rough Rider regiment). He climbed to the top of the hierarchy as chief of staff of the Army without having attended West Point. His relentless criticism of Woodrow Wilson and his administration's military policies cost Wood not only a combat command in World War I but led him to being banished to training assignments far from the spotlight.
Second, Wood was an able administrator. He demonstrated competency in his various military governorships, as well as army assignments. As chief of staff he initiated many long overdue, modernizing reforms, but his autocratic and divisive personality polarized the army. In the parlance of the twenty-first century, he had "sharp elbows" - in other words, he was skilled at internecine bureaucratic in-fighting. He was not a consensus-builder.
Third, I was a little surprised how strongly he desired the presidency. It was on his mind for at least a dozen years before he jumped into the Republican race for the nomination in 1920. I always assumed that he was really a stand-in for Theodore Roosevelt, who died in 1919. But it is possible that Roosevelt would have supported Wood, without entering the race himself. His campaign echoed Roosevelt's strenuous life, focused on law and order during the Red Scare, and pointed out the Wilson administration ignored his Wood's proposals and made numerous mistakes in doing so. Yet, public opinion changed in early 1920 and those themes lost their resonance as the convention approached.
