A Lesson In Political Dysfunction Between The World Wars

The period following the first world war was disastrous. It was a period of slow economic growth in much of the world, and it led to the rise of Hitler in Germany.  The US was the largest creditor nation at the end of the war, and it was in a position to dictate the terms of the peace agreement.  President Wilson had to choose between a plan proposed by Keynes, which is described in this article, and the Versailles treaty.  It was not a good position for a US president to be in.  He knew that Congress would not accept the Keynes plan, but Congress was also likely to reject the Versailles treaty.  He chose to reject the Keynes plan, which might have enabled the allies to recover from the war, and it gave Germany and other nations a chance to restore their shattered economies.  We know what happened following that decision.  Keynes wrote a book which predicted the disasters that followed.  It became a best seller, but political dysfunction determined the outcome.  Our political systems have difficulty dealing with hard problems.