It was a little less than a century ago that Woodrow Wilson suffered his disabling stroke. He was on the presidential train on a siding near Wichita, Kan., in the midst of his exhausting cross-country whistle-stop tour. He was trying to sell the League of Nations to the American people over the heads of the U.S. Senate and Henry Cabot Lodge. If Twitter had been available in 1919, Wilson might have skipped the tour, avoided the stress, and escaped the stroke.
As the tragedy played out, Wilson was more or less confined for the rest of his second term to the twilight of his sickroom, protected from visitors except for carefully arranged audiences meant to fool Congress and the public into thinking that all was well, or anyway not so bad. For 16 months, First Lady Edith Wilson, presidential physician Cary Grayson and private secretary Joseph Tumulty in effect exercised the powers of the presidency.
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