One German publication actually referred to Barack Obama as “President of the World.”  That’s heady stuff.  For an American politician to get that kind of response in Europe is remarkable.

But it is not unprecedented.

Ninety years ago another American received the royal treatment on the continent.  His name was Woodrow Wilson and he became an international hero, at least for a brief and shining moment.  Within days of the signing of the Armistice ending The Great War, the man who led our country into a war to make the world safe for democracy crossed the Atlantic to become president of his world. 

As Mr. Wilson’s train arrived at the Hoboken pier in New Jersey on the morning of December 4, 1918, a great crowd gathered to wish him a safe and prosperous voyage.  A band played the national anthem as the George Washington set sail on the ten-day trans-Atlantic voyage.   More than ten thousand people viewed the scene from a distance in lower Manhattan.  They wanted to witness history.  You see, not only was the chief executive going abroad to save the planet, he was, in fact, the first president up to that time to travel outside the country while in office.  Zeppelins hovered overhead.  Planes looped and swooped.  It was the media event of the decade.

When the ship reached the Port of Brest in France, it was met with even greater enthusiasm.  Margaret MacMillan, great-granddaughter of Wilson’s contemporary and collaborator at the Paris peace conference, David Lloyd-George, described the scene in her excellent book, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World:

“The streets were lined with laurel wreaths and flags.  On the walls, posters paid tribute to Wilson, those from right-wingers for saving them from Germany and those from the left for the new world he promised.  Huge numbers of people, many resplendent in their traditional Breton costumes, covered every inch of pavement, every roof, every tree.  Even the lampposts were taken.  The air filled with the skirl of Breton bagpipes and repeated shouts of ‘Vive l’Amérique! Vive Wilson!’”

Woodrow Wilson was the most popular man in the world.

But a year later it was different.  Someone in Barack Obama’s camp should start searching used bookstores, or the Internet, to find a copy of a 1964 book by Gene Smith.  It is directly on point.  The title says it all: When the Cheering Stopped.  President Wilson came to understand that the deafening sound of grand and glorious bombs bursting in air can, all too quickly, give way to the pathetic whimper of a bursting bubble.   

By 1920, the man who had so recently been hailed as the greatest international statesman ever, watched in physical and emotional brokenness as his nation rejected what he hoped would be his lasting legacy.   They voted Republican and would twice more in the decade.  Mr. Wilson died in 1924 after another in a long line of strokes.  But doubtless somewhere in the mix were complications due to a bubble that burst.  

People are fickle and the bigger the bubble the bigger the mess when it inevitably bursts.  Barack Obama is riding high now, and he carries the hopes and dreams of millions who have bought into the notion of nonspecific change.  But he will sooner or later descend from the heights according to the political law of gravity.   And when he falls to earth there may be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.