Obama as Woodrow Wilson?

David Jackson | USA TODAY

After flaps over the Internal Revenue Service and the Associated Press, some critics have take to comparing President Obama to Richard Nixon.

Others liken Obama to presidential predecessor George W. Bush because of drone strikes and other counter-terrorism measures.

Now another critic reaches further back for a comparison: Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who also sponsored aggressive national security actions and was criticized by civil libertarians.

Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor of The New Republic, criticizes the Justice Department seizure of AP phone records in a leak investigation, and says Wilson's experiences should serve as a cautionary tale for Obama:

"An enthusiastic supporter of Espionage Act prosecutions, the progressive, detached, technocratic Wilson was so convinced of his own virtue that he was willing to jail the Socialist candidate for President, Eugene V. Debs for his mild criticism of the war, even as he championed progressive reforms such as the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission, both of them designed with the help of his economic advisor, Louis Brandeis.

"Wilson had a sorry record on civil liberties, and once Brandeis was on the Supreme Court, he eloquently criticized the Wilson administration for its betrayal of progressive values such as free speech and transparency, declaring that 'sunlight is the best disinfectant,' and unforgettably extolling the necessity of protecting political dissent.

"Let's hope today's progressives teach the Wilsonian Obama a similar lesson."