Woodrow Wilson's Pitiful Prognostication

Well, Punxsutawney Phil has some company in the category of misguided forecasts. Here's Woodrow Wilson, in his speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war against Germany on April 2, 1917. Keep in mind this is after the initial Russian revolution that deposed the Czar, but before Lenin and friends took over:

"Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart....
The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naïve majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor."

Democratic at heart, totalitarian in spirit, maybe?