[3] Bailey contended foreign policy was significantly affected by public opinion, and that current policymakers could learn from history.
[5] His first book was a study of the diplomatic crisis over racial issues between the United States and Japan during the Theodore Roosevelt administration.
[6] He delivered the Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History at Johns Hopkins University on the Wilson administration's policy towards neutral nations in 1917-1918, later published in 1942.
[7] While the impact of public opinion on the making of foreign policy was a theme that ran through most of his works, he laid it out most clearly in The Man in the Street, published in 1948.
The Commonwealth Club of California awarded him gold medals in 1940 for his Diplomatic History of the American People and 1944 for his Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace.