political history

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/28/2022
  

  Does History Show a Remedy for Dark Money?

  by Bo Blew

  Until 1969's Tax Reform Act, private foundations allowed the rich to influence policy and avoid taxation with haphazard oversight by the states. The new generation of independent political action groups needs similar federal oversight.

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• SOURCE: CNN
  9/17/2022
  

  Forget Policy Wins, Biden Needs to Tell Voters the Story of His Administration

  by Julian Zelizer

  The Biden administration and the Democrats have both legislative successes of their own and unpopular Republican positions to present to voters. Do they have a story that ties them together? 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/6/2022
  

  Nicole Hemmer on the Fall of the Republican Party

  by Kim Phillips-Fein

  The seeds of today's hard right populism, nativism and conspiratorialism were present in the GOP for decades, argues historian Kim Phillips-Fein. 

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• SOURCE: Substack
  8/28/2022
  

  The Democrats, Not the "Party of Lincoln," are the Best Hope to Protect Abe's Legacy

  by Eli Merritt

  Abraham Lincoln went to Washington as president-elect animated by the commitments to justice and liberty defined in the first Republican Party convention. If the Republicans won't honor these commitments, the Democrats must do it. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/29/2022
  

  Are the Republicans Repeating the Mistake of 1998?

  by Steven M. Gillon

  The Republican congressional leadership pushed ahead with the impeachment of Bill Clinton to appeal to their right-wing base. The strategy backfired: the party failed to make any midterm gains and Newt Gingrich was overthrown as Speaker. Will a similar dynamic play out over abortion in 2022?

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  8/22/2022
  

  Review: Does Gary Gerstle Get to the Meaning of Neoliberalism?

  by Steven Hahn

  Reviewer Steven Hahn says that Gerstle's new book effectively bridges the economic transformation of global capitalism with studies of the fracturing of the Democratic New Deal political coalition. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/17/2022
  

  Lichtman: Polarization Makes Dynastic Politics Less Prominent

  NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks to Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, about Liz Cheney's political career after her Wyoming primary loss, and the political dynasties.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/14/2022
  

  History Exposes the Fraud of Marco Rubio's Populism

  by Sean Wilentz

  The Florida senator engaged with an ingnominious tradition of disparaging expertise and knowledge as "elitist" when he condemned a meeting between President Biden and a number of historians, including the author. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  8/9/2022
  

  Mario Fiorentini (1918-2022): The Last Surviving Italian Partisan

  by David Broder

  After Nazi German occupied post-Mussolini Rome, Fiorentini escaped from prisons four times during twenty months of anti-Nazi struggle. He remained an important witness for a society prone to forgetting the horrors of far-right politics.

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• SOURCE: The American Prospect
  8/4/2022
  

  Review: Two Books on the Recent History of Polarization

  by Paul Starr

  Historian Michael Kazin and journalist Dana Milbank approach the nation's dire politics from the perspective of the two respective parties, Kazin examining the long conflicts within the Democratic party to create a broad and stable populist coalition, and Milbank examining the GOP's increasingly nihilistic efforts to break it up.

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• 7/31/2022
  

  What Does the Perot Phenomenon Tell Us about Andrew Yang's Third Party Prospects?

  by William Kertzman

  Third parties can temporarily capture the public if they meet a moment of discontent with resources and a compelling personality; building for the long-term is something very different. 

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• 7/24/2022
  

  Kentucky Fried Vice President?

  by Cary Heinz

  Despite his advanced age, could chicken entrepreneur Colonel Harland Sanders have been an effective running mate for George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign? Would he have been the ultimate celebrity politician?

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/20/2022
  

  Fanaticism May be Alarming, but It's Not New

  by Zachary R. Goldsmith

  The term "fanatic" evolved from a value-neutral name for participants in Roman religious cults to describe someone with dangerous and erroneous beliefs in religion and then in modern politics. Philosophers from Kant to Burke show the need to pull back from such absolute judgments of our adversaries. 

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  7/21/2022
  

  Review: Gerstle on Free Markets and Besieged Citizens

  by Robert Kuttner

  Gary Gerstle's new history aims to define the political order that began under Jimmy Carter and resulted in the overturning of New Deal liberalism for the empty promises of a market society, with the power of the state insulating capitalism from democracy.

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• 7/3/2022
  

  What Americans Might Learn About Political Collapse from the Classical Greeks and Romans

  by Daniel Noah Moses

  The right traces political turmoil in the US to the supposed abandonment of the classical canon. But reading those works might not teach the lessons they want about hierarchy, authority, and political collapse. 

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• 7/3/2022
  

  The Edmund Burke Foundation Betrays its Namesake and Threatens Liberty with "National Conservatism"

  by Thomas Lecaque and J.L. Tomlin

  The Edmund Burke Society has claimed the mantle of the foundational conservative in its recent manifesto, but what the document articulates is a blueprint for an authoritarian, theocratic society that owes more to European fascism.

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  6/15/2022
  

  Review: Gary Gerstle Argues the Pandemic Killed the Neoliberal Era (But Democrats Don't Know It Yet)

  by Ed Burmila

  "Gerstle makes an all but indisputable case that neoliberalism has had its lamentable time in the sun. The question that remains is: What comes next? As things stand at present, you’re probably not going to like it."

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• SOURCE: N + 1
  6/1/2022
  

  Review Essay: Who Did Neoliberalism?

  by Erik Baker

  New books wrestle with the rise and collapse of the 1960s New Left and the gulf between its aspirations and achievements, and assess whether 1960s radical intellectuals are responsible for present-day neoliberalism. 

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• SOURCE: Crooked Media
  5/2/2022
  

  Kevin Kruse Joins Podcaster Dan Pfeiffer to Break Down the Most Famous Political Ads

  Former Barack Obama Communications Director and Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer is joined by Professor of History at Princeton University Kevin Kruse to break down the Most Famous Political Ads of All Time.

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  6/1/2022
  

  Rescuing Shirley Chisholm's Life from Symbolism

  by Anastasia Curwood

  Writing a biography of the Congresswoman and presidential candidate required working through the distinction between Shirley Chisholm the symbol and the much more complex reality of Shirley Chisholm the woman, to see how big trends in Black history unfolded at a human scale.