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Why Has Mormonism Been Such a Non-Issue in This Election?

by David Prior

Credit: Wikimedia Commons/HNN staff.

New York City and Hurricanes: A Brief History

by Mariana Villa

Storm surge from the 1938 Long Island Express hurricane. Credit: NOAA/NWS Historic Collection.The tree lay down on the garage roof and stretched, You have your heaven, it said, go to it.--William Carlos Williams, “The Hurricane”Despite the current mayhem and losses caused by Hurricane Sandy, New York City is no stranger to Mother Nature’s wrath. In the days before NASA and the National Weather Service, people did not have the means to track down a storm or predict the its level of gravity. Due to these impediments, the information available on hurricanes prior to the 1800s is rather limited.

Hymn to Working-Class New York

by Mark Naison

Storm cleanup in West Harlem, October 30, 2012. Credit: Flickr/Dave Bledsoe.As we struggle through the aftermath of the worst storm in New York’s history, my thoughts turn to the first responders -- firefighters, police officers, EMS worker -- and the role they played in the last great tragedy to strike New York, the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.The heroism these men and women displayed, both then now, is not a surprise to me. For the fifteen years I spent coaching and running youth programs in Brooklyn in the '80s and '90s, civil servants, especially firefighters, were an integral part of the coaching cohort I interacted with daily, both in my own neighborhood and throughout Brooklyn and Staten Island. There was never any doubt in my mind, based on that experience, that they would sacrifice their health, well-being, and, if necessary, their lives if called on to rescue people in trouble.

Mitt Romney’s Leadership Style

by Andrew M. Obritsch and Aubrey Immelman

Credit: Flickr/Jason LuongOn paper, Mitt Romney is an attractive candidate. He looks “presidential,” is well financed, and has a strong track record in business and government. However, despite MBA and law degrees from Harvard, a successful career as a management consultant and venture capitalist, president and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, governor of Massachusetts, and chair of the Republican Governors’ Association, questions remain: What are the personal qualities that shape Romney’s leadership style? What kind of president would Romney make? How would Romney deal with adversity?While the Republican platform and Romney’s policy positions and campaign promises provide a point of departure for inferring many of the specifics of a prospective Romney administration, they do not provide a comprehensive basis for anticipating the more intangible aspects of a Romney presidency. Fortunately, political psychology provides the tools for answering those more elusive questions.

Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort to Turn Back the Environmental Clock

by Nancy C. Unger

The flooded Hetch Hetchy Valley. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.If San Francisco voters pass Measure F on November 6, the city will conduct an $8 million study on the feasibility, costs, and benefits of draining the 300-foot deep reservoir created by the O’Shaughnessy Dam in 1923. The measure’s proponents see it as a first step in restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, sister valley to Yosemite, to its natural state. That the measure is even on the ballot is a significant indication of the shift in attitudes towards the ongoing conflict between nature preservation and traditional notions of progress.

Barack D. Eisenhower

by Dennis Gaffney

Credit: HNN staff.When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, Carolyn Kennedy buoyed his campaign with her endorsement, saying, “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them.” As well as comparing Obama to Kennedy, admirers likened him to Abraham Lincoln, noting both men’s eloquence and their strong moral compasses, an analogy Obama courted when he launched his presidential bid from Springfield, Illinois. Supporters also compared him to Franklin D. Roosevelt, noting that both men inherited desperate economies they both tried to fix with large infusions of government spending.But those poetic presidential comparisons have given way to nearly four years of experience with a man who is very different from Kennedy, FDR, or Lincoln, appearing more like a president who’s probably just as misunderstood as he is: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Presidential “Czars”: A Constitutional Aberration

by Mitchel A. Sollenberger and Mark J. Rozell

Ed Montgomery, Obama's auto bailout czar (official title: Member Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers) in 2010. Credit: Flickr/pennstatelive/HNN staff.

Historian's Take: The Final Presidential Debate

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2012 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved. Cross-posted from the National Review Online.The final presidential debate focused disproportionately on the Middle East. Four of the six segments were on the Middle East, just two on other topics (one about the U.S. role in the world, the other about China). The European crisis got no mention, nor did India, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, or Australia. In contrast, Egypt was mentioned 11 times, Libya 12 times, Iraq 22 times, Pakistan 25 times, Syria 28 times, Afghanistan 30 times, Israel 34 times, and Iran 47 times.Barack Obama has a weak record in the Middle East, but one would not learn this from the debate, where Mitt Romney praised Obama’s achievements (“It's wonderful that Libya seems to be making some progress”), agreed with Obama more than he disagreed, and rarely pointed out his failings. Presumably, Romney took this mild approach to establish his likeability, competence, and suitability to serve as commander-in-chief.

Historian's Take: The Second Presidential Debate

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2012 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reservedThis evening’s presidential debate, the second between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, featured some very sharp disagreements over facts that almost no viewers can judge (such as the licenses issued for drilling in federal lands) and agreement on the topics where viewers have strong opinions (such as capitalism). Perhaps this debate will move those few undecided voters in Ohio, Virginia, and Florida, but it leaves the rest of us judging the debate according to which candidate we’d rather have as a dinner companion. Put differently, Romney missed an opportunity by not discussing larger issues but letting himself get mired in details.

Historian's Take: The Vice-Presidential Debate

Ruth Rosen, a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle, is a Professor Emerita of History at U.C. Davis and a scholar in residence at the Center for the Study of Right-Wing Movement at U.C. Berkeley. Her most recent book was “The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America.” Well before the vice-presidential debate began, even the president had agreed that he had failed to expose Mitt Romney’s lies and had allowed his opponent to present himself as a supporter of universal health insurance, Social Security and Medicare, none of which is true.

Return of the Paranoid Style

by Marc-William Palen

Joseph McCarthy with Roy Cohn, 1954. Credit: Library of Congress/New York World-Telegram/Wikimedia Commons.The Bureau of Labor statistics just announced that unemployment has dropped below 8 percent, the lowest since Barack Obama entered the Oval Office. The new numbers proffer a timely boon to the Obama campaign. For some, however, it appears too timely.Romney supporters are already claiming that the Obama administration somehow fabricated the statistics for political gain, that nobody “is immune to being bent by Obama and the Democrats.” Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, immediately alleged that the Obama camp manipulated the numbers, while at the same time admitting there was “no evidence to prove that.”All this despite the fact that the Bureau of Labor is insulated from the Obama White House.

How Mormons and African Americans Criss-Crossed Political Identities

by David Prior

Political cartoon from Puck, 1877.The 2012 election is marked by a paradox common to politics across much of the globe. Partisans invoke, appeal to, and claim to embody national unity and the public good as they engage in a divisive power struggle. Whether we view the current slate of candidates as conflicted, manipulative, or both, they hardly stand out for celebrating their country as a community in one breath while positioning their opponents on the outskirts in the next.

A Historian Taught by History

by Ronald Radosh

The death late last month of Eugene D. Genovese was a loss not only to the world of professional historians, but to American intellectual life as a whole and especially to the conservative intellectual movement. Best known for his prize-winning 1974 book Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Genovese transformed the way in which scholars came to understand the slave South. Arguing that a conflict existed between a bourgeois North and a pre-capitalist South, he wrote about the effects of the policies of the Southern slave-owning class. He used the concept of “hegemony” derived from the work of the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci to argue that the slave-owners created a social structure in which slaves, despite their subordinate role, were able to build their own communal space and assert their humanity.

How History Shaped Barack Obama’s View of National Identity

by Robin Lindley

Barack Obama campaigning in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 5. Credit: Flickr/Obama for America.Whether your ancestors came here on the Mayflower or a slave ship; whether they signed in at Ellis Island or they crossed the Rio Grande -- we are one people. We need one another. Our patriotism is not rooted in ethnicity, but in a shared belief of the enduring and permanent promise of this country. -- President Barack Obama April 2011 Commencement address at Miami Dade CollegeThroughout his political career, President Barack Obama has spoken vigorously and repeatedly about his vision of a civic national identity that will lead to a more inclusive and united nation, and on his belief that the common good must be pursued -- that our policies cannot focus solely on maximizing individual gain.

Hey Mitt, When Are You Going to Apologize to My Parents?

by Ron Briley

Mitt Romney listens to Barack Obama during the first presidential debate on October 3. Credit: Flickr/University of Denver.As the focus of the presidential campaign shifts to the debates, I am still awaiting the apology that Republican nominee Mitt Romney owes my deceased parents.Romney’s description of the 47 percent who fail to pay federal income taxes as mooching freeloaders who believe they are victims and entitled to handouts denigrates the memory of my mother and father, who worked hard all their lives to escape poverty and whose final years were made a bit more comfortable with programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Their son -- me -- was able to become the first in the family to attend college due to the student loan program. The values instilled in me by parents include honesty, hard work, responsibility, and a sense of citizenship. Poor all their lives, they were a model of integrity who would be insulted by a politician labeling them as irresponsible.

Barack's Lost Idealism

by Jim Sleeper

The audience at the History Colorado presidential debate watch party listens to President Barack Obama's answer to a question. Credit: Flickr/University of Denver.When President Obama was deep into debt-ceiling negotiations two summers ago, sparing no effort at old-fashioned deal-making as well as honest dialogue across a newly gaping ideological abyss that showed how weak mutual respect and trust have become in our public (and private) discourse -- The New York Times published an essay, "What Happened to Obama's Passion?," by the political psychologist Drew Westen, that fired up liberal Democrats but infuriated Obama's neoliberal apologists among pundits captive to the Washington Beltanschauung, or Beltway worldview that I characterized right here.

Why Obama Lost the First Debate

by Robert Brent Toplin

Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan shake hands during their fateful meeting in 1980.President Barack Obama did not lose the first presidential debate with Mitt Romney simply because he failed to deliver key talking points in a clear and strong manner. Obama's problem was more fundamental: he did not adequately recognize that there is a significant difference between a stump speech and a televised debate. If Obama had looked back at history, he would have seen that candidates succeed when they recognize that televised debates are a form of theater. A look at very recent history -- the 2012 debates in the Republican primaries -- could have given Obama useful insights on the theatrics of effective debating.During Obama’s televised confrontation with Mitt Romney, the president spent very little time looking directly into the camera -- that is, into the eyes of the American people. Over much of the ninety-minute event, Obama spoke to the moderator, Jim Lehrer. Richard Nixon made a similar mistake in his debate with John F. Kennedy in 1960. Nixon, a former college debater, spoke to his opponent, while Kennedy frequently looked directly at the audience.

Historian's Take: The First Presidential Debate

Ruth Rosen, a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle, is a Professor Emerita of History at U.C. Davis and a scholar in residence at the Center for the Study of Right-Wing Movement at U.C. Berkeley. Her most recent book was “The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America.” For weeks, President Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney have sparred with partners, immersed themselves in piles of position papers, practiced remaining cool, and in the case of Romney, memorized unforgettable zingers that he never used. But each knew they had the same task: to persuade viewers that they genuinely cared about the lives of ordinary Americans.To do that, Obama had to justify his record, sound like a president instead of a professor, and to explain that the same Republican policies advocated by Mitt Romney caused the economic crisis he inherited. Obama did avoid sounding professorial, but he failed to explain the Republican origins of the American’s financial crisis in a crisp and lucid manner.

Affirmative Action's Unlikely Allies

by Matthew Johnson

Lee Bollinger, former president of the University of Michigan and current president of Columbia University, talks with Admiral Mike Mullen in 2010. Credit: DoD/Mass Communication Specialist Chad J. McNeeley.On October 10, the Supreme Court will hear Fisher v. University of Texas, the fifth affirmative action admissions case to reach the Court in forty years. One way to view this case is to place it in the long history of resistance to affirmative action in the United States. But a look at the amicus curiae (friends of the court) briefs reveals a parallel story about affirmative action that we don’t often discuss. Supporting the University of Texas and its use of race in admissions decisions is a group of unlikely bedfellows: university presidents, corporate executives, and military officials. As much as we like to tell the story of affirmative action through the lens of backlash, the emergence of this coalition helps explain why race-conscious admissions practices -- albeit in limited forms -- have survived the legal onslaught.

"I Don't Think There is a Real Mitt Romney Anymore" -- Interview with Samuel Popkin

by David Austin Walsh

Mitt Romney at a rally in Virginia Beach. Credit: Flickr/Toby Alter.Last May, I spoke with UC San Diego political scientist Sam Popkin about his latest book, The Candidate: What It Takes to Win -- and Hold -- The White House and the lessons from the book that could be applied to the 2012 election. With the first presidential debate a little over a week away and Election Day a little over a month distant, I spoke with Dr. Popkin on the phone about the latest developments in the race.I wanted to ask you a little bit about the dynamics of the current campaign from the perspective that you employed in The Candidate.