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Is the Modern GOP a "Relic of Barbarism"?

by Manisha Sinha

Statue of Charles Sumner at Harvard University. Credit: Flickr/oafbot.In its very first party platform during the presidential election of 1856, the Republican Party condemned slavery and polygamy, an allusion to the then Mormon practice, as the "twin relics of barbarism." Ironically, today the party itself seems poised to become a relic of barbarism. With its platform that denies even victims of rape and incest access to abortion and blatant attempts at disfranchisement, the GOP appears to be on the wrong side of history. Contemporary Republican politicians might do well to study their own party's origins during the age of the Civil War. Indeed, the present presidential race and the approaching hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation beg for historical comparison.

TV Campaign Debates: America’s Political Gift to the World

by Alan Schroeder

Democratic primary debate in Charleston, South Carolina on July 23, 2007. Credit: Flickr/grittycitygirl.As the nation prepares to indulge in another round of presidential debates, let us consider an underappreciated legacy of this quadrennial ritual: the export of American-style TV debates around the world. The political tradition that John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon wrought in a Chicago studio in 1960 now extends to every corner of the globe. In some seventy-five countries television debates have become part of the electoral landscape; even fledgling democracies like Iraq and Afghanistan have incorporated candidate match-ups into their campaigns. This most American of programming genres qualifies as a worldwide hit.

What is Society’s Obligation to Those in Distress?

by Beth Tompkins Bates

Job seeker in Detroit, Michigan, in 1930. Credit: Flickr.The issue of unemployment benefits has been a hot-button topic since the financial tsunami of 2008. Democrats have supported legislation to extend benefits so the long-term unemployed will not fall through the cracks during the prolonged recovery. Republicans resist extensions, arguing that increased government spending will prolong the recession. Behind the platforms of both parties lies the question of society’s obligation to those in distress, an issue that surfaces when times are tough. During the Great Depression, a similar debate raged in Detroit in the summer of 1931, turning a mayoral campaign into a dress rehearsal for the viability of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The "Bought Vote" of the 47 Percent

by Robert Mason

Anti-New Deal sign near Davenport, Iowa, in the winter of 1940. Credit: Library of Congress. Note the Cyrillic И.Speaking at a fundraising event in May, Mitt Romney discussed the electoral challenge that he faced in seeking to defeat Barack Obama. Forty-seven percent of Americans "will vote for the president no matter what," Romney said. These are voters "who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."

Republicans or Democrats: Which Side are You On?

by Vaughn Davis Bornet

Which side are you on?Political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution. But the Founding Fathers, experienced in over a century of colonial government during British rule, fully expected parties to develop -- while at the same time not seeking it. Foreshadowed in the "factions" (like-minded groups) common to eighteenth-century government, the Federalist and Democratic Republican parties emerged by 1800. Partisanship toward a cause or candidate, is what citizens are expected to display in a democratic republic like the United States. So is arguing and legal lobbying on behalf of teachers, farmers, unions, small businesses, and corporations. Lobbyists educate representatives; they help finance them; they must not, of course, control (much less bribe) them.

Feast of Fools: How American Democracy Became the Property of a Commercial Oligarchy

by Lewis H. Lapham

Portrait of Thomas Paine by Laurent Dabs, date unknown.All power corrupts but some must govern. -- John le CarréThe ritual performance of the legend of democracy in the autumn of 2012 promises the conspicuous consumption of $5.8 billion, enough money, thank God, to prove that our flag is still there. Forbidden the use of words apt to depress a Q Score or disturb a Gallup poll, the candidates stand as product placements meant to be seen instead of heard, their quality to be inferred from the cost of their manufacture. The sponsors of the event, generous to a fault but careful to remain anonymous, dress it up with the bursting in air of star-spangled photo ops, abundant assortments of multiflavored sound bites, and the candidates so well-contrived that they can be played for jokes, presented as game-show contestants, or posed as noble knights-at-arms setting forth on vision quests, enduring the trials by klieg light, until on election night they come to judgment before the throne of cameras by whom and for whom they were produced.

Watch the Polls -- Where People Vote

by Leo P. Ribuffo

Election workers in Philadelphia's 62nd Ward, 4th Division, on Election Day 2008. Credit: Flickr/David Webber.If I had been Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000 and he had listened to me, he would have defeated George W. Bush for president. My prime directive would have been simple. Even at the cost of spending less money on television spots, focus groups, and tracking polls, make sure that you have plenty of flesh-and-blood representatives at the polls where people vote in order to prevent intimidation and help with complicated ballots.This advice -- which is equally relevant to the 2012 election -- would not have been the product of my day job as a professor of history but rather the result of my experience as a young poll watcher for Eugene McCarthy delegates in the April 1968 Connecticut Democratic primary. There I learned that a lot of ballots get screwed up, a non-academic term used here to embrace spoiled, stray, null, over-voted, under-voted, residual and other technical categories favored by scholars who study this problem as part of their day jobs.

The Last Time America Had So Many Two-Term Presidents was the 1820s

by Robert Schmuhl

James Monroe, the last member of the "Virginia dynasty," in his official portrait.American politics travels today at warp speed, with change rather than continuity a hallmark of the accelerated pace and communications of contemporary campaigns. Three times in the past two decades -- in 1992, 2000 and 2008 -- the White House has swung from one party to the other in almost pendulum fashion.Despite the shift of presidential power back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans, it’s possible that the outcome of the 2012 race will create a situation that hasn’t existed in the U.S. since the nation’s early days. If Barack Obama defeats Mitt Romney, he would become the third straight president (following Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) to win a second term.

Why Voting for the GOP is Bad for Your Health: Interview with Dr. James F. Gilligan

by Kristopher Wood

Photo Credit: Flickr/Edward Allen L. Lim.Dr. James F. Gilligan is the author of Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic and PreventingViolence: An Agenda for the Coming Century. Having formerly headed the Institute of Law and Psychiatry in addition to directing mental health programs for the Massachusetts prison system while on the faculty of the Harvard Medical Scholl of Law and Psychiatry, Dr. Gilligan is currently a Collegiate Professor in the College of Arts and Science, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Law at New York University.

The Bad Things Presidents and Would-Be Presidents Have Said About Each Other

by Thomas Fleming

Anti-Lincoln political cartoon from 1864 by John Cameron, printed by Currier and Ives. Credit: Library of Congress.Recently I went to a dinner party at which several guests wondered aloud if the 2012 presidential election was setting some sort of record for nastiness. The two candidates and their spokesmen were calling each other a startling range of names from liar to crook to weakling to would be dictator. I agreed that the rancor was growing intense -- but I assured them that other candidates for and holders of the nation’s highest office had compiled a record that equaled and often exceeded the current epithets.

No Julian Castro Without Mother Rosie Castro

by Cynthia E. Orozco

Julian, Rosie, and Joaquin Castro at a La Raza Unida Party reunion. Credit: Flickr/Jaime Puente.For the first time, Latinos and Latinas were adequately represented on the national stage by both major political parties. At their recent national conventions, Democrats and Republicans finally acknowledged that Hispanics are full-fledged Americans. Bert Corona, a Los Angeles immigrant activist, spoke at the 1968 Democratic convention, but non-Latinos were not listening. Now they are listening, at last.

Lincoln Would Choose Obama over Romney

by Daniel Herman

Lincoln and Obama. Not pictured: Mitt Romney. (Photo Credit: HNN Staff/Wikipedia.)Mitt Romney claims history’s stamp. “The ‘last best hope of earth,’” declares his website, “was what Abraham Lincoln called our country. Mitt Romney believes in fulfilling the promise of Lincoln’s words.” Would Lincoln agree?Lincoln penned those words -- “last best hope” -- 150 years ago. Nine weeks earlier -- on September 22, 1862 -- he had issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which promised to free all slaves in rebellious states that failed to return to the Union by January 1. No state came back. Lincoln’s “last best hope,” then, was an activist U.S. that would free slaves and win the war. It was also a Union that promoted the greater good through economic intervention. Were he alive, he would endorse Obama.Far from being Lincoln’s heir, Romney is heir to his 1860 opponent, Stephen Douglas, the states’ rights Democrat called “The Little Giant.” It was Douglas who convinced Congress to renounce its power to stop slavery’s spread by passing the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Each territory would now decide whether or not to legalize slavery prior to statehood.

America Needs an Industrial Policy

by Judith Stein

Ford Foundry in Dearborn, Michigan, 1973. Credit: National ArchivesRepublican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan famously accused President Obama of failing to save a big General Motors plant in Janesville, Wis., after promising to keep it open for "another hundred years." Candidate Obama actually said the plant would prosper for another century if it were retooled for "green" production. GM stopped making light trucks and SUVs at the plant in December 2008 (while George W. Bush was still president), formally closed it in April 2009, and started making the same vehicles in China four months later.

Fifty Years After "Silent Spring," Let's Not Roll Back Environmental Protections

by Nancy C. Unger

Credit: Wikipedia.

A Lesson in Volunteerism from George Romney

by Laura Jane Gifford

George Romney at the 1968 Republican National Convention. Credit: Florida Memory ProjectMitt Romney might learn an important lesson from his father.While the rhetoric of the Republican National Convention repeatedly exalted the promise and power of the individual -- and the threat of an enterprise-stifling government -- the Republican nominee’s campaign agenda is silent on an issue that was central to the governmental vision of his late father.

Paul Ryan Plays Politics With the Family Business

by Tammy Ingram

Construction work on I-55 in Mississippi, 1972. Credit: Environmental Protection Agency.The Republican National Convention’s focus on President Obama’s now (in)famous “you didn’t build that” speech came as no surprise. As soon as Mitt Romney selected Paul Ryan to be his running mate on August 11, the focus of partisan conflict shifted noticeably away from hot button issues like gay marriage to debates over federal spending.Transportation is front and center in these debates. Ryan’s near-consistent record of voting against infrastructure projects since Obama took office, like his dogged opposition to the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the 2010 Affordable Care Act, has made him a favorite among Tea Party activists and boosted the Republican ticket’s credibility among libertarian voters.

Clint (and Mitt), What Were You Thinking?

by Robert Brent Toplin

Clint Eastwood at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. Credit: Flickr.Mitt Romney constantly reminds voters that he knows how to govern effectively because he had been a successful businessman. But during one of the most important evenings of his presidential campaign -- the night he delivered an acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention -- Romney fumbled. He allowed Clint Eastwood to address the nation shortly before his own speech. Romney and his top convention aides did not know how the famous Hollywood actor intended to handle the situation.The events of that night do not inspire confidence in Mitt Romney’s skills as a planner, organizer, and leader.

Women are People, Too

by Catherine Allgor

Mitt and Ann Romney in Altoona, Iowa, in 2007. Credit: Wikipedia.Last week, Ann Romney appealed to American women as mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. In this, Mrs. Romney was partaking of an age-old tradition and making a pretty good bet. Most women fall in at least one of those categories.Declaring that it is "the moms of this nation, single, married, widowed, who really hold the country together," the aspiring First Lady meant to be complimentary. But appealing to us as wives and mothers -- that's how we got in trouble in the first place.In 1776, the Founding Fathers were contemplating more than a break from Great Britain; they were envisioning a world made new. They imagined a modern nation based on liberty and equality. In July of that year, they would put that vision to paper: "All men are created equal."

Voter Suppression: The Unraveling of American Democracy

by Ruth Rosen

Editorial cartoon in an 1879 edition of Harper's Weekly. Caption: "The color line still exists -- in this case."How will the American presidential election be won in November 2012? By the Republicans buying the election? Perhaps. But money cannot always buy an election. That is why Republicans have spent the last four to six years passing a spate of voter suppression laws in "swing states" that will make it more difficult and costly for the young, the elderly, minorities, union members and single and elderly women to cast a vote for Barack Obama.

Money in Politics: Where Is the Outrage?

by Bill Moyers and Bernard A. Weisberger

Eugene V. Debs speaking in Chicago, 1912. We might wish the uproar from the convention halls of both parties these busy weeks were the wholesome clamor of delegates deliberating serious visions of how we should be governed for the next four years. It rises instead from scripted TV spectacles -- grown-ups doing somersaults of make-believe -- that will once again distract the public's attention from the death rattle of American democracy brought on by an overdose of campaign cash.No serious proposal to take the money out of politics, or even reduce its tightening grip on the body politic, will emerge from Tampa or Charlotte, so the sounds of celebration and merriment are merely prelude to a funeral cortege for America as a shared experience. A radical minority of the superrich has gained ascendency over politics, buying the policies, laws, tax breaks, subsidies, and rules that consolidate a permanent state of vast inequality by which they can further help themselves to America's wealth and resources.