News at Home

What I Told the Hedge Fund Managers in Miami

by James Livingston

[My] op-ed in the New York Times (October 25th) led to many radio interviews, and then the book came out. The response has been astonishing. Absolute silence from the Left, and curiosity from elsewhere. The extreme Right has hammered the thing as communist propaganda, of course, but the business press has been more or less respectful, notwithstanding the twit who reviewed my book alongside James Roberts in the Wall Street Journal. Did I tell you he and I “debated” the issues on Minnesota Public Radio? Never mind. It was like arguing with a clergyman about the Bible—surely you know money is the root of all evil, and, oh my god, you ought not spend more money than you got?—so that, when the radio host asked if there were some “middle ground” where me and Mr. Roberts could meet and make nice, I said no.

Former Gingrich Ally Claims Republican Leaders Blackmailed Him Over Affair

by David Austin Walsh

Gingrich and his now wife, Callista Bisek. Credit: Gage SkidmoreA former ally of Newt Gingrich contends that the Republican Revolution in the 1990s was derailed when the Speaker was blackmailed by opponents of reform in his own party who had learned of his affair with Callista Bisek, now his wife.  Scot Faulkner, the first Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives, alleges in an article that will be published on the website of the History News Network next week, that Gingrich abandoned reform to keep his affair secret.  In the article Faulkner singles out Louisiana congressman Bob Livingston, who at the time was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, as one of the people guilty of blackmailing Gingrich.In his 2008 memoir, Naked Emperors: The Failure of the Republican Revolution, Faulkner also implicated Californian Bill Thomas, the chairman of the House Committee on Administration under Gingrich.

How Newt Gingrich's GOP Rivals Blackmailed Him Back in the '90s

by Scot Faulkner

The centerpiece of Newt Gingrich’s claim for the GOP nomination is that “we balanced the budget during the four years I was Speaker.” This is a true crowd pleaser in an era when both the White House and Congress have sailed America over a fiscal cliff.The truth is very different from Gingrich’s account and accounting.Fiscal Year 1995 began on October 1, 1994, prior to the Republican landside in November.  Federal outlays were approximately $1.5 trillion against approximately $1.4 trillion in revenue, for a deficit of $164 billion.Fiscal Year 1999 began on October 1, 1998, the last few months of Gingrich’s Speakership. Federal outlays were $1.7 trillion against $1.8 trillion in revenue. For more information, visit OMB’s historical tables.

Did Teddy Roosevelt Write Obama's State of the Union Address?

by HNN Staff

Below is an excerpt from Teddy Roosevelt's 1906 annual message to Congress -- what we now refer to as the State of the Union Address.  Was President Obama this week channelling Roosevelt?  Roosevelt here combines an appeal to patriotism with a proposal to levy steeper taxes on the rich--just as Obama did Tuesday night.  He also comes out foursquare for education--just as Obama did. Where they parted was on the question of the central government's role in ediucation.  Sounding a bit like a modern Tea Party supporter, TR believed that under our federal system education was a function that perforce had to be left up to the states and localities.

Taking the Long View on Presidential Transcript Releases

by Leslie Kitchen

The wing-nuts want to see Barack Obama’s college transcripts. And, by definition, they won’t shut up about it.Usually, and I have to say justifiably, the wing-nuts  have just enough sense to ignore matters like being able to see their own candidate’s college transcripts. That is how they save themselves from the horror they would experience if they did see them, and how they save their candidates from nervously shifting from one foot to the other, explaining, in public, under glaring lights, how they could muster no more than a D+ in Introduction to Logic, or a C- in Early Modern Comparative Literature.

Social Conservatism Isn’t “White”

by Jim Sleeper

There they go again: Republican candidates are saying things and sending signals that show that racism remains widespread, routine, hideous—and sometimes even laughable, when it strains to deny its own existence.  And, again, some of us white leftists and liberals are compounding the lunacy.  The best way to deal with racism is to document it clearly and forcefully without shouting or sneering about the knuckle-draggers who remain gripped by it, and to refrain from encouraging it by inflating its monstrosity.  The best of the civil rights movement understood this.  So did Obama in 2008.Instead of strategizing intelligently, however, some activists and writers display a moralistic, self-indulgent, tragically American innocence of the harsh truth that groups of people have always stigmatized other groups, often lethally.  To grasp this isn’t to let [the Republican presidential candidates] off the hook.  It’s to learn how to defeat racism, of which their “white” variant is our peculiar American curse.

Obama's Osawatamie Speech Proves He's the Anti-TR

by Ira Chernus

"President Obama:  Hold Wall Street banks accountable by fully investigating the big bank fraud that caused the housing crisis."  When I read that call recently from MoveOn.org, I could have sworn I heard the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt cry out, “Bully!”  When TR went to Osawatamie, Kansas, to proclaim his New Nationalism, he made exactly the same demand:  “Every special interest is entitled to justice ...  the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.”

Keynes and Hayek, Obama and the Republicans

by Walter Moss

Liberal economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich tell us that British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) “was right.”  In a December 2011 New York Times column, Krugman reminded us that Keynes stated that in hard economic times like the Depression (or, for Krugman, the present) the government should be stimulating the economy.  But instead in 2011 “our political elite obsessed over short-term deficits that aren’t actually a problem and, in the process, made the real problem—a depressed economy and mass unemployment—worse.”  In earlier columns, Krugman had criticized the Obama administration for being insufficiently Keynesian and believed that the Obama economic stimulus package had been much too small.  In late December, however, Krugman wrote that “the good news, such as it is, is that President Obama has finally gone back to fighting against premature austerity—and he seems to be winning the political battle.  And one of these years we might actually end up taking Keynes’s advice, which is every bit as valid now as it was seventy-five years ago,” in the midst of the Depression.

Lesson for Obama: GOP Mud Didn't Stick to FDR

by Rosemarie Ostler

With the recent Great Recession, many Americans have begun reminiscing about Depression-era president Franklin Roosevelt.  Pundits often compare him with our current president and conclude—whether for better or worse—that there aren’t many similarities between the two.  FDR and President Obama do, however, share at least one trait.  They triggered the same sort of brutal, over-the-top invective from their enemies.  Several of the attacks now being made on President Obama are remarkably similar to those flung at President Roosevelt—both in tone and in content.

Let's Ditch "Detainee" and "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" and Use the Right Words: "Prisoner" and "Torture"

by Caroline V. Hamilton

In The Nonviolent Alternative, Thomas Merton reflected upon what he called “the language of Auschwitz.”  “In destroying human beings, and human values on a mass scale,” he wrote, “the Gestapo also subjected the German language to violence and crude perversion.”  Before I read Merton, I would have characterized misleading political language as “Orwellian,” but Merton’s assessment is even more darkly accurate.Sadly, it is also relevant to American English today.  Thanks to official defenders of the Iraq War and to their uncritical echo-chambers, some egregious euphemisms have become common in ordinary speech.  By failing to resist them, American journalists have failed their readers and listeners.The two most objectionable of these euphemisms are “detainee” and “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Television and radio journalists use these terms without compunction, but they are ideologically loaded.

You Want to Understand Occupy Wall Street? Start Reading Havel

by James Livingston

If you want to understand Occupy Wall Street, the impasse of American politics, and the coming explosions of 2012—they will make the “events” of 1968 look quaint—try thinking with Vaclav Havel, the DJ of the Velvet Revolution who died Sunday at the age of 75.To begin with, read “The Power of the Powerless,” his zamizdat manifesto of 1978. Havel wrote it to explain the invention of Charter 77, a small band of intellectuals, dissidents, musicians, artists, vagabonds, and ne’er-do-wells which became the headquarters and staff of the Velvet Revolution—but you can say that only in retrospect, because at the time it looked like a rag-tag bunch of misfits with no program, no plan, and absolutely no intention of overthrowing the state. All its members had to start with was anger at Absurdistan, as Havel like to call the Czech regime.

Can a Mormon Candidate Rise Above the Religious Issue to Win It All Next Year?

by Vaughn Davis Bornet

If Mitt Romney is the eventual nominee of the Republican Party this year, will the American public disregard his Latter Day Saints membership, loyalty, and affection (amounting to dedication), or will a substantial part of the electorate turn on him with Christian based, upright, uncompromising venom? In short, will the election bring out the best or the worst in voters as they finally reflect silently at ballot box time on what they are, who they really are, and what they think will motivate this candidate who professes something called Mormonism?Jon Huntsman is a less conspicuous Latter Day Saints member than Mitt Romney, but both face the potential of religious prejudice. They bear their religion with a different degree of emphasis, as a few minutes spent on Google quickly shows. Romney did his undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, Huntsman at the University of Pennsylvania. The difference in orientation during these formative years seems to have stuck with each.

Was Benjamin Harrison a More Significant President than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama?

by Leo P. Ribuffo

Teaching the first part of the introduction to U.S. history since the 1870s, as I did this past semester, is always a challenge.  For my students, eager to reach Barack Obama or at least Bill Clinton, it seems so long ago.  There were all those family farmers who complained that their way of life was being destroyed instead of sinking quietly into the compost heap of history.  Not only was there no Facebook or Twitter, but techies like Thomas Edison were only starting to produce silent movies.  Plump people were considered sexy.It helps a bit—but only a bit—to point out to students that we still drive over bridges built during the late nineteenth century and buy light bulbs, sodas, and (if we dare) cigarettes from companies founded way back then.  It is less helpful to note that my grandparents were my students’ age when the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth; because, you know, Professor Ribuffo is so old he even remembers black-and-white television.

What Speaker Boehner Should Tell House Republicans About Compromise

by Walter G. Moss

Republican representatives in the House have thankfully realized they were committing political suicide and changed their minds about rejecting a Senate bill extending the payroll tax break and unemployment benefits.  Even in compromise, though, House members once again expressed their disdain for the term.  Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson have recently written on the necessity of political compromise and will have much more to say in their forthcoming book, The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It.  But the initial House rejection merits more comment now.

It’s Not Such a "Wonderful Life" This Holiday for Homeowners

by Robert E. Wright

It’s that time of year again.  The bird has been stuffed and consumed, gifts selected and maybe even purchased, the halls decked, wreaths and lights hung and strung, and the channel guide anxiously scanned for Christmas classics.  The 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore, should resonate with particular potency this year.

The Words That Mattered In 2011

by Ian C. Friedman

Each year possesses a distinctive history and character that is best understood through the spoken words that created and shaped it.  Here are the ten quotations that best reflect the American experience in the year 2011.“We are the 99%”—Occupy Wall Street motto Economic anxiety continued in 2011, lowlighted by the summer’s tedious and largely fruitless bickering over the debt ceiling.  However, the most memorable words related to this collective stress were coined by Occupy Wall Street protesters, who created a nationwide movement that helped bring attention to the issue of increased income inequality in the United States.

Why Today's Politicians Love Teddy Roosevelt

by Rosemarie Ostler

The country is experiencing a Teddy Roosevelt moment.The most recent example is President Obama's decision to deliver an economic policy speech—featuring several TR quotations—in Osawatomie, Kansas, the site of Roosevelt's 1910 "New Nationalism Address."  Roosevelt's resurgence, however, started several years ago, with the 2008 collapse of Wall Street and the resurrection of the term "malefactors of great wealth," Teddy's label for corrupt corporations and businessmen.  Three years later the phrase is still popping up in blog posts and op-ed pieces.Theodore Roosevelt's views on controlling big business and protecting the environment play well with modern progressives.  Democratic politicians also like the fact that he was a Republican.  By reminding Americans that Roosevelt fought to rein in corporate excesses, they slyly rebuke the modern party.  Roosevelt's unabashed zest for war fits poorly with today's progressive views, but conservatives admire his eagerness to project American power abroad.  

What Will the Democratic Left Do in 2012?

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The Democratic Party’s left wing—comprised, for the most part, of labor, peace, racial justice, women’s rights, and environmental organizations, as well as unaffiliated progressive activists—faces some difficult choices in 2012, when it will be dealing with numerous election campaigns.

How the New England Patriots Use Sound Business Strategy to Win Football Games

by Louis A. Ferlnger

During the football season, every day there are hundreds of thousands of print and web articles, blogs, podcasts, and twitter messages that provide information, maybe even insight, and as much trivia about each football team in the National Football League.  In addition, every night, and in particular on game days, there are shows that analyze, interview, and predict well in advance as well as during the game [local ESPN stations have their writers respond to chats while the game is being played].  The NFL’s prominence reached new heights a few years ago when it started its own cable network, not only to televise games but to contribute to the flood of information about NFL teams and almost anything else associated with football.What does all this information mean?  Is it important?  Who cares?  Well, I admit, I care.  Not about reading all this info—I don’t. But some of the information is fascinating and it raises interesting historical questions.

Channelling George Washington: A Carnival of Buncombe

by Thomas Fleming

“Do you know what buncombe means?”“I believe it means nonsense.  Didn’t the Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, call the politics of his day ‘A Carnival of Buncombe’?”“I’m inclined to say the same thing about the politics of your time.”“What makes you say that, Mr. President?”“Mostly the Republican Party candidates’ endless debates.  Those fellows are spouting more buncombe by the hour than any previous bunch of would-be presidents I’ve ever seen.  Why do they do this, night after night?”“I believe it has something to do with the idea of democracy.”“Maybe that’s true.  But it has nothing to do with the presidency.  An ability to win a debate is not a qualification for a president.  I never won a debate in my life.  Neither did Andy Jackson, Jim Polk, Ronnie Reagan—the strong presidents.  They didn’t debate. They acted.”“How about Abe?”