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In Dreams Begin Politics

by John H. Summers

In The Epic of America (1931), the historian James Truslow Adams argued what many Americans have felt all along, that “there has been the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” The campaign season, a prolonged divination of suppressed wishes, is prime-time for the rhetoric of the American Dream. But rhetoric is not the same as propaganda,

Blame Ronald Reagan For Our Current Economic Crisis

by Robert Brent Toplin

Ronald Reagan rarely catches any blame these days for the present economic mess that is destabilizing markets in the United States and around the world. In fact, Americans often praise the former president for taking the country in bold new directions during his years in the White House. Politicians contribute to this love-fest by naming schools and roads after the iconic president  These admirers rarely acknowledge how central Reagan’s ideas are to the market difficulties t

The Parallels Between China's Olympics and Our Political Conventions

by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

When the media spotlight shifted instantaneously from Beijing to Denver last week, it was easy to focus on things that the Olympics and the Democratic Convention had in common as spectacles, especially since each ended with a

The Danger of an Unvetted Veep: An Israeli Lesson

by Dror Wahrman

A celebrated war hero turned elder statesman runs while in his 70s for the highest executive office in the land as an agent of change, and against the grain of his own party. Sounds familiar? Well, before the Republican party embarked on this route in the presidential elections of 2008, Ariel Sharon tried it in Israel in 2005. Nothing perhaps can bring some sober judgment – rather than PR hype – into the meaning of McCain’s choice for VP better than a quick reminder of what has

Martin Luther King's Thoughts on a Future Black President

by Timothy Stewart-Winter

'Negro President Possible In Next 25 Years: King.' So declared a headline in the Chicago Defender, America's largest black-owned newspaper, on Christmas Eve 1964. The article reported on an interview by civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., recorded by the British Broadcasting Company earlier in December. King had been asked to comment on a statement by Senator-Elect Robert F. Kennedy of New York to the effect that it might be possible to elect an African American presi

Could an Italian Economist Born in the 19th Century Offer an Answer to Our Political Prayers?

by Robert E. Wright

Obama, McCain, somebody bound to lose, or nobody at all? The question engulfs us. All presidential elections are important but this one is outright critical b

Dear Sean

by James Livingston

Dear Sean,I feel your pain.  If I believed I had backed the better candidate, and lost, I’d be just as angry and bitter as you are.  But you’re getting carried away by your Enlightenment Project—by the urge to look through the candidate to the policies and positions that define his or her candidacy.  You have to get used to the idea that the rhetoric just is the reality.  Otherwise you’re going to get more angry, more bitter, and we kn

Thoughts on a Black First Lady in Waiting

by Arica L. Coleman

"Barack has a handicap the other candidates don’t have: Barack Obama has a black wife. And I don’t think a black woman can be first lady of the United States. Yeah, I said it! A black woman can be president, no problem. First lady? Can’t do it. You know why? Because a black woman cannot play the background of a relationship. Just imagine telling your black wife that you’re president? ‘Honey, I did it! I won! I’m the president.’ ‘No, we the pre

Obama, McCain, Bush, Age, Experience, and Wisdom

by Walter Moss

On July 24, 2008, Senator Barack Obama, like many others before him, left a hand-written private prayer in a crack in Jerusalem’s Western [or Wailing] Wall.  Because of his celebrity, however, someone apparently pulled it out and made it public.  According to newspapers, one of its few sentences asked God for the wisdom to act correctly and justly. As inappropriate as it was to remove the prayer from the wall, it does offer an opportunity to examine Obama’s attitude toward wisdom, a virtue that the Bible’s book of Proverbs states is “better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared with it.”

We Need to Know More About Biden's Health

by Steven Lomazow, M.D.

The headline, from the Associated Press, May 4, 1988, read:"Biden Resting After Surgery For Second Brain Aneurysm." The story flashed the details around the world: Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. underwent surgery today to correct an aneurysm in an artery that supplies blood to the right side of the brain, a spokesman for the Walter Reed Army Medical Center said. The spokesman, Peter Esker, said Senator Biden was awake, resting comfortably and talking with his family after t

“Let’s Talk Sense to the American People:” Adlai Stevenson’s Memorable 1952 Acceptance Speech

by Jean Baker

This week Barack Obama will accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in a traditional, but often disappointing, partisan ritual. In the last sixty y

Is Georgia 2008 a Repeat of Hungary 1956, With John McCain as Agent Provocateur?

by Allan J. Lichtman

The crisis in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia eerily recalls a tragedy of the Cold War, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. That year, after

Does Christian Fundamentalism Endanger Our Republic?

by Carol V. Hamilton

Credo quia absurdum. The sentence “The most important single element in the history of Western civilization was Christianity” opens the second chapter of Robert Hoyt’s classic textbook Europe in the Middle Ages. Despite its origins as “a religious system hostile to many of the values and entrenched interests of antiquity,” the paragraph continues, Christianity absorbed and transmitted “the best elements of antique civilization” to

Once Again Social Security's on the Table

by Marc Goldwein

After a two-year hiatus, Social Security has made its way back onto the political stage. Both presidential candidates, recognizing that the program is insolvent over the long-run, are claiming that they will confront the system’s $4 trillion long-term shortfall. Senator Barack Obama has made a specific proposal to finance part of the shortfall through a tax on people making over $250,000 a year, while Senator McCain has pledged that he’ll "fight to save the future of Social Secu

The Shadow of Adlai Stevenson

by Nicholas Adell

Democrats, more than Republicans it seems, have always had a penchant for their "lovable losers;" those candidates, who despite passionate adherence to liberal causes, proved unable to capture the elected office they sought. Of course, the office is often the presidency, and the exposure afforded to any serious candidate provides him with a base of loyal supporters. The prominence these men acquire is often overshadowed by the victor's ensuing Administration and consequently smudged

War on Drugs: What Won't Work -- Again

by Hal Brands

On June 30, President Bush signed into law an initiative called Plan Merida, a $465-million program designed to help Mexico deal with the unchecked drug trafficking and violence that have recently turned much of the U.S.-Mexican border into a war zone. The initiative is the most recent chapter in the long history of attempts to regulate activity along America's southern frontier. It is bold and ambitious -- and it probably won't work. Plan Merida dwarfs previous U.S. counter-narcotic

America’s “Mission Accomplished” Syndrome

by Michael W. Williams

Recent events have highlighted a flaw in the American political system:  our tendency to declare “mission accomplished” after achieving what is merely the first step in a long process.  Passage of a law or amendment, victory in a war or election, the signing of a treaty or the launch of a new program is often seen as an end in itself.  Having completed Chapter One but assuming we have finished the book, we move on to the next controversy.  Meanwhile, the original

Tax Policies the Old Fashioned Way

by Bryan D. Jones and Walter Williams

Politicians are forever making claims based on the favorable case.  In particular, claiming ‘something for nothing’ is often just too tempting to resist.This often happens right where it is most imp

Why the Vice-Presidential Nominees Will Be Presidential

by Joel K. Goldstein

Unlike many of their predecessors, this year's vice-presidential candidates won't be chosen primarily because they're from a large state or to balance the ticket's geography or philosophy. They'll be chosen because they're presidential. It's not that Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are nobler than prior presidential nominees. Rather, they operate in a changed political context, which dictates that vice-presidential candidates themselves be qualified to serve in the Oval Office,

No Free Lunch: Obama and Nietzsche in Berlin

by Andreas Daum

Would a President Obama offer a free lunch for the Europeans? Hardly so, at least not if one carefully reads Barack Obama’s Berlin speech of July 24, delivered — after much hassle about the appropriate location — in front of Berlin’s Victory Column.  “Your troops” are needed in Afghanistan, said Obama, and he meant German and European troops.  The Democratic presidential candidate did not hesitate to remind the audience of an estimated 200,000 that