Roundup: Historians' Take

Bruce J. Schulman: The “Smoke-Filled Room” Never Looked So Good

Bruce J. Schulman, the William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University, is the author of "The Seventies" (DaCapo Press).A traveling carnival of candidates arrives in another town (and on another network) for a weekly debate more than a year before Election Day — a schedule so mind-numbing that some candidates will now pass up debates and the free publicity that they provide. States jockey for ever-earlier positions on the presidential selection calendar — playing a game of chicken, with the outcome barely averting pushing the first contest of 2012 back into 2011. Meanwhile, parties, candidates and SuperPACs collect billions in contributions, setting the stage for an unprecedented and unbelievably expensive barrage of campaign ads.Is this any way to choose the leader of the world’s richest, most powerful nation?...

Edward N. Luttwak: Obama Should Adopt the Ben-Gurion Model

Edward N. Luttwak, a military strategist and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the author of The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire.Now an international airport and a university, as well as any number of boulevards in Israeli cities and towns, David Ben-Gurion—the man—was born in Płońsk, the Russian-ruled part of Poland in 1886. When he read Israel’s declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, thereby inaugurating the first government of the first Jewish state in two millennia, he was already 62. In the years since, some 150 new states have been established. Most of these were the gift of colonial powers that handed them over to their new rulers as complete packages with everything ready from internationally recognized borders to a ministry of finance and a prison service. That was true of the post-Soviet states as well, except for the democratic bits, which their rulers mostly ignore anyway.

Conrad Black: Hope for Peace in the Mideast?

Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, and, just released, A Matter of Principle. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.

Niall Ferguson: Yes, Wall Street Helps the Poor

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His Latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, will be published in November.It was a scene to curdle liberal blood. A ballroom full of New York hedge-fund managers playing poker ... to raise money for charter schools.That’s where I found myself last Wednesday: at a Texas Hold ’Em tournament to raise money for the Success Charter Network, which currently runs nine schools in some of New York’s poorest neighborhoods.

Simon Sebag Montefiore: Dictators Get the Deaths They Deserve

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of “Jerusalem: The Biography.” “ALL political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure,” wrote Enoch Powell, the controversial but often perspicacious British politician, “because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” But the political lives of tyrants play out human affairs with a special intensity: the death of a democratic leader long after his retirement is a private matter, but the death of a tyrant is always a political act that reflects the character of his power. If a tyrant dies peacefully in bed in the full resplendence of his rule, his death is a theater of that power; if a tyrant is executed while crying for mercy in the dust, then that, too, is a reflection of the nature of a fallen regime and the reaction of an oppressed people.This was never truer than in the death, last week, of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. The only difference between his death and those of so many other tyrants across history was that it was filmed with mobile phones, a facility unavailable to contemporaries of, say, the Roman emperor Caligula.

James Livingston: It’s Consumer Spending, Stupid

James Livingston, a professor of history at Rutgers, is the author of “Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture Is Good for the Economy, the Environment and Your Soul.”AS an economic historian who has been studying American capitalism for 35 years, I’m going to let you in on the best-kept secret of the last century: private investment — that is, using business profits to increase productivity and output — doesn’t actually drive economic growth. Consumer debt and government spending do. Private investment isn’t even necessary to promote growth....Between 1900 and 2000, real gross domestic product per capita (the output of goods and services per person) grew more than 600 percent. Meanwhile, net business investment declined 70 percent as a share of G.D.P. What’s more, in 1900 almost all investment came from the private sector — from companies, not from government — whereas in 2000, most investment was either from government spending (out of tax revenues) or “residential investment,” which means consumer spending on housing, rather than business expenditure on plants, equipment and labor.In other words, over the course of the last century, net business investment atrophied while G.D.P. per capita increased spectacularly. And the source of that growth? Increased consumer spending, coupled with and amplified by government outlays....

Jeremi Suri: Is America Really an Empire?

Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown Distinguished Professor for Global Leadership, History, and Public Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. His book is "Liberty's Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama."

John J. Pitney Jr.: Will voters kick out all incumbents in 2012?

John J. Pitney Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. He is coauthor of “American Government and Politics: Deliberation, Democracy, and Citizenship.”...Although it’s theoretically possible that the electorate could turn against incumbents of both parties, such a result would be unprecedented in the modern era.When large numbers of lawmakers go down, the bulk of the losses come from one party or the other. It’s even harder to picture a situation where voters would oust both Mr. Obama and the Republican majority in Congress. Other election scenarios are more plausible.

Paul Moreno: Obama's Re-Election Model Is FDR

Mr. Moreno is a professor of history at Hillsdale College and the author of "Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History," (Louisiana State University Press, 2006).President Obama is cozying up to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, intending to make resentment of big business a central theme of his re-election campaign. Here he's following the lead of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who tried to convince the public that Wall Street was to blame for the double-dip recession that plagued his second administration.In late 1937 the American economy, which had been recovering slowly since 1932, contracted even more sharply than it had after the stock market crash in late 1929. Industrial production fell by a third, stock prices fell by 50%, durable goods production by almost 80%. Payrolls fell 35%, and unemployment climbed back to 20%.Roosevelt was initially nonplused, slow to appreciate the severity of the downturn. But once he saw the need for action, he called Congress into special session and undertook a massive new public-spending program....

Victor Davis Hanson: Lessons from Libya?

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.Is the horrific murder of the loathsome Qaddafi a sign of things to come or an aberration of the mob? Will Libya become a Somalia on the Mediterranean or follow Tunisia’s path (which itself is not assured)? Some conservatives will argue that the removal of Saddam, the fostering of consensual government in Iraq, and support for constitutional government elsewhere in the Middle East — despite the demonization and eventual near destruction of the Bush administration — set the stage for what followed. Liberals will counter that “leading from behind” diminished knee-jerk Anti-Americanism by lowering our profile and allowed others to help along Qaddafi’s exit at little cost.Some general observations:

Andrew Roberts: How Dictators Die

Historian Andrew Roberts's latest book, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, was published in the U.S. in May. His previous books include Masters and Commanders and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Dr. Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.When on Monday, April 30, 1945, Winston Churchill learned from Radio Hamburg that Adolf Hitler had died fighting against the Russians in Berlin, he told his private secretary, Jock Colville, “Well, I think he was perfectly right to die like that.” It was only later that he discovered that the fuhrer had in fact committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery bunker, taking his wife of one day, Eva Braun, with him, and thus denying the world the 20th century's most justified execution at Nuremberg.

Paul Moreno: Obama's Re-Election Model Is FDR

Mr. Moreno is a professor of history at Hillsdale College and the author of Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History, (Louisiana State University Press, 2006). President Obama is cozying up to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, intending to make resentment of big business a central theme of his re-election campaign. Here he's following the lead of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who tried to convince the public that Wall Street was to blame for the double-dip recession that plagued his second administration. In late 1937 the American economy, which had been recovering slowly since 1932, contracted even more sharply than it had after the stock market crash in late 1929. Industrial production fell by a third, stock prices fell by 50%, durable goods production by almost 80%. Payrolls fell 35%, and unemployment climbed back to 20%. Roosevelt was initially nonplused, slow to appreciate the severity of the downturn. But once he saw the need for action, he called Congress into special session and undertook a massive new public-spending program...

Andrew Roberts: How Dictators Die

Historian Andrew Roberts's latest book, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, was published in the U.S. in May. His previous books include Masters and Commanders and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Dr.

Andrew Meyer: The End of the Iraq War

Andrew Meyer is associate professor of history at Brooklyn College.

Michael Kazin: How Occupy Wall Street Offers a Promising New Model for the Left

Michael Kazin’s latest book is American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. He teaches history at Georgetown University and is co-editor of Dissent.“This occupation is for you.” The protestor with a trim grey beard smiled a bit as reporters and tourists snapped pictures of the small, handmade sign he was holding at the entrance to Zuccotti Park. His simple slogan—and the month-long occupation that inspired demonstrations in over 900 cities last weekend—may represent the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the left. Or the whirlwind of activism could end up sharing the fate of other protest campaigns since the 1960s, from anti-apartheid to global justice, leaving its organizers wondering how they let so splendid an opportunity slip away.

Ethan Kytle: Confessions of a Civil War Historian

Ethan Kytle is a history professor specializing in 19th century American history and the Civil War at Fresno State. This weekend thousands of Valley residents will descend upon Kearney Park for Fresno’s annual Civil War Revisited reenactment.  They will be treated to “the sights and sounds of the 1860s,” as self-styled “living historians” — most clad in Union blue or Confederate gray — set up camp, march in formation and demonstrate antebellum crafts.  The centerpiece will be a reenactment of the Battle of Bull Run, pitting Yanks and Rebs against one another as if it were 1861.This year’s event takes on a special significance.  It comes on the 150th anniversary of the start of a war that nearly tore the nation in two.  It is high time that we take stock of how we remember this pivotal moment, both at our annual Kearney Park event and beyond.I confess that as a Civil War historian I find events like Civil War Revisited frustrating.  On the one hand, I am thrilled to see people engage history — especially my period of expertise — with enthusiasm.  Many of the students who turn up each year in my classes say that trips to the reenactment stoked an early interest in the past.On the other hand, I am discouraged by what tends to be remembered and forgotten at such events....

Kim Phillips-Fein: In Bleak ’70s, Salvo of Protest

Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian and an assistant professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University, is the author of “Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement From the New Deal to Reagan.”OCCUPY WALL STREET, the protest encampment at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, has many historical inspirations. After all, the tactic of sitting down and refusing to move was used by angry veterans marching on Washington in the early Depression years, striking automobile workers in the late 1930s and civil rights protesters in the 1960s. But there is a local precedent, one that few people remember today: the sit-ins and “occupations” that followed New York City’s deep budget cuts in 1975 and 1976.In the spring of 1975, amid a recession and mounting anxiety about municipal bookkeeping, the banks that had long marketed the city’s bonds refused to do so any longer. To regain access to the bond market, and under pressure from Albany and Washington, Mayor Abraham D. Beame proposed a series of austerity budgets, slashing funds for schools, libraries and firehouses and, for the first time, charging tuition for the City University of New York.

David Greenberg: Why Liberals Need Occupy Wall Street, and Vice-Versa

David Greenberg, a contributing editor to The New Republic, teaches history at Rutgers University and is at work on a history of presidents and spin.It was the spring of 1968 and the Columbia University campus was in revolt. “You must come right up, Dwight!” F.W. Dupee, a Columbia professor and one of the original Partisan Review editors, beseeched Dwight Macdonald. “It’s a revolution! You may never get another chance to see one.”Macdonald raced uptown. “He was right,” the critic said of Dupee, delighting in the “atmosphere of exhilaration, excitement” they found at Columbia, where “communards” made decisions through a deliberative, democratic process. Here were hopeful signs, thought Dupee and Macdonald, a new generation productively channeling its radical energies.

Arthur Herman: After 10 Years, Getting Afghanistan Right

Arthur Herman is the Pulitzer Prize-finalist author of Gandhi and Churchill. Ten years ago today, the first American Special Forces landed in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Five weeks later, the fighting was over, as Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda fled across the border into Pakistan and the Taliban regime collapsed. Some obvious questions demand answers: Why that victorious tide of war became reversed? Why we are still fighting there a decade later -- and what do we hope to achieve? And, on the other hand, what happens if we don’t stay -- if a war-weary America gives up on that rugged, forbiddingly primitive country and its tough, valiant people? Make no mistake: Afghanistan is now the vital front line in our fight with Islamicist terrorism; abandoning it now could make the difference between ultimate victory and suffering another, even more deadly, 9/11. Certainly we’ve made a host of mistakes until now. For one, it was never clear whether the goal of Operation Enduring Freedom was to destroy al Qaeda, topple their Taliban protector or to establish a new government in its place. Somewhat to our surprise, we ended up doing all three so quickly that no one was prepared for what came next…

Thomas Fleming: Wall Street Protesters Channel Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Fleming, a former president of the Society of American Historians, is the author, most recently, of "The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers" (Smithsonian, 2009).'We demand the forgiveness of all debts." After several days of listening to the Occupy Wall Street protesters, I had begun to lose all hope of grasping exactly what they wanted, beyond some sort of "change." I was almost relieved to hear this endorsement of a solution to a specific problem, especially pertinent to protesters in their age group who owe millions of dollars to the federal government for the money they borrowed to go to college....Did they know, on this point, they were echoing Thomas Jefferson? If so, these protesters and their sympathizers might want to think twice.Debt forgiveness was not original with Jefferson, who enunciated it in a letter to his favorite correspondent, James Madison, on Sept. 6, 1789, when the French Revolution was picking up steam in Paris....In a masterpiece of understatement, James Morton Smith, the editor of "The Republic of Letters," a three-volume collection of their correspondence, says Madison's reply to Jefferson's proposal was "a severe test of their friendship." Point by point, the younger man demolished Jefferson's silliness with polite but irrefutable logic....