Roundup: Historians' Take

Daniel Pipes: Is the Middle East "Freer, More Hopeful, and More Promising"?

In a Middle East valedictory speech today, summing up the nearly eight years of his two administrations, George W. Bush declared that "the Middle East in 2008 is a freer, more hopeful, and more promising place than it was in 2001." I disagree. Count some of the important ways things are now worse: Iran is closer to nuclear weapons, perhaps the single most alarming development of Bush's era. Pakistan is close to becoming a nuclear-armed, Islamist rogue s

Julian Zelizer: Why Congress must be Obama's equal partner

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" and is completing a book on the history of national-security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books.] Tens of millions of people are expecting great things from President-elect Barack Obama. With his announcement of a plan for a bold public works

Tom Engelhardt: The Imperial Transition

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a co

Victor Davis Hanson: Bush Through the Obama Prism

I think Obama may do more for George Bush's reputation than anyone thinks. I've collated the dozens of articles from liberal thinkers that explain why so far Obama—the candidate of hope and change, and cleaning out the entrenched status quo that so warps our D.C. politics and ensures stasis in our policies—has surrounded himself either with Clintonites, outright Bush people or those who worked closely with them, and centrists of ambiguous politics. The explanations are quite creativ

Juan Cole: Obama Taps Shinseki for Veterans Affairs ... ironies abound

Barack Obama will put forward retired Gen. Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs in his cabinet..WaPo quoted me: 'Juan Cole, a University of Michigan history professor who writes about the Iraq war and Islam, called Shinseki's appointment ironic. "If Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and [former undersecretary for defense Douglas J.] Feith had

Juan Cole: Arguing with Bush One last Time

Informed Comment has had a few running features, including top ten lists, the Ghoul's Glossary, and 'Arguing with Bush.' With any luck this column will be the last in that dreary series. Readers should remember that back in 2003 and 2004, the Bush administration was denying that there had been extensive looting in Iraq after it overthrew the government, was denying that there was a guerrilla war there, and denied that there was an Iraqi insurgency (they seemed to allege that a Lex

Yinon Cohen and Neve Gordon: Obama can end the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict ... Will he meet the challenge?

[Yinon Cohen is Yerushalmi Professor of Israel and Jewish Studies, Department of Sociology, Columbia University, New York. Neve Gordon is the chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and is the author of Israel’s Occupation, University of California Press, 2008. His website is www.israelsoccupation.info .] As Barack Obama enters the oval office he will face a series of daunting cha

Stanley Kutler: Bailout Ballpark

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “Privilege and Creative Destruction,” among other writings.] The New York Mets have announced that their new stadium will still be called Citi Field. According to news reports, Citigroup will pay the Mets a trifling $400 million over 20 years for the naming rights to the new ballpark. Small change. The Mets added that the government bailout of Citigroup will help the bank survive the “economic crisis.”

Robert Hormats & David Kennedy: Economic policy and foreign policy are not two distinct domains

[Robert Hormats, a managing director of Goldman Sachs, is the author of “The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars From the Revolution to the War on Terror.” David M. Kennedy is a professor of history at Stanford and the author of “Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.”] AMONG the parallels between our present financial turmoil and the Great Depression of the 1930s, few are more important to understand than the implications of economic upheav

Andreas Umland: Russia’s Constitutional Ailments

[Dr Andreas Umland is editor of the book series"Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society" (www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html) and administrator of the web site"Russian Nationalism" (groups.yahoo.com/group/russian_nationalism/).] Yeltsin's 1993 Constitution, which is still valid today, has never been a particularly balanced basic law. The Russian political system is called ‘semi-presidential.' It has even b

Juan Cole: State Universities versus State Prisons

Why is tuition so high in state universities that the NYT is wondering if families will go on being able to afford it?As someone who has observed this rise in tuition over an academic career of 30 years, as graduate student and professor, I have some theories from an insider perspective.State universities have had to raise tuition because state legis

Daniel Franklin: Presidential Transitions (Let’s Get Rid of Them)

[Daniel Franklin is currently Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.] The election’s over and not much has happened. But that’s not the way democracy is supposed to work. Besides, doing nothing isn’t good enough in this environment. In fact, doing nothing in the presidency is never good enough; sometimes it’s dangerous. The 9/11 Commis

Kaneko Masaru and Andrew DeWit: The Positive and Negative Lessons of the Japanese Bubble for Americans

[Andrew DeWit thanks the Asia Research Fund for funding risk research. Kaneko Masaru is Professor of Public Finance, Keio University. Andrew DeWit is Professor of the Political Economy of Public Finance, Rikkyo University.] Mid-September of 2008 abruptly blackened every rosy scenario concerning the American subprime crisis and its spillovers. Through the summer, optimists had continued to insist that an American recession was unlikely and that, even if there were to be one, it would

William Leuchtenburg: Obama should keep his distance from Bush

[William E. Leuchtenburg is the author of a forthcoming biography of Herbert Hoover.] ON election night, Nov. 8, 1932, Herbert Hoover, in the company of friends and neighbors at his home on the Stanford campus, sifted through returns that were rendering a verdict on a presidency begun so hopefully on a March day in 1929. As she observed him — his eyes bloodshot, his face ashen, his expression registering disbelief and dismay — a little girl asked, “Mommy, what do they do to a presid

Julian Zelizer: Why Obama's picks will make Bill Clinton smile

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" and is completing a book on the history of national-security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books.] Many observers use historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's term, "A Team of Rivals," to describe the cabinet that President-elect Barack Obama is assemblin

Donald Ritchie: Why Does the Transition Take So Long?

[Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, looks at this lag in historical perspective. Ritchie, who has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades, explains why a President-elect may need this time prepare to take over.] Many Americans, and the rest of the world, wonder why so much time elapses between the U.S.

Joseph Lane: Why Would Hillary Clinton Want to be Secretary of State?

As President-elect Obama names his national security team this morning, no appointee will receive more scrutiny than Senator Hillary Clinton who assumes the office of Secretary of State. A great deal of chatter has centered on his decision to offer her the job (great news for Doris Kearns Goodwin and her publisher), but the more interes

Mark Naison: Its Time to Use the "D" Word: "Recession" Doesn't Begin to Describe Where The US Economy

[Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University.] For the last three months, as the American economy has gone into a free fall, economists and political leaders have parceled out the bad news in small, allegedly manageable proportions. Yesterday, the National Bureau of Economic Research finally confirmed what virtually every small business owner has known for some time- that the US economy is a recession, and that it has been in recession si

Steve Fraser: Roosevelt's Brain Trust vs Obama's Brainiacs

[Steve Fraser is a visiting professor at New York University and the author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace. He is a regular contributor to TomDispatch.com and co-founder of the American Empire Project (Metropolitan Books).] On a December day in 1932, with the country prostrate under the weight of the Great Depression, ex-president Calvin Coolidge

Jonathan Zimmerman: A New Face for Change

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth.] My family and I spent the first half of this year in Ghana, which is holding presidential elections on Sunday. By the time we left, the contest was already in full swing. Wherever you looked - street signs, storefronts, even schools - you saw posters of the two major candidates, John Evans Atta Mills and Nana Akufo-Addo, smiling next to their vice presidential running mates. Since Nov. 4,