Roundup: Historians' Take

Julian Zelizer: Will Obama be able to deliver on his promises?

[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 Americans are expecting big things from President Barack Obama. The president-elect ran as the candidate of change, promising to transform t

Tom Engelhardt: Obama and "the Elecular"

[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

Jonathan Zimmerman: A Victory for America, and the World

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century" (Harvard University Press).] There will be jubilation in the streets of London and Berlin this morning. Likewise in Lagos and Bamako, Lahore and Bangkok, Lima and Bogota. Wherever you look, it would seem, the world is celebrating Barack Obama's landslide win in Tuesday's US presidential election. To people

Julian Zelizer: John McCain's chaotic operation may well rank among recent history's least successful efforts

[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-secu rity politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books.] The GOP presidential campaign of 2008 will certainly be one that historians discuss for years to come. But not in the way that some Republicans had hoped for

Joseph Lane: Memo to President-Elect Obama ... Remake the Democratic Party for the Long Term, Now

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.] In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Barack Obama revealed an ambitious plan that has always been implicit in his campaign but now stands both openly avowed and suddenly plausible:he plans to remake the Democratic party.He made it clear that he wants to find common ground with some

Mary L. Dudziak: Obama and the Image of America

[Ms. Dudziak is Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science, University of Southern California. Her newest book is Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey (Oxford Univ. Press, 2008).]"Just wanted to share my joy across the Atlantic," wrote a friend from Paris this morning, as the world celebrated Barack Obama’s victory."It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it di

Juan Cole: The Ghoul's Glossary ... the 2008 Election

Alaska: The only one of the 50 states where secessionists are considered American patriots rather than traitors. Catholic working class: Synonym for "feminist." Communist: 1. A believer in a graduated income tax ("Communists" include Adam Smith and 81% of professional American economists). 2. When modified by 'Chinese' : A supplier of retail goods to Walmart. Friends: Persons whom John McCain does not know and does not actually like very

Simon Schama: A Farewell to Dubya, All-Time Loser in Presidential History

"Forgotten but not gone" was the way in which the supremo of Boston politics, Billy Bulger, liked to dismiss the human irritants he had crushed beneath his trim boot. The same could now be said for the hapless 43rd President of the United States as the daylight draws mercifully in on his reign of misfortune and calamity. How is he bearing up, one wonders, as the candidate from his own party treats him as the carrier of some sort of infectious political disease? How telling was it that

John Patrick Diggins: America needs integrity and humility in the Oval Office

[John Patrick Diggins is a professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His recent books include Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History (W.W. Norton, 2007), Eugene O'Neill's America: Desire Under Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2007), and the forthcoming "God Is Dead! Long Live Religion."] Is ethical leadership possible in the politics of our era? Had the question no specific time frame, the answer might be yes, o

Larry Bartels: How smart is the American voter?

[Larry M. Bartels directs the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. A longer version of this article appears in the current Wilson Quarterly.] One of the bestselling books of the 2008 election season has been "Just How Stupid Are We?" by popular historian Rick Shenkman. It presents a familiar collection of bleak results f

Mark Naison: To My Republican Friends- A Vote For Obama Is a Vote to Rescue the GOP From Bigotry

[Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University.] One of the things I've learned, through long experience, is that it can be as difficult to change a person's political affiliation as it is to change their religion. People are attached to political parties through tradition and sentiment as well as ideology, and to try to get people to change parties is usually futile and often counterproductive.Some of my favorite former students are

Daniel Pipes: Obama's Connection to Sirhan Sirhan

From the perspective of a Middle East & Islam specialist, the just-concluding U.S. presidential election is extraordinary for the outsized role of one's subject area. Consider some of the topics:Barack Obama's birth and youth as a Muslim, a fact that he completely denies ("I've always been a Christian,""I have never been a Muslim"). Obama's network

John Steele Gordon: Speculators, Politicians, and Financial Disasters

Fueled by easy credit, the real-estate market had been rising swiftly for some years. Members of Congress were determined to assure the continuation of that easy credit. Suddenly, the party came to a devastating halt. Defaults multiplied, banks began to fail. Soon the economic troubles spread beyond real estate. Depression stalked the land. The year was 1836. The nexus of excess speculation, political mischief, and financial disaster—the same tangle that led to our pres

Joseph Palermo: Chicagoans Studs Terkel and Barack Obama (and the Election of 2008)

John Steinbeck's widow asked Studs Terkel to write an introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of The Grapes of Wrath. And while he was working on it Robert F. Kennedy's eldest son, then Congressman Joe Kennedy, called Terkel to come to Iowa and see for himself the plight of American farmers."Here it is the 1980s," Terkel wrote in his memoir, Touch and Go, "and you've got farmers who are starving. You saw the Depression in the Iowa countryside; the topsoil worn out, dust, towns with F

Joseph Lane: Is it 1856 or 1860? (The Past as Political Prologue)

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.]Peter Lawler wrote a fascinating analysis here at the Britannica Blog of eight recent elections that might help us understand this one, and I would like to offer another perspective on the question of historical antecedents and what we might learn from them.Is this 185

Tom Engelhardt: The End of a Subprime Administration

[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

Stanley Kutler: Closing Guantanamo ... Bush leaves another big decision to his successor

The U.S. government’s failure to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center for alleged terrorists continues to haunt and color our standing in the world. Barack Obama and John McCain both endorsed closing the facility. Even President George W. Bush has been known to utter such a heretical idea, and some of his top aides have expressed similar sentiments. In 2006, Bush said, “I’d like to close Guantanamo, but I als

Jim Sleeper: Treat, or Trick? Elections Officials, Beware!

In honor of Halloween, here's one more frisson about election tricks perverse enough to block the treat of a victory.One Saturday morning in 1982 I walked into the Brooklyn Board of Elections and found 30 supporters of then-State Senator Vander Beatty" checking" voter registration cards from the recent primary election. The hobgoblins of Florida, 2000, never outdid what I saw that morning in Brooklyn. But, believe me, it can happen again.Beatty's minions --

Mark Naison: Our Goal on Election Day ... A Mandate to Bring Relief to the Nation's Suffering

[Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University.] As election day approaches, and the nation's economic problems grow severe, our goal for November 4 should not be just to assure an Obama victory, but to give him a mandate that will allow him to take immediate action to funnell aid to the millions of Americans on the verge of losing their hones and their jobs To prevent suffering on a massive scale, we need a dramatic program

William Polk: We need to reduce the American empire

The announced topic of my talk to you today is not exactly what I want to discuss with you. For me to tell you what I would advise the incoming American president to do about oil is not so useful. Most of you could do a better job of that than I. If such advice is not coals to Newcastle, it is worse: “oil” to London. So let me cast my net somewhat more widely. I begin with one of our national weaknesses. We Americans have a tendency to offer solutions before we know what we ar