Roundup: Historians' Take

Frederick Kagan: Security Should be the Deciding Issue

As the scale of the economic crisis becomes clear and comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s are tossed around, there is a very real danger that America could succumb to the feeling that we no longer have the luxury of worrying about distant lands, now that we are confronted with a"real" problem that actually affects the lives of all Americans. As we consider whether various bailout plans help Main Street as well as Wall Street, the subtext is that both are much more important to Ameri

Andrew J. Bacevich: The Next President and the Global War on Terror

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His bestselling new book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books). To listen to a podcast in which he discusses issues relevant to this article, click here.] A week ago, I had a long conversation with

Julian Zelizer: Taking It To The People

There has been a lot of buzz today that Barack Obama is going too far with his thirty minute television commercial. Reporters have speculated about whether it shows Obama's arrogance, or extravagance, and if this move is just overkill. Will Americans react badly to thirty minutes of Obama? Why is this necessary? We should not be so quick to dismiss what Obama is doing. We must first remember that Obama's tactic is nothing new. There is precedent for candidates to purchase national televis

Bruce Ackerman and Oona A. Hathaway: Bush's Final Illusion ... The president's agreement with Iraq bypasses Congress. Again.

[Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, and the author of fifteen books that have had a broad influence in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy. Oona Hathaway is a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley. She earned her B.A. at Harvard University and her J.D. at Yale Law School.] Nouri al-MalikiPresident Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have reached an agreement governing American military forces

Robert S. McElvaine: "Black Tuesday" plus 79 Years

[Historian Robert S. McElvaine is Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters at Millsaps College and the author of The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 (Random House). His latest book is Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America (Crown).] "Is it happening again?" That is the very disturbing question that many Americans are nervously asking on this, the seventy-ninth anniversary of "Black Tuesday," the date of the Stock Market Crash, in

Stanley Kutler: Remembering Ted Stevens

[Stanley Kutler is the author of Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes.] Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), as Ed Sullivan might have said, has been a really big show in Washington. The now-ranking Republican, and sometime-Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he (in tandem with his Democratic counterpart, Robert Byrd (D-WV) has controlled the appropriations process through much of his forty-year tenure. Reports credit him with directing billions of dollars to his native state. He should be

Daniel Pipes: PLO Acknowledges ... Still at War with Israel

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Yasir Arafat may have shook Yitzhak Rabin's hand in 1993 and signed solemn declarations about ending the war to eliminate Israel, but late last month, in a New York City courtroom, the Palestine Liberation Organization formally confirmed that it still sees terrorism against

David Kennedy: A Historian on the Lessons of the Depression

[Kennedy is a professor of history at Stanford University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.] Are we witnessing the birth pangs of another Great Depression? Karl Marx once observed that history repeats itself, "first as tragedy, second as farce." But the record of the past emphatically suggests that we are not suffering through a play-by-play recapitulation of the catastrophe of the 1930s. To be

Mary Hershberger: What Is the True Story of McCain’s Wartime Experience?

[Mary Hershberger is a historian, teacher, and author of Jane Fonda's War: A Political Biography of an Antiwar Icon, and Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War. She has taught at the University of Georgia, Virginia Tech, Eastern Mennonite University, Ohio State University, and at schools in East and Central Africa, including Makerere University in Uganda. ] As we approach the end of an astonishing campaign season, one thing grows clear: John McCain’s campaign ha

Julian Zelizer: New president's 100 days of pressure

[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.] When presidents enter the White House, they have approximately 100 days to show what they are made of. The notion of a "hundred days" i

Daniel Pipes: Obama's Mansion, Saddam's Money

[Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] Barack Obama appears to have personally benefited from funds originating in Saddam Hussein's regime. It's a complicated connection, but one that deserves the consideration of Americans voters. Two similar figures, Nadhmi Auchi and Antoin S. "Tony" Rezko, served

Jim Sleeper: My Almost-Hidden Stake in an Obama Win

[Jim Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, is author of The Closest of Strangers (Norton 1989) and Liberal Racism (Viking 1997). Homepage and feature photography by Bbsrock (wikimedia commons / creative commons). ] Some people are still wondering whether Barack Obama will be flummoxed on Nov. 4 by the so-called "Bradley Effect." Maybe, maybe not, but that we're even debating it shows that much has changed for the better, as I note in a short commentary just pos

Jim Sleeper: Things No One Talks About

[Jim Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, is author of The Closest of Strangers (Norton 1989) and Liberal Racism (Viking 1997). Homepage and feature photography by Bbsrock (wikimedia commons / creative commons).] AS PUNDITS dithered late last week over “the Bradley effect” and other racial clouds on Obama’s horizon, the candidate was making a difficult, possibly final, visit to the white mother of his white mother. Few commented on the implications of the fact that whil

Martin E. Marty: The role of religion in the American presidential campaign

I am currently in Finland, where scholars at Turku and Helsinki asked me to address, among other topics, the role of religion in the American presidential campaign. Having done very different variations on that theme in the United States before I left, let me pass on to you something of what I will have delivered in Finland by the time of this Sightings. Trying to explain why religion is any part of politics in the United States, which was constitutionally "born secular" (in European

Edmund Morris: Theodore Roosevelt, Pundit

[Edmund Morris is working on the third and final volume of his biography of Theodore Roosevelt.] THE former president, born 150 years ago today, was interviewed in his childhood home at 28 East 20th Street. He has long been a ghostly presence there. The house is now the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site. Due to Roosevelt’s great age, it is difficult to tell how well he hears contemporary questions. But he is as forceful as ever in expressing himself. His statement

Deborah Lipstadt: Is Blaming the Bankers for the Crisis Like Blaming the Jews?

Ha'aretz carries an important story, one that confirms some of what I feel has been in the air for the last month or so....A leading German economist said the criticism of bankers about the world financial crisis is similar to Germany's anti-Semitism in the 1930s.

Juan Cole: Pakistani Military Takes Towns in Bajaur; If this is So Central to US Security, Why isn't it news?

Although both candidates tie the resurgence of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan to US domestic security, I personally have difficulty understanding exactly how that works. The September 11, 2001, attacks on the US were planned by Arab expatriates in Hamburg, Germany, and Pushtun tribespeople had almost nothing to do with them (did the Taliban even know what Bin Laden was planning?)Both McCain and Obama have adopted Bushspeak on this issue, allowing W. and Cheney to frame

Carol V. Hamilton: Let's Call the Whole Thing Off!

[Carol V. Hamilton has a Ph.D. in English from Berkeley. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. Her website ishttp://www.carolvanderveerhamilton.com] They hate us. They say so in public. Bill O'Reilly hates us. Ann Coulter hates us. Sarah Palin thinks we're not "pro-American." And now an obscure Republican named Bachmann suggests that our senators and representatives be investigated. It's like a

David Greenberg: How FDR saved capitalism in eight days

[David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers, has two new books out: Presidential Doodles and Calvin Coolidge.] President Bush's vacillating response to the financial crisis has occasioned fond memories of the last president to face a banking catastrophe, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The comparisons are bound to be invidious. FDR's response to the panic of 1933 represented his finest hour—one of them, at any rate—while Bush's moves exhibit all the surefootedne

Daniel Pipes: Obama Would Fail Security Clearance

With Colin Powell now repeating the lie that Barack Obama has"always been a Christian," despite new information further confirming Obama's Muslim childhood (such as the Indonesian school registration listing him as Muslim), one watches with dismay as the Democratic candidate manages to hi