Roundup: Historians' Take

Michael Nelson: How Vice Presidential Debates Came to Be

[Michael Nelson, a former editor of The Washington Monthly, is a professor of political science at Rhodes College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.] The first presidential debates occurred 48 years ago, in 1960. The first vice presidential debate didn’t take place until debates resumed in 1976, 16 years later. How come? The answer is that three very significant things happened to the vice presidency dur

Julian Zelizer: Sitting senators become stand-up guys

Wednesday night's vote on the financial bailout was good for future legislators who plan to run for president. For decades, the conventional wisdom has been that sitting senators make bad presidential candidates. Almost everything about the legislative process is rough and ugly, the thinking goes. Legislators compromise, take contradictory stands, strike deals with their adversaries and form unholy alliances. When the life of a sitting senator is exposed on the campaign trail, it d

Andrew Meyer: McCain's missing a vital point about Afghanistan

[About Meyer: After living in mainland China and Taiwan for four years and in Japan for one year I returned to the U.S. and earned a doctoral degree in Chinese history, which I teach at the City University of New York. This blog reflects my belief that the study of the history and culture of other nations is indispensible to the conduct of modern politics.] The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama over foreign policy toward Pakistan has generated much press coverage of late. It

Scott Reynolds Nelson: The depression of 1929 is the wrong model for the current economic crisis

[Scott Reynolds Nelson is a professor of history at the College of William and Mary. Among his books is Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American legend (Oxford University Press, 2006).] As a historian who works on the 19th century, I have been reading my newspaper with a considerable sense of dread. While many commentators on the recent mortgage and banking crisis have drawn parallels to the Great Depression of 1929, that comparison is not particularly apt. Two

Bee Wilson: NYC once had its own milk scandal

[Bee Wilson is the author of “Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud From Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee.”] THE milk was marketed as pure and wholesome, and it looked fine to the naked eye. How were the mothers to know they were poisoning their babies? They had paid good money for it on the open market. It would take thousands of sick children before lawmakers did anything to stop it. China in 2008? No, New York City in 1858. Missing from the coverage of the cur

David Kaiser: What a week

[My new book, The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, has now been published.] One era died today, but the shape of the new one remains completely unknown. The House's failure to pass the bail-out signals the utter bankruptcy of our political system--a drama in which two generations have certainly acted entirely in character. Boomer Henry Paulsen, a former Wall Street titan, took charge of the situation--as Donald Rumsfeld had taken charge of foreign policy for Georg

Nigel Jones: Austria, still hobbled by its history

[Nigel Jones's Countdown to Valkyrie: The July Plot against Hitler is published in December by Frontline Books.] Austria is special. Its tourist board will tell you that, as will the headlines on the infrequent occasions when the Alpine republic grabs global attention. One of those rare occasions happened this weekend: Austria's far-right parties scooped up 29 per cent of the votes between them in a general election, pushing them ahead of the conservative People's Party, and only ju

Robert S. McElvaine: Their Party Crashed. Ours May Too.

[Robert S. McElvaine, a professor of history at Millsaps College, is the author of "The Great Depression" and, most recently, "Grand Theft Jesus: The Highjacking of Religion in America."] "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." Mark Twain was supposed to have said that, but even if he didn't, there's no denying that we're seeing proof of the adage in today's financial crisis. Consider this statement: "The extraordinary rate of

Correlli Barnett: We have learnt the wrong lessons from Munich

[Correlli Barnett is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and author of The Collapse of British Power (Pan Books).] Tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Munich Agreement with Hitler. The word “appeasement” has been a synonym for cowardly surrender to armed threat ever since. The Agreement marked the denouement of the foreign policy that Neville Chamberlain had pursued with unshakeable self-belief since he became Prime Minister in 1937. To him app

Tom Engelhardt: The Pentagon Bailout Fraud

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.] Let's start with the money the Bush admin

Jonathan Zimmerman: Sarah Palin and the Assault on Merit

In the 1990s, the Chicago Bulls won six NBA championships. Their formula was simple: Michael Jordan plus a decent supporting cast equals victory. At the end of every game, the ball was in Jordan's hands. And the Bulls almost always came out on top. Were the Bulls being "elitist" by channeling their entire offense through Michael Jordan? Of course they were. Jordan was the best basketball player on earth, plain and simple. He had won the right to carry the Bulls, and--even

Ron Chernow: The Lost Tycoons

[Ron Chernow is the author of “The House of Morgan” and “Alexander Hamilton.”] With breathtaking speed, the world of large Wall Street investment banks has vanished. Fabled firms, some more than a century old, have been merged out of existence (Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch), gone bankrupt (Lehman Brothers), or sought asylum as commercial bank holding companies (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley). Why on earth did this happen? The death of Wall Street has been a long-running,

Juan Cole: First McCain said he didn't see the meltdown coming, then he said he saw it

About that claim by McCain that he warned about the mortgage crisis:McCain:"But -- but let me -- let me point out, I also warned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and warned about corporate greed and excess, and CEO pay, and all that. A lot of us saw this train wreck coming." In fact, he has already admitted that he did not see the financial meltdown coming.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Patriot rises to the call in crisis

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth.] "I'm directing my campaign . . . to delay Friday night's debate until we have taken action to address this crisis."- Sen. John McCain, Sept. 24 "I think that it is going to be part of the president's job, to deal with more than one thing at once."- Sen. Barack Obama, Sept. 24 My fellow Americans: In this time of dire economic peril, patriotic

William J. Astore: Hey, Government! How About Calling on Us?

[William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. He now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, and is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005), among other works. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.] Lately, our news has focused on tropical depressions maturing into monster hurricanes that leave devastation in their wake -- and I'm not just talking about Gust

Simon Schama: The victory of big ideas over small minds

[Simon Schama is author of The American Future: A History.] The night before John McCain announced that Sarah Palin was his choice for vice-president, Barack Obama said, in his acceptance speech at Denver, that people with nothing better to run on could always “make a big election about small things”. “It's worked before,” he added ruefully – and accurately. What Obama meant by “small things” was the politics of personality and character assassination that he believes

Stanley I. Kutler: They Claim the Bailout Is Necessary, But Is It Constitutional?

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate.” ] Our “conservative” ideologues have steadily advanced their free-market myths during the past 40 years, insisting on minimalist government. Now those voices are quiet as we see the fallout of their laissez-faire notions. But once they reinvigorate financial institutions by transferring their huge debts to the taxpayer, we can be certain they will return. Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative favorite, has posit

Alan Schroeder: John McCain’s Risky Maneuver

[Alan Schroeder, author of Presidential Debates: Fifty Years of High-Risk TV.] The gambit by John McCain to postpone Friday night’s opening debate at Ole Miss entails considerable risk to the candidate. History shows that the public disapproves of presidential contenders who appear to be shirking a campaign exercise now regarded as obligatory. Since the dawn of televised presidential debates in 1960, candidates have regularly sought to avoid taking part, or to whittle d

Allen C. Guelzo: Lincoln's lessons for today's culture wars

... What lies behind the insistence on injecting morality into politics – and what lies behind the resistance to it – is a battle between two basic concepts of democracy itself: between democracy as process and democracy as purpose. This conflict is hardly an aberration of the 1990s or the Religious Right. It's a battle that was spectacularly played out 150 years ago in the great debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Then, as now, politicians preferred their proble

Timothy Garton Ash: The time has come for a final report on the 43rd president of the US

[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.] As the two men who would succeed him train like Olympic athletes for tomorrow's foreign policy debate, pause for a moment to complete your final report on the 43rd president of the United States. What would you say? I would sum up his two terms in four words: hubris followed by nemesis. Remember the mood music of eight years ago. The greatest power the world has ever seen. Rome on