Roundup: Historians' Take

Mark LeVine: We Are All Israelis Now

Mark LeVine, guest blogging at juancole.org (Nov. 5, 2004): [Mark LeVine, History, University of California, Irvine] Three years ago, as the pungent odor of what was left of the World Trade Center slowly pervaded my neighborhood, I wrote a piece called “We’re all Israelis Now.” I didn’t invent the idea; in the hours since the attacks I had heard several commentators say essentially the same thing, although our meanings were in fact diametrically opposed. For them, the S

Gene Gerard: A Mandate? What Mandate?

Gene Gerard, HNN book editor (Nov. 5, 2004): Over the course of the last two days, since the election, various members of the media have said that President Bush now has a mandate. Presumably, this is attributable to the fact that Bush received precisely one percentage point about 50 in the popular vote. And to be fair, he is the first president to achieve a popular vote exceeding 50% since his father’s election in 1988. But there is evidence suggesting that the mandate Bush receive

Robert Dallek: Can't We Just Get Along?

Robert Dallek, Los Angeles Times, 02 Nov. 2004 [Robert Dallek is a presidential historian, and recently authored"An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963" (2003, Little Brown).] In 1968, after rioting at the Democratic convention in Chicago underscored the bitter divide in the United States over the Vietnam War, a French travel agency urged its customers to"see America while it lasts." Today's antagonism rivals what happened in 1968. Although we've not seen m

Joshua Brown: A Lot Can Happen in Two Years (Illustration)

Garry Wills: The End of the Enlightenment?

Garry Wills, in the NYT (Nov. 4, 2004): This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove underst

Jack Rakove: Chaos on Tuesday Could Have the Welcome Effect of Ending the Electoral College

Jack Rakove, in the LAT (Oct. 31, 2004):Part of me perversely hopes that Tuesday's election is a replay of 2000. Three years ago, I undertook a fool's errand to the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta to urge the National Commission on Federal Election Reform to recommend altering or even abolishing the electoral college. The

Gil Troy: Myths of Campaign 2004

Gil Troy, in LaPresse (Oct. 30, 2004): As the campaign to select the putative Leader of the Free World ends, myth-making proliferates amid the image-making. Even when the conventional wisdom errs, it will nevertheless shape this election. The most popular misconceptions, festering left, right, and center include: That This is The Nastiest Campaign Ever: In fact, most campaigns get vicious, and there is a grand tradition of American political mudslinging. The slick Swift Boat Veterans

Gil Troy: Presidential IQ as a Subject Susceptible to Political Debate

Gil Troy, in the Montreal Gazette (Oct. 27, 2004):At times, this epic 2004 U.S. presidential contest, debating pressing issues regarding the war on terrorism, recipes for prosperity, the responsibility of democratic citizens to one another, has degenerated into schoolyard brawling.In the Jon Stewart era, the president as village idiot and the challenger as flip-flopper have moved from late-night comedy to the editorial page and the stump. Googling "

Ruth Rosen: The Marriage Gap Between Dems and Repubs ... And How It Could Decide the Election

Ruth Rosen, in the Nation (Oct. 28, 2004): [Ruth Rosen, professor emeritus of history at the University of California and former columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, is a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute and author of The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (Penguin Putnam).] Last winter, newspapers across the country publicized the startling fa

Edmund S. Morgan: What Is at Stake in This Election

Edmund S. Morgan, in the NY Review of Books (Nov. 4, 2004):In the wake of the many scandals that have disgraced our government in the last four years, who is accountable? Will the secretary of defense be dismissed because of what happened at Abu Ghraib? Will the attorney general be dismissed for what is happening at Guantánamo Bay? Will the secretary of the interior be dismissed for handing national treasures

Garry Wills: What Is at Stake in This Election

Garry Wills, in the NY Review of Books (Nov. 4, 2004):What was the last election with great stakes in play? I suppose 1968. It was similar to this race, but (as it were) upside down. Both involve the problem of admitting a tragic mistake. The mistake in 1968 was a belief that where the French had failed in a long and committed colonial adventure in Indochina, we could replace them and succeed. We could do so, we thou

Michael Kazin: Our Buddy-Buddy Politics ... Personality Over Substance

Michael Kazin, in New York (Nov. 1, 2004):It’s the final week before an election that activists from both parties are claiming is the most significant one in decades. Pollsters cannot agree on which candidate might win, and we face the prospect of legal battles that may stretch weeks beyond November 2. So it is a shame that the trembling index finger

Robert Tucker: The Sources of American Legitimacy

Robert Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, in Foreign Affairs (Nov./Dec. 2004):[Robert W. Tucker is Professor Emeritus of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University. David C. Hendrickson is Robert J. Fox Distinguished Service Professor at Colorado College.]The 18 months since the launching of the se

Jim Sleeper: Why Some Conservatives Are Backing Kerry

Jim Sleeper, in the American Prospect (Oct. 27, 2004):[Jim Sleeper is a political-science lecturer at Yale University, where he teaches a seminar on "New Conceptions of American National Identity."]If some of us anti-Bush Americans seem on the verge of a nervous breakdown in these final days, it's not necessarily because John Kerry is our heart's desire or even because George W.

Joshua Spivak: How the Electoral College Came into Existence

Joshua Spivak, in The Hill (Oct. 26, 2004):[Joshua Spivak is an attorney and media consultant.]With a close, bitterly contested election coming to a possible photo-finish, the Electoral College is in for yet another beating. America's presidential election system is clearly the most heavily critiqued part of the original Constitution, as many complain about its anti-democratic distorting ef

Daniel Pipes: Bush is 9/12, Kerry is 9/10

Daniel Pipes, in the NY Sun (Oct. 26, 2004):"I can wage a better war on terror than George Bush has." So speaks Senator Kerry in the U.S. presidential campaign's final days, again reminding voters that the key issue in this race remains as it was a year earlier - deciding which candidate will better protect Americans from terrorism. As with so many topics, the basic difference between Kerry and Pre

Robert S. McElvaine: It's the Illusions About Iraq, Stupid

Robert S. McElvaine (Oct. 23, 2004): [Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, is the author of Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, and is currently completing his first novel and screenplay.]The sign that ought to be on the wall at John Kerry’s campaign headquarters is: IT’S THE ILLUSION THAT IRAQ & THE WAR ON TERROR ARE THE SAME, STUPID!That’s a little longer than the slogan on the sign

Robert S. McElvaine: The Making of the Marlboro Man, 2004 (Yes, We're Talking About W)

Historian Robert S. McElvaine (Oct. 20 2004): [Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, is the author of Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, and is currently completing his first novel and screenplay, What It Feels Like, which also deals with questions of masculine insecurity.]He can’t be a man, ’cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me. This famous Mick Jagger

Juan Cole: Bush Sounds More and More Like Mao

Juan Cole, at his blog (Oct. 17, 2004):Ron Suskind's profile of George W. Bush reminded me eerily of Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. Suskind portrays Bush as filled with unwarranted certainty, sure that God is speaking and working through him, and convinced that decisive action

William Loren Katz: Will Bush Have to Pay for His Mistakes on Election Day?

William Loren Katz (Oct. 20, 2004): [William Loren Katz is the author of forty US history books. His website is: williamlkatz.com.]It will be 18 months ago this election eve, since President Bush on May 1, 2003, donned a flight jacket, landed on the carrier Abraham Lincoln and before a “Mission Accomplished” banner announced the end of “major combat” in Iraq. He proudly said: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign ag