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Is Obama Unpatriotic for Not Wearing the Flag on his Lapel?

by Fran Shor

The right-wing assault on Senator Barack Obama’s refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin and his supposed failure to salute the flag is an all-too-predictable manifestation of Republican political posturing. In a related incident, CNN posted an outrageously tendentious poll on its website asking whether Obama had the “proper patriotism” to be President. Although CNN may have crossed the boundaries of political partisanship, the identification of the flag and patriotis

What It Takes to Be President

by Rick Shenkman

Presidents are different from you and me. But it is not their power that makes them different. Or their money. Or their perks. Take away those things and they would still be different. One thing makes them different. Their drive. Thursday April 16, 1953 was going to be a crazy day anyway, one of those days only presidents put themselves through. First Ike would have to fly from Augusta, Georgia to Washington—he was in Augusta playing golf, of course—to give a

How Eloquence Has Paved the Way to the White House

by Robert Brent Toplin

They're piling on Barack Obama for being all word, no act. Yet that's wrong on the facts, and the implication is unfair. Obama's oratory has carried him far, but his skill as a talker is not unique. Most of America's popular presidents got into the White House primarily because they were effective communicators.In recent weeks the public has heard a good deal of mockery about Obama's eloquence. Critics have ridiculed his inspiring messages about "change." Columnist Robert Samuel

The Echo of the Culture Wars in the Obama-Clinton Fight

by James Livingston

I’ve been trying to figure out the philosophical predicates of the opposition to Obama’s candidacy—as attentive readers of HNN will know—and I’ve noted that the opposition coming from the Left is deeply rooted in Enlightenment values or discoveries, particularly in the correspondence theory of truth (which tells us that ideas are the copies and words are the transcriptions of an external reality). So I

Hillary's First Hundred Days Promise

by Bob Miller

After watching the Democratic candidates debate, the nineteenth such contest in the long hard slog towards the coveted nomination, I was struck by an overwhelming sense of irony by one of Hillary Clinton’s responses concerning immigration reform. Clinton dropped the f-bomb. No, not the four letter cheer made popular by Country Joe and the Fish during Clinton’s formative years during the sixties. Rather, she promised to provide a “pathway to legalization” for illegal im

Lincoln's Generation Also Faced Crises Involving Religion and Terrorism

by Vernon Burton

The problems of the nineteenth century parallel some of our own. Then, as now, America confronted terrorism and religious fanaticism. Then, as now, America conducted a war and engaged in occupation and nation-building. Religious zeal in the nineteenth century strongly influenced events, a fact that deserves underscoring, particularly when we see how the extremes of religion are currently influencing the world (jihadists flying jets into the World Trade Center) and our own U.S. political p

Why Liberals Are Weak When Faced with Fundamentalism

by James Simpson

Liberal intellectuals recoil from the obvious manifestations of scriptural fundamentalism, yet they continue to admire the very culture that produced it. The inheritors of the Enlightenment, they trace thei

Clintonites Need to Realize the Left Won the Debates of the 1960s

by James Livingston

Last time out on this limb, I ended by saying that the Obama campaign performs a political sensibility—an attitude toward history—that adjourns the culture wars by assuming the Left won the struggles conducted in, or inherited from, the 1960s. This campaign assumes, in other words, that the New Left has become the mainstream of American politics. It assumes accordingly that the New Right has always been a marginal, insurgent movement

Why DC's Gun Law Is Unconstitutional

by David E. Young

Historical arguments about American bills of rights are major points of discussion in the District of Columbia vs Heller case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue is exactly what the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means and whether it was proper for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District o

Should the Candidates Be Talking More About History?

by Alexander Heffner

At the National Book Festival this past August, Michael Beschloss, an American presidential biographer and award-winning historian, urged the nation to choose a president with historical knowledge—a task he suggests the electorate has ignored in the past two presidential campaigns.In a Q&A session after presenting his new book Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, a member of the audience asked Beschloss if he could “expound” on

An Obama Supporter Speaks Out

by Daniel Herman

I write in pique. I have been subjecting myself to the recent spate of columns that decry an irrational "anti-Hillary" campaign by Obama supporters. On HNN, there was Rick Shenkman 's POTUS blog, which told us that Obama supporters are nearing fanaticism in their hatred of Hillary, and are threatening to boycott her should she be the nominee. There is also Deborah Lipstadt's p

MLK Was Both a Talker and a Doer, Hillary

by Harvard Sitkoff

According to Hillary Clinton’s version of history, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dreamer, a talker (much as she labels Barack Obama), and the person really responsible for civil rights progress in the 1960s

Does Hillary Clinton Really Have More Experience than Barack Obama?

by T. Alissa Warters and Scott Kaufman

For the past few months of the Democratic race for the 2008 presidential nomination, the candidates have focused on two issues: experience and change. It is hard to assess whether any of them will promote change if elected, as none of them have yet to win the presidency, let alone the party nomination. On the matter of experience, Hillary Clinton claims that she should be the nominee because she has more government service than her top rival, Barack Obama. Here, though, there is a problem: what

Welcome Back to American Politics, LBJ!

by Randall B. Woods

Last month Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first Democratic candidate for the presidency to invoke the name of Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ, the Great Society,

Why Obama's the Real Deal

by James Livingston

The Hitman is at it again. Paul Krugman’s New York Times column on Friday, February 1st, praised John Edwards for moving the Democrats to the left—by laying out concrete proposals on health care and climate change, by forcing Clinton and Obama to follow suit. This praise works as setup for the punch line: “Personal appeal won’t do the job” against the Republicans. Only repeated reference to “substantive differences” will allow the new “pa

Mukasey Still Doesn't Know Water Boarding Is Torture?

by William Loren Katz

Attorney General Michael Mukasey, this country's chief legal officer, discussed the torture known as water boarding Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Obama’s New Math

by Robert S. McElvaine

There is nothing new about insurgent presidential candidates. The Democratic party seems to have one every four years. But it has become clear that there is something very new about this year’s insurgent, Sen. Barack Obama. The difference can best be seen in mathematical terms: the Obama campaign is making a serious attempt to change the type of math by which American politics has been calculated for the last 40 years. The Republican era that began with the election of Richard Nixon

Obamarama: The Absurd Arguments Being Used Against Him

by James Livingston

This time I waited until the returns were in. Barack beat Billary badly in South Carolina Saturday, much to my surprise. I thought it would be closer. The most promising figures to come out of the contest indicate that Obama’s appeal to young white voters is not something that shows up only in opinion polls—it reaches into the voting booth as well. He got 40% of white voters under 40 and 50% of white voters under 30. Pretty amazing.But I’m still cranky because the pol

Don't Get Tough, Barack

by James Grossman

Don’t do it, Barack. The pundits have weighed in, and they’ve reached a consensus: it is time to take off the gloves. “Time to get mean,” as one Chicago columnist puts it. “Democratic War!” screams the headline in New York. The media have concluded that the Clintons have gotten serious, and it’s time to show how tough you are. Time to demonstrate that you aren’t as “soft” as you have seemed. Well, this is not the National Basketb

Can Washington DC Legally Stop Residents from Owning a Handgun? (Supreme Court Brief)

by Jack N. Rakove, Saul Cornell, David T. Konig, William J. Novak, Lois G. Schwoerer, Fred Anderson, Carol Berkin, Paul Finkelman, R. Don Higginbotham, Stanley N. Katz, Pauline R. Maier, Peter S. Onuf, Robert E. Shalhope, John Shy, and Alan Taylor

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT The central question is whether the Second Amendment protects a private right to keep handguns and other firearms, independent of an individual’s membership in a state-regulated militia. As a problem for constitutional historians, the question can be elaborated and restated in this way: Did the framers and ratifiers of the Amendment believe they were constitutionally entrenching an individual right to keep arms for personal protection? Or did t