Roundup: Historians' Take

Michael Kazin: A Liberal Revival of Americanism

[Michael Kazin's latest book is "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan." He teaches history at Georgetown University.] Barack Obama's rise to power has, to many people's surprise, once again made patriotism a liberal faith. At the pre-inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial, "This Land Is Your Land," lustily rendered by Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen, shared equal billing with "The Star-Spangled Banner." In his inaugural address, the new

Alan Brinkley: Railing Against the Rich ... A Great American Tradition

[Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.] The Great Depression of the 1930s created hardship and suffering among millions of Americans. It also created populist resentment of elites. Among the many signs of this anger was the astonishing popularity of Huey P. Long, governor of Louisiana and then U.S. senator, a figure so dominant in his own state that his enemies called him a dictator. But to the ordinary people of Louisiana --

Mark Naison: Did FDR's Jobs and Spending Programs Make the Depression Worse?

[Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University.] During the debate on President Obama's stimulus package, I was astonished to hear Republican Congressional leaders argue that history shows us that massive government spending programs make economic crises worse. As an example, they invoke the jobs and public works programs of the Roosevelt Administration, which, they claim, lenththened the Depression rather than ameliorated its impact.

Andreas Umland: Are We Witnessing the Beginning of a New Russian Thaw? Medvedev Meets "Novaya gazeta" Editor

When Vladimir Putin nominated Dmitry Medvedev for becoming Putin's successor as President of the Russian Federation on December 10, 2008, Western observers reacted with relief. Medvedev was the best possible candidate, in Putin's entourage, and the West's preferred choice as a future partner in negotiations – at least, given the alternatives to Medvedev, in the Russian leadership. At the same time, most pundits, in both Russia and the West, were sceptical concerning not only the actual prerogati

Niall Ferguson: Keynes can't help us now

[Niall Ferguson is a professor at Harvard University and Harvard Business School, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution. His latest book is "The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World."] ... There is something desperate about the way economists are clinging to their dogeared copies of Keynes' "General Theory." Uneasily aware that their discipline almost entirely failed to anticipate the current crisis, they se

Melvin I. Urofsky: Obama should follow Brandeis's advice to Woodrow Wilson and FDR

[Melvin I. Urofsky is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of the forthcoming “Louis D. Brandeis: A Life.”] SOME things never change. When President Obama spoke last week of “shameful” bonuses for bankers and the financial community’s “irresponsibility,” he echoed charges leveled nearly a century ago by Louis D. Brandeis. Brandeis, a commercial lawyer, leading reformer and future Supreme Court justice, described a dangerous combination of avarice, lack of a

Tom Engelhardt: Whistling Past the Afghan Graveyard

[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.] It is now a commonplace -- as a lead

Joseph Lane: Being President and Saying "I'm Sorry": Obama's Mea Culpa

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.] You can stop the watch: the time from his inauguration to President Obama’s first mea culpa clocked in at exactly two weeks.He did not leave anything to chance, taking responsibility on the evening news with all the major network news anchors, and doing so repeatedly.Of course, Presi

Jonathan Zimmerman: On Uncle Sam's role in public schools, Republicans have it backwards

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. His next book, "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory," will be published in June.] Hey, look out for the Big Bad Federal Government! It's coming soon, to build a school near you. That's what Republicans are saying about President Obama's stimulus plan, which includes $20 billion for school building and renovation. Throughout American history, the st

Deborah Lipstadt: Double Disaster at the Vatican ... Indepth Analysis

[Ms. Lipstadt is Dorot professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University.] There are two in depth analyses of the Vatican situation, one in the New York Times, which discusses how the reinstatement of the SSPX by the Vatican exposes deep divisions within the Vatican.In addition Sandro Magister, a correspondent for the weekly magazine L&

Roger Morris: The President Behind the Mask

In the political sense, Barack Obama came out of nowhere — and both his Democratic primary opponents and John McCain in the general election tried to persuade voters of the risks of electing someone with so sparse a past, telling them that “we don’t know who he is!” This raises a bigger question: how well do we really “know” any politician, no matter how long he’s been in the public eye? History holds a cautionary lesson. Barack Obama is an unknown quantity. But so, aft

Walter Russell Mead: Why the recession bolstered America

[Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World. Lauren Gottlieb provided research assistance for this article.] Even before the Panic of 2008 sent financial markets into turmoil and launched what looks like the worst global recession in decades, talk of American decline was omnipresent. In the long term, the United States faces

Juan Cole: We're really leaving Iraq (The left shouldn't worry)

On Friday, nearly six years after George W. Bush's swaggering "Mission Accomplished" speech, a new and humbler president addressed a cheering military audience and declared an end to the Iraq War. But some observers fear that President Barack Obama's blueprint, which extends the American presence for another quarter-decade, raises the possibility of a continued U.S. entanglement in that war. In particular, Obama's plan to leave 35,000 to 50,000 support troops in Iraq betwe

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: 10 Things That Obama Should Do (To Prepare for Going to Beijing)

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, and the author, most recently, of Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments (2008).] No, there hasn't been any indication that the new President will be heading to China anytime soon, though it does seem likely that Hilary Clinton will make it there during her first tri

Carmen M. Reinhart And Kenneth S. Rogoff: The lesson of history is grim: Expect a prolonged slump.

[Ms. Reinhart is professor of economics at the University of Maryland. Mr. Rogoff is professor of economics at Harvard and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.] Perhaps the Obama administration will be able to bring a surprisingly early end to the ongoing U.S. financial crisis. We hope so, but it is not going to be easy. Until now, the U.S. economy has been driving straight down the tracks of past severe financial crises, at least according to a variety of stan

John Q. Barrett: Irving Feiner, Supreme Court Litigant & Free Speaker

[Professor John Q. Barrett, St. John’s University School of Law.] This morning’s New York Times brought the sad news of the death ten days ago of Irving Feiner, age 84, of Nyack, New York. (For the obituary story, click here.) In 1949, when Feiner was a student at Syracuse University, he was arrested for disorderly conduct after he, speaking from a soapbox at a Syracuse street corner to a crowd of interested listeners and less enthusiastic onlookers, ignored police orders to shut

Daniel Pipes: Obama, the Middle East and Islam - An Initial Assessment

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Why, just two weeks into a 209-week term, assess a new American president's record on so esoteric a subject as the Middle East and Islam? In Barack Obama's case, because of:(1) A contradictory record: His background brims over with wild-eyed anti-Zionist

Philip Brenner and Saul Landau: Farewell, Monroe Doctrine

[Philip Brenner is a professor of international relations at American University. His most recent book is A Contemporary Cuba Reader (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). Saul Landau is vice chair of the Institute for Policy Studies board of trustees. His most recent film is "We Don't Play Golf Here — and Other Stories of Globalization." They are Foreign Policy In Focus contributors.] President Barack Obama could swiftly improve U.S. relations with Latin America by announcing th

Michael Reynolds: Behind the blow-out at Davos

[Michael A. Reynolds is an assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, where he is at work on a book on Ottoman-Russian relations and the struggle for mastery of Anatolia and the Caucasus in the twilight of empire.] Origins of a cooperation. For the past two decades, cooperative relations between Turkey and Israel had been one of the constants of internation

Martin E. Marty: Pope Benedict and the Jews

On January 22, responding to a post-speech questioner at St. Scholastica College in Duluth, which is (roughly) twenty-four percent Catholic and sixteen percent Lutheran, I observed that American Catholic criticisms of Pope Benedict XVI have often been muted, and that Lutherans held their fire and even admired some Benedict-ine actions. For example, he had guided a Lutheran-Catholic entente document through obstructions in 1999. On 'interfaith' in general, recalling the nightmare his quotation