Roundup: Historians' Take

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

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

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

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.

Andreas Umland: The Rise of Fascist Rhetoric in Russia

[Dr Andreas Umland is editor of the book series "Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society" (www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html) and administrator of the web site "Russian Nationalism" (groups.yahoo.com/group/russian_nationalism/).] "I did not get this, sorry?" – exclaimed Matvei Ganopolski, moderator of the radio station "Ekho Moskvy" (Moscow's Echo) being on air at the evening of August 8, 2

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

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

Eric Rauchway: Presidents CAN do two things at once

[Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author, most recently, of Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America and Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. ] Today is September 24. On this day in 1864, Abraham Lincoln presided over a country at war with itself and a party split to its roots over the question of how to plan for the nation’s reconstruction—to such an extent that on this day, Lincoln reluctant

David Greenberg: How neocons made liberals wary of idealism

n early November 1956, Soviet tanks swarmed into Hungary to crush an insurgency that had just thrown off Moscow's yoke. In the United States, where the presidential election was days away, the Democratic nominee was the professorial and sometimes equivocal Adlai Stevenson--the epitome of the peace-loving, arms control-pushing, diplomacy-advocating liberalism that Republicans loved to tar as squishy-soft. In Hungary's case, however, Stevenson didn't flinch. At a Cleveland campaign st

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

Daniel Pipes: Appease Iran?

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] After Hitler, the policy of appeasing dictators – ridiculed by Winston Churchill as feeding a crocodile, hoping it will eat one last – appeared to be permanently discredited. Yet the policy has enjoyed some successes and remains a live temptation today in dealing with the I

Eric Rauchway: How big a bailout?

Laura Conaway at Planet Money asks, “So how big is $700 billion, anyway?” And Brad Setser tells her, it’s five percent of GDP; it’s “real money.” Good, but maybe we can do better: remember the terrible horrible no-good very bad New Deal, which was, like, socialist and all that? All federal non-defense spending during the New Deal was only a few percentage points

Andreas Umland: Moscow’s Miscalculated Show of Strength

[Dr Andreas Umland is editor of the book series "Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society" ( http://www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html ) and administrator of the web site "Russian Nationalism" (groups.yahoo.com/group/russian_nationalism/).] In Western comments, the Russian army’s invasion of Georgia is portrayed as a manifestation of revisionist expansionism. Kremlin-controlled mass media, in contrast, presents R