Roundup: Historians' Take

Julian Zelizer: Obama-Edwards ticket? Nah.

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the co-editor of Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Harvard University Press). He is currently writing a history of national security politics since World War II that will be published by Basic Books.] Yesterday John Edwards announced his support for Barack Obama. The endorsement arrived at a good time for Obama since the inevitable nominee was badly defeated in Wes

Simon Winchester: China should have been in a better position to handle the quake

[Simon Winchester is the author of “The Man Who Loved China.”] IT is a cruel and poignant certainty that the children who died in the wreckage of their school during the earthquake this week in Dujiangyan, China, knew all too well that their country once led the world in the knowledge of the planet’s seismicity. They would have been taught, and proudly, that almost 2,000 years ago an astronomer named Chang Heng invented the world’s first seismoscope. It was a bizarrely

Juan Cole: Is Obama the Apostate, or is Bush? A Reply to Luttwak

I've been traveling again and so only just saw Edward Luttwak's ridiculous column about Barack Obama being considered an"apostate" in the Muslim world.It is just so discouraging that such an ignorant and illogical comment was made by a prominent American pundit, and that the New York Times leant its pages to this complete drivel.Of course, this column is a stealth way of b

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China’s political colours ... from monochrome to palette

[Jeffrey N Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. His most recent book is China's Brave New World-And Other Tales for Global Times (Indiana University Press, 2007), and his next will be Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (Routledge, forthcoming).] A dramatic but largely unacknowledged shift has recently taken place in how the past is understood in China. One way to think about this Chinese transformation is to see it as a sort of "colour revoluti

Juan Cole: Clinton and Obama on Al-Jazeera

Last Wednesday morning, Al-Jazeera's Arabic service reported from Indianapolis on the split results of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. For analysis, the anchor in Doha, Qatar, interviewed the network's Washington correspondent, Fady Mansour. "A state for each candidate, is that right?" she asked. Mansour replied that it might seem so from the outside, but in fact winning states was less important than winning delegates, and Barack Obama had bettered his lead over Clinton in t

Richard D. Kahlenberg: Barack Obama and Affirmative Action

[Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, is author of The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action.] Even as Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee last Tuesday, his continuing failure to win white working-class voters clouds his prospects for November. The inability to connect with noncollege educated whites also undercuts his claim to being a truly transformative candidate — a Robert F. Kennedy figure — who could significan

Tom Engelhardt: Running Out of History

[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.] Already climate change--in the form of

Allan J. Lichtman: The Democratic Dream Ticket ... Obama / Clinton

[Allan J. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C. His six books include Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928 and The Keys to the White House.] In 2002, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the Democratic nominee for governor in my home state of

Bernard A. Weisberger: The Super Problem

Though there are still primaries left, the Democratic Party may be headed for an August dilemma. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama is likely to enter the convention with a clinching majority of committed delegates chosen by voters in primaries and caucuses, but Obama is almost guaranteed to have more of them. So, barring a huge late turnaround, the deciding votes will come from the approximately 800 “superdelegates,” automatically seated ex officio and free to vote as they please.

Michael Klare: America Out of Gas

[Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of the just-released Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books). A documentary film based on his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation and can be ordered at bloodandoilmovie.com. A brief vid

Victor Davis Hanson: Presidential Pariah

We are in one of the longest presidential campaigns in modern memory -- and haven't even started focusing on the general election. It's been enough to drive most of us mad, but if there's one person in particular suffering the most, it may be President Bush. It's been noted here before that we have not had an election since 1952 in which an incumbent president or vice president was not running in at least partial defense of an existing administration's record.

Stephanie Coontz and Valerie Adrian: An Overdue Mother's Day Gift that would make a real difference

[Stephanie Coontz is a Professor of History and Family Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. Valerie Adrian is a researcher at the Council on Contemporary Families.] Here's a thought for a Mother's Day gift that would go beyond the complimentary flowers passed out by restaurants and the complementary speeches churned out by politicians every May: Affordable child care that is operated in accord with high-quality national standards. It's a gift long over

Jim Castagnera: The Global Species Shift

[Jim Castagnera is the Associate Provost and Associate Counsel at Rider University.] Since Darwin published Origin of Species a century and a half ago, biologists have puzzled over when incremental changes in a life form add up to a brand new species. Mother Earth… Gaia… poses the same challenge. “The Gaia hypothesis,” Wikipedia tells me, “is an ecological hypothesis that proposes that living and nonliving parts of the earth are a complex interacting system that can be thought o

Taru Taylor: The Wright-Obama Split in Historic Perspective

[Taru Taylor is Professor of English at Semyung University, Jecheon, South Korea.] Sen. Barack Obama's recent fallout with Rev. Jeremiah Wright transcends daily news. The gravity of their broken friendship commands larger perspective. Now that they have separated into opposing camps, it is possible to see their argument replaying Black America's central conflict: Booker T. Washington vs. Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. Every Black American is either Washington or Dr. DuBois. He eit

Daniel Pipes: Israel's Predicament at 60 ... World's worst neighbourhood

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Two religiously-identified new states emerged from the shards of the British empire in the aftermath of World War II. Israel, of course, was one; the other was Pakistan.They make an interesting, if infrequently-compared pai

William J. Astore: The Air Force Above All

[William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. He currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. He is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005). He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.] When I first joined the Air Force, its mission statement was straightforward: to fly and fight. The recruiting slogan was upbeat: the Air Force was"a great way of life,"

Leonard Steinhorn: Blue-collar fault line is not to blame

[Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of communication at American University, is the author of “The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006).] ... The American society is one of dynamic capitalism, cultural rejuvenation and technological change. Because the young are best at adapting to change and learning how to translate it into our daily lives, ours has become the first country in history to transfer cultural authority from its elders to its y

Eric Rauchway: John McCain is dangerously contemptuous of the international system that has served the U.S.--and the world--so well

[Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author of The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction, Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America and Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. He also blogs for The Edge of the American West.] Seventy years ago, back when John McCain was a toddler babbling nonsense, the U.S. turned toward international cooperation on economic issues. With the An

Juan Cole: Clinton on Iran Obliteration ... A Bush Clone?

Barack Obama criticized Hillary Clinton on Sunday for her threat to"totally obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel. He said on Meet the Press, 'MR. RUSSERT: Hillary Clinton was asked about if Iran launched a nuclear attack against Israel, and this is the answer she gave. Let's listen.(Videotape)

Frederick Kagan: How We'll Know When We've Won

[Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.] The president's nomination of generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno to take command of U.S. Central Command and Multinational Force-Iraq, respectively, was obviously the right decision. By experience and temperament and demonstrated success, both men are perfectly suited to these jobs. Given the political climate in Washington, however, their nominations are likely to be attacked with the same tir