Roundup: Media's Take

Philip Klein: Forgetting the Forgotten War ... Obama's Selective History

[Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.] "Leaders like Truman and Acheson, Kennan and Marshall, knew that there was no single decisive blow that could be struck for freedom," Barack Obama declared on Tuesday at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. "We needed a new overarching strategy to meet the challenges of a new and dangerous world." In what his campaign billed as a "major" foreig

Kevin Phillips: Lies, Damn Lies and Government Inflation Statistics

[Author and commentator Kevin Phillips' most recent book is Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, published by Viking in April.] Describing the decade that began in 2000 as the "naughties" or "oughties" offers a useful shorthand -- and particularly for people interested in discussing the U.S. economy's perilous dual pathway of rising commodity inflation coupled with financial assets deflation. Ough

Ryan L. Cole: Vietnam Syndrome ... The war that has yet to produce a commander-in-chief

[Ryan L. Cole is a writer based in Washington, D.C.] Two million Americans fought in Vietnam. But not one of them has ever been elected president. If John McCain's bid for the presidency is unsuccessful, no veteran of that war will ever occupy the White House. This would make it unique among American wars and the political fortunes of their heroes. From the beginning of the republic Americans have looked to former warriors for leadership. Am

Michael Knox Beran: McCain's Cult of Teddy Roosevelt

[Michael Knox Beran is a contributing editor of City Journal. His most recent book is Forge of Empires 1861-1871: Three Revolutionary Statesmen and the World They Made.] Asked recently by the New York Times to name a conservative model, John McCain cited Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy, of course, had no shortage of virtues. Conservatism, alas, wasn’t one of them. It’s one thing for a conservative to admire T. R.’s style and gallantry, the charge up San Juan Hil

Richard A. Clarke: Lessons Relearned

[Mr. Clarke, counter-terrorism "czar" in the White House under Presidents Clinton and Bush, writes in his new book, YOUR GOVERNMENT FAILED YOU: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters, that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are not wholly to blame for the Iraq War mess. The system is also at fault. In the following excerpt from his new book he explains how.]

Bruce Bartlett: The GOP Is the Party of Civil Rights

[Mr. Bartlett is the author of "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past," recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.] ... Everyone knows this, but it's worth repeating: The Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln and was established in 1854 to block the expansion of slavery. The Democratic Party was the party of slavery: Its two founders, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, owned large numbers of slaves, and every party platform before the Civil War defe

Daniel Weintraub: Don't expect new drilling off the coast anytime soon

It has been nearly 40 years since a well a half-mile beneath the Pacific off the shore of Santa Barbara blew a gasket, spewing 200,000 gallons of gooey black oil over 800 square miles of ocean and fouling 35 miles of coastline. But even in a fast-changing world where memories are short, the Santa Barbara oil spill in January 1969 still stands as a vivid reminder of the risks from offshore oil development. Californians don't forget when you mess with their beaches. And w

Lizzy Davies: War story ... 64 years after massacre, villagers of Maillé may get some answers at last

[Lizzy Davies writes for the Guardian.] On August 25 1944, as General Philippe Leclerc led triumphant allied troops into the newly liberated French capital, Nazi soldiers entered the village of Maillé and razed it. Moving house to house through the quiet streets with machine guns, bayonets and firebombs, the Germans killed everyone they found - men, women and children. While Paris erupted in joy and patriotic pride, Maillé lay still: burned, ruined and bloody.

Eli Lake: Obama isn't Jimmy Carter--he's Ronald Reagan

[Eli Lake is a senior reporter on national security issues for The New York Sun.] ... Before unpacking the Obama view of the war on terrorism, let's dismiss the comparisons to Jimmy Carter. A bit of a refresher course in the horrors of the late 1970s: Jimmy Carter pledged to enshrine human rights as a central value in U.S. foreign policy. That was an admirable goal, but Carter didn't just inject human rights into U.S. foreign policy; he allowed it to rule policy, no matter the impli

Peter Beinart: The Other Wilsonianism

John McCain has made this much clear: The 2008 election will be about national security. Barack Obama will discuss the economy, where he has an edge. He will even discuss Iraq, where his position enjoys public support. But McCain will broaden the discussion to the larger question of how the two candidates see the world. That was how George W. Bush won reelection in 2004. According to exit polls, voters who identified “Iraq” as their primary issue opposed Bush en masse. But he made up for that by

Leon Aron: Back In the USSR?

[Leon Aron is director of Russian studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author, most recently, of "Russia's Revolution: Essays 1989-2006."] Vladimir Putin's appointment this spring as prime minister of the symbolic "union" of Russia and Belarus was yet another example of the troubling similarities between today's Russia and the other most stable and prosperous Russian regime of the past 80 years: Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet U

William Rees-Mogg: This recession could easily tip into a depression

[William Rees-Mogg is a distinguished journalist. He was Deputy Editor of The Sunday Times before becoming Editor of The Times in 1967, a position he held until 1981.] Today I am celebrating my 80th birthday, an age that seems less formidable when one has reached it than when one can see it only from afar. I was born on July 14, 1928, about 15 months before the American boom of the 1920s came to its rather abrupt end. Like everyone else, I am naturally curious to see w

Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier: Kennan Had a Vision. Things Aren't So Clear Now.

[Derek Chollet is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. James Goldgeier is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at George Washington University. They are co-authors of "America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11."] James Monroe had one, and so should we. That seems to be the theory behind the rampant and premature speculation among national security wonks about what kind of new doctrine President Obama or

Roger Pulvers: The self-serving memoirs of politicians

Japanese politicians are known for their perseverance and ingenuity, and the Diet may well be the last place in the country still offering lifetime employment. Ex-prime ministers effortlessly retain their seats and most of their influence. It's a phenomenon that politicians in other democracies can only look on with envy and awe. Now some Japanese leaders are bolstering their popularity, while augmenting their income, by publishing books. A book by ruling L

Tim Shipman: Barack Obama will chase John F Kennedy's mantle when he comes to Europe

[Tim Shipman is Washington Bureau Chief at the Sunday Telegraph.] The Democrat candidate has picked Germany, the country where the Iraq war most strained relations with America, for what is billed as a major address on transatlantic relations. That choice is also deliberately reminiscent of Kennedy's address in West Berlin during one of the bleakest periods of the Cold War in 1963, when he declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" - I am a Berliner. The

Michael Barone: We're Not Leaving

Sixty years ago this month, the top story in campaign year 1948 was not the big poll lead of Republican nominee Thomas Dewey or the plight of President Harry Truman. It was the Berlin airlift. On June 23, the Soviets cut off land access to West Berlin. Gen. Lucius Clay, the military governor in Germany, called for sending convoys up the autobahns, but Allied troops were vastly outnumbered by the Red Army, and everyone feared they would overrun Western Europe unless the United States

Anna Mulrine: Afghan Warlords, Formerly Backed By the CIA, Now Turn Their Guns On U.S. Troops

[Anna Mulrine is a senior editor at U.S. News & World Report magazine in Washington, D.C.] The war in Afghanistan reached a wrenching milestone this summer: For the second month in a row, U.S. and coalition troop deaths in the country surpassed casualties in Iraq. This is driven in large part, U.S. officials point out, by simple cause and effect. Marines flowed into southern Afghanistan earlier this year to rout firmly entrenched Taliban fighters, prompting a spike in combat in

Brian Groom: Language a great leader makes

[Brian Groom is the FT’s comment and analysis editor.] Whatever happened to the art of political phrase-making? The leaders of the developed world were on show this week at the Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Japan. Faced with the triple challenge of a food, oil and financial crisis, their response was as tongue-tied as it was ineffectual. “We saw eye to eye,” was all Yasuo Fukuda, Japan’s prime minister, could muster as he sought to look positively at an outcome that

Michael Lind: Jesse Helms is not dead

Having devoted his career to shocking and outraging American liberals, the late North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms continues to provoke them from his grave. Progressive journals and blogs are full of Helms horror stories. How he tried to make Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun cry by singing "Dixie" in the Senate elevator. How he won reelection against a black opponent by means of an ad showing the hands of a white man who had allegedly lost a job because of affirmative action. How he neve

Ross Douthat: The GOP's Carter Moment

[Ross Douthat has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review, Policy Review, and Details. His latest writings can be found on the Ross Douthat blog.] Very broadly speaking, when you look at people who gravitate toward the two political parties, the GOP tends to be the party of economic optimists - people who are confident about their professional lives, their future prospects, and the country's economic health - and the Democratic P