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Is President Bush Fated to Fail in the Second Term?

by Rick Shenkman

Hats off to the NYT for the headline above Lou Cannon's Tuesday morning op ed: "Can Bush Break the Second-Term Jinx?" Every president of the last 100 years has faced debilitating scandals or ennui in their second term. That's a warning light on Bush's dashboard. It doesn't mean he will be similarly enfeebled as his predecessors were. History is never so neat and simple and predictions usually f

Why the Democrats Don't Have to Worry About the Voters Who Are Obsessed with Old-Fashioned Morality

by Leonard Steinhorn

In these post-election days my e-mail in-box is full of despair. Friends, former college classmates, and countless Baby Boom peers all seem to be asking the same plaintive question: "Are we out of synch with the country, are we outside the mainstream?" The e-mails are from a dry cleaner in upstate New York and a suburban mom who works part-time and a high-tech wizard in the Pacific Northwest and from Boomer liberals generally chilled by polls showing that moral values motivated mo

Can Democrats Marry Progressive Politics with Religion? (They Have in the Past)

by Ron Briley

Political pundits are labeling presidential adviser Karl Rove a genius for focusing the attention of his boss upon such “moral” issues as same-sex marriage and abortion and working to attract the four million evangelicals to the polls who sat out the 2000 election. Meanwhile, Democrats targeted Ohio and its loss of manufacturing jobs as the most likely electoral prize to upset President Bush, who is the first President since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression to preside over

Are Gilder and Lehrman Tilting American History to the Right? A Case in Point

by Jesse Lemisch

Having had a busy autumn, I've only just seen the New-York Historical Society's Alexander Hamilton exhibit (it runs September 10-February 28; U.S. tour, 2005-2008). As we would expect from Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, the two rich right-wingers who have in effect taken over the N-YHS, the exhibit leads inexorably to the re-election of George Bush, the rejection of the last thirty-five years of social history, and a paean to triumphalist capitalism. Richard Brookhiser, Hamilton biographer an

Lynne Cheney's Attack on the History Standards, 10 Years Later

by Gary B. Nash

Ten years ago–October 20, 1994 to be exact–brought a screaming headline to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. Under the title “The End of History,” Lynne Cheney, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, maligned the National History Standards that she had funded (along with the Department of Education) as a “grim and gloomy” monument to political correctness. She pronounced the standards project a disaster for giving insu

Flip Flops Among Religious Groups in 2004

by Martin E. Marty

Having done little Monday-morning sighting of the 2004 campaign, at its end, we should, at least, look at the "flip-flops" or "changed places" among religious groups. First, Catholics: In 1960 the Vatican and American bishops assured U.S. citizens that bishops' (fatefully futile) intrusion in Puerto Rican politics (declaring it sinful for any Catholic to vote for the pro-birth control PPD) would never find a counterpart here. That first intervention under an American fla

Did the Bush Administration Consult Academics Before Invading Iraq?

Following is an exchange that has taken place on H-Diplo.Nedra Dyer McCloud, Graduate Student (10/15/04)This week, PBS aired Frontline's "The Choice 2004," a dual biography of John Kerry and George W. Bush. Bush's decision to wage war against Iraq was treated in some detail; there was no mention of his asking advice from any Middle Eastern scholars. There was no mention of any Middle Eastern scholars' having volunteered their advice abo

Hating America: An Old Tradition in Some Quarters

by Daniel Pipes

“The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years.” Thus does Walter A. McDougall of the University of Pennsylvania begin the first volume of his acclaimed new American history, Freedom Just Around the Corner (HarperCollins). Not surprisingly, this central event has evoked a wide range of opinions. Tens of millions of immigrants have voted with their feet to slough off prior allegiances and join the boisterous experiment th

Column: Letters from Korea: Jeju--Shhhhhhh! Don't Ask! (Part 2)

by William Thompson

This is the second of two articles Mr. Thompson has written about Jeju. Click here for the first. The rebellious outbreak on Jeju Island, South Korea is referred to as 4.3 as it started on April 3, 1948. Precipitating events consisted of discontent over the American occupation and that of troops from the central South Korean regime which was in its early stages of forming under Syngman Rhee's leadership. Jeju residents were especi

Is America's Empire Doomed?

by William E. Odom and Robert Dujarric

At least two sets of major threats from without confront the American empire, and critics suggest that these might be capable of undermining or catalyzing the empire's decline. First, some claim that the United States has paid insufficient attention to terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, information warfare, and other such so-called asymmetric threats. Second, other critics cite the political and moral tensions created by the empire's possession of th

Highlights of Election Night (Featuring Historians' Commentary)

by Bonnie Goodman

The Electoral College • George W. Bush: 286, Number of States: 31 • John F. Kerry: 252, Number of States: 20 The Popular Vote• George W. Bush: 59,459,765 (51% total) with 3.5 million more votes than his opponent. • John F. Kerry: 55,949,407 (48% total)The Congressional Results The Senate:• Republican: 55, a gain of 4 • Democrat: 44, a loss of 4

You Want Radical Policies ... Vote for Bush

by Juan Cole

The decision between Bush and Kerry will shape the world Americans live in during the next four years. Even though Bush has been called the "CEO President," that isn't how he has behaved. Bush has overthrown two governments and announced the imminent demise of several others. Bush is a revolutionary in Asia, a Robespierre. At least one of Bush's revolutions is now mired in its Terror phase. What a real CEO thinks abou

Republicans Aren’t Even Good for the Rich

by Robert S. McElvaine

"The Republicans only help the rich." We hear it all the time, and there is rarely disagreement over any word in the sentence other than "only." Almost everyone accepts it as axiomatic that Republican administrations and their policies are beneficial to the rich; the argument is over whether they are also helpful to other income groups. It seems certain that the socio-economic segment of the electorate most solidly in favor of the reelection of George W. Bush is the very r

The Disgrace that Was the 2000 Election: A Refresher Course in What Went Wrong

by HNN Staff

It was a Murphy's Law Election. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Sadly, no one came off well. Not ... ... Not the broadcast networks, which on election night first announced at 7:49 pm EST that Al Gore had won Florida, then announced at 10:13 pm that the race was too close to call, then announced (following the lead of Fox News) at 2:26 am that Bush had won Florida. Within hours the networks pulled back yet again, concluding that it was impossible to decide who had won the stat

Could the Election Turn on the Votes of the Soldiers in the Field?

by D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore

When Al Gore failed to carry his home state of Tennessee in the 2000 presidential election and returns from Florida became "too close to call," the race ultimately came down to a determination of "voter intent" divined by examination of Florida's punch card ballots and a count of its military absentee votes. Some 1,420 absentee ballots were thrown out after a Democratic consultant circulated a memo which suggested using technicalities to disallow the votes of military pers

Junk the Electoral College

by Joyce Appleby

Note: This article was first published in 2000 following the disputed Bush/Gore election. The 2000 presidential election is unique in the annals of American history. Because of its indeterminacy? No. Its singular distinction comes from the fact that never before have both the popular and electoral votes been close in the same election. When John F. Kennedy squeaked out a victory over Richard Nixon in 1960, his 48.7 percent of the popular vote triumph

Disputed Elections Are an American Tradition

by Holly Brewer and Laurie Burnham

Note: This article was first published in 2000, a week after the presidential contest went to the courts. HNN is republishing the piece in the event that the election of 2004 similarly ends in dispute, as some pundits think likely. Some political analysts claim that without quick resolution of the current presidential election, Americans will lose all faith in the electoral process. But why rush to judgment? The historical record shows that earlier generations, includin

Once Again Republicans Are Running Against the Sixties

by Robert S. McElvaine

Somewhere in the backrooms at the Republican party, Karl Rove is surely chortling as he manipulates the levers controlling the smoke and mirrors that have his candidate in a position where he might win the election. His ego must be bursting. He has taken the strategy of the Republican party of the late nineteenth century, which he has studied carefully and greatly admires, and outdone his role models. Rove is hardly the first Republican strategist of recent decades to see how we

Is Bush Really Good for Israel?

by Edward Olshaker

"Why do four out of five American Jews continue to vote Democrat?" Conservative columnist Mona Charen posed this thought-provoking question following a huge pro-Israel rally in Washington, DC in early 2002, noting that Republicans "were well represented" at the event and had demonstrated a higher level of support for Israel than Democrats had in recent polling. In a similar column, William Safire argued that "perhaps that 80 percent should think again" abo

If W Had Written the Declaration of Independence

by Marc Stein

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. --Declaration of Independence, 1776 When Thomas Jefferson asked George Bush to