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Presidency: Memo to George W.

by Rick Shenkman

To: George W. BushFrom: Teddy RooseveltGeorge, I’m coming out of retirement to give you a little friendly advice, one Republican to another. No, I am not here to berate you for your administration’s dismal environmental record. I’m writing a separate letter to Dick about that. I figure he’s the one to talk to about policy.The issue I want to raise with you is more important. It’s how you’re conducting yourself as president. George, you need to take command! The presidency

Presidency: George’s Jimmy Problem

by Stephen Hess

Editor’s Note The following column was first published July 2, 1978. Different era, different president. But today George Bush faces the same problem Jimmy Carter did back then: declining poll ratings. In an effort to put the latest poll numbers in perspective, we decided to take you back in time. So sit back and relax. It’s 1978 again. A president with little experience is discovering that leading is difficult. And he’s receiving all kinds of advice.Presidential scholar Thoma

Analogies: Was Timothy McVeigh Our John Brown?

by Paul Finkelman v. Clayton Cramer

YESBy Clayton Cramer. Mr. Cramer, who describes himself as"a software engineer by day, historian by night," holds an MA in history and is the author of several books. The public perception of John Brown has gone through a quite substantial transformation since his execution in 1859. While there were those like Thoreau who were prepared to publish “A Plea for Captain John Brown,”

Column: Learning Nothing from the Reagan Deficits

by P.M. Carpenter

11It had to be the most awesome, lollapalooza understatement of the year. In a June 30th headline, the New York Times – which neurotics in the know regard as a capitalist rag of unsubdued socialism -- reported without a hint of sarcasm or bias that the “Budget Surplus Could Dwindle, Bush Aide Says.” Surely this admitted reversal of fortune came as “news” only to children under the age of nine who aren’t quite right, and perhaps George W. himself.11The aide selected to deliver the

Column: Red, White, and Blue, From Sea to Shining Sea, Long May It Wave

by William Thompson

As a gambling researcher in Las Vegas, I am often called upon to comment on the many maladies that afflict the social fabric of my community. I do so recognizing one major disconnect. Over 5000 vote each month with their feet. Their votes say Las Vegas has to be doing something right because they move here. They make us the fastest growing community in the country. Often I think we should have a day to celebrate good things about Las Vegas. We don't.People of the world vote with th

Column: This Smoker’s Glad Bush Is in Big Tobacco’s Pocket

by P.M. Carpenter

On the matter of what to do about smoking and purveyors of smoke, there is as much confusion in our nation’s capital as there was some 400 years ago in the Old World. Then, European governments were not worried about tobacco’s health detriment; indeed, many physicians considered tobacco a curative for a host of ills. But its use had the unfortunate by-product-—a kind of second-hand smoke problem, if you will-—of setting ablaze wood-constructed villages and leaving Lord only knows how many in

Presidency: What's Up Doc?

by Rick Shenkman

What are we to make of a high official who repeatedly suffers from heart trouble? The fact that we do not know the answer is almost as troubling as Dick Cheney’s repeated visits to the hospital.To most questions concerning our leaders we have stock answers, well-honed after two hundred years of experience. One of the reasons for our political system’s stability is that when most problems arise we know immediately the right questions to ask, even if we do not immediately know all the answ

Writers Who Lie

by HNN Staff

Editor’s Note: Figuring out why he did it is impossible at this point. We simply don’t know enough. Maybe we never will. But Joseph Ellis is not the first person of prominence to lie about himself. The list includes politicians, sports figures, and writers, including at least one, like Ellis, who won the Pulitzer Prize. Herewith a short list of writers who got caught lying. For perspective, we have included brief excerpts from books and articles written by cr

Military: Bush’s Dangerous Nuclear Plans

by Ira Chernus

George W. Bush is talking about the most radical change in U.S. military strategy since Dwight D. Eisenhower took office as president in 1953. Like Eisenhower, Bush faces an uphill struggle selling the new strategy to Congress, the American people and U.S. allies. Eisenhower's innovation brought more risks than benefits. Bush's plans are even more full of dangers. Eisenhower wanted to limit military spending by reducing conventional forces and basing U.S. security on nuclear weapons. But

Column: A White Male Confesses: I Got My Job Through Affirmative Action

by William Thompson

I received my undergraduate and master's degrees in Political Science from Michigan State University. Following a brief stint in the Marine Corps and a two-year teaching position at Southeast Missouri State College in Cape Girardeau, I enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of Missouri in Columbia. I received my degree in l972, nine months after I entered the job market for a tenured track teaching position. I knew that finding a job in l971 would not be easy. After all, my degrees

First Bob Kerrey, Now Joe Ellis?

by Jim Sleeper

It's the return of the repressed. Two months ago, former Senator Bob Kerrey threw his presidency of New York's New School University into turmoil by admitting but downplaying his role in an apparent massacre in Vietnam. Now Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian, has been caught inflating his role in Vietnam. For years, he admits, he told students at Mt. Holyoke and Amherst Colleges that he'd seen combat, some at My Lai, and had served on General William Westmoreland's st

Politics: Faith-Based Groups Should Be Careful What Whey Wish For

by Andrew M. Schocket

The Bush administration wants to drop some cash in the collection plate. If Congress enacts the proposed"faith-based initiative," the federal government will help pay for religious institutions' social programs. Federal funding of religious organizations' good works would enable these groups to divert money currently spent on such activities any way they want. In effect, tax dollars would be supporting churches, mosques and synagogues. The plan's defenders argue that clos

Column: How Bush Sold Out the Christian Right

by P.M. Carpenter

Recent developments in the president's course of shaping his"faith-based initiative"-a hefty alternative to government attending the needy-prompt questions about the evolution of conservativism. Amidst the Great Depression's massive unemployment, for example, President Herbert Hoover wrote that"many persons left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples." Yet it's doubtful that he conceived this incredibly insensitive assessment as a deliberate deception. Hoover really, trul

More Is at Issue than Just Joe Ellis's Honesty

by Jerry Lembcke

A colleague passed along the clipping about Joseph J. Ellis, the Mount Holyoke College history professor who lied about having served in Vietnam. Knowing that I've written about men who tell war stories, he asked me why I thought someone would do something like that. On one level, the answer seems quite obvious. Military experience is a rite of passage for men and to have been in uniform during a war, as Ellis was during Vietnam, there is an urge to associate oneself as closely as possible

Readers Comment on the Joseph Ellis Scandal

by HNN Staff

Editor's note: After the story broke about Joseph Ellis's misrepresentations, we asked readers for their views. (Click here to read statements made by Mr. Ellis in the past about character.)CENSURE BUT DON'T IMPEACH HIM I have a unique perspective on Joe Ellis, having chaired a committee that recommended that the University of North Carolina at

Politics: What TR Would Have Made of Bush/Cheney

by Daniel Justin Herman

A century ago Americans, led by their new Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, left behind the excesses of the Gilded Age and entered the Progressive Era. The Gilded Age was a time when plutocrats and corporations dominated society and manipulated government. The Progressive Era was a time when middle-class reformers regained control of their society. Progressives pushed through legislation to protect workers; to conserve natural resources and wildlife; to create national parks and monum

Politics: Who Changed History Most in the Past Half Year?

by HNN Staff

JEFFORDS AND O'CONNOR SANDRA DAY O'CONNORBecause ... She was the swing vote in Bush v. Gore, giving us ... Bush...the end of Kyoto...the end of the ABM Treaty (maybe)...higher levels of arsenic in wat

Politics: Bush’s River Boat Gamble—And Why Republicans Love It

by Robert Forbes

Now that President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut has been signed into law, the pundits and the experts have declared that the surplus is dead--and that that's a good thing. Suddenly, politicians and economists who have for years stressed the urgency of fiscal discipline and the need to slash spending have found a new fondness for deficits. It's a strange tturnaround, to say the least.Why do President Bush and his allies want to knock the federal budget into the red? It's a familiar claim

Column: History 101 for Lefties

by P.M. Carpenter

Novice visionaries of the Left, many of whom signed on with Ralph Nader in 2000, live in an imaginary America. They live in a nation where stridently stated radical visions can lead to revolutionary realities. Experienced visionaries live in a nation where that tactic means profound disappointment, because we’re a profoundly unrevolutionary people.11A brief review of America’s tenaciously conservative past—a splash of cold-water in the face—might be helpful to the (barely) surviving Left i

Column: Can Anybody Teach Gray Davis How to Behave Himself?

by William Thompson

Governor Gray Davis is playing the rich man versus the poor man political game as the lights go out in California. Davis sees the cost of energy rising in his state, and because his state and its poor people cannot share any of the responsibility for the price increases, the fault must be put on the doorstep of the rich people--far away rich people--rich people who live in another political jurisdiction--rich people who live in Texas. To Davis politics is a giant zero-sum game. The poor Calif