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Republicans Should Look Back to the Future

by Robert Brent Toplin

When Republicans met at a governors' conference recently to consider their party's future, many of them complained that conservatives had lost their way. They pointed to Ronald Reagan's victories in the 1980s as the best model for rebuilding the GOP after its 2008 defeat. Reagan proved successful, they argued, because he stressed bedrock conservative principles. But they're wrong. This isn't the Reagan era. Republicans would be better off looking for a model more relevant to our time

The Eisenhower Lesson Obama and the Democrats Need to Learn

by Michael Bowen

Historians make their living seeing the past in the present. The recent landmark election of Barack Obama has led to an outpouring of presidential comparisons. So far, the two that have become consensus link Obama to either Franklin D. Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Time magazine saw fit to Photoshop Obama, complete with top hat, monocle, and cigarette holder, into the famous photo of FDR driving his roadster and make it the cover image of its November 24th issue. CNN, the New York T

Bigotry Still Rules

by Lisa Szefel

In the summer of 2006 I attended the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard. One of the guest presenters was ninety-five year old Johnnie Carr, the woman who took over the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1956 after the successful bus boycott when Martin Luther King, Jr. went on to form the Southern Christian Leadership Convention. Carr told stories and fielded questions. I'm not sure how the topic of gay people came up but at the m

An Ancient Athenian’s Advice to President-Elect Obama

by Josiah Ober

Tom Paine, American revolutionary patriot, ardent democrat, and author of the 18th century bestseller, Rights of Man, predicted that, “What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude.” Paine was prescient. By leveraging its democratic government and culture, America -- like ancient Athens

Diplomatic Advisers: Washington, Kennan, FDR

by John A. Moore, Jr. and Ralph E. Shaffer

Who would have thought that President-Elect Barack Obama would be channeling George Washington for foreign policy advice? After all, the bewigged fellow on the one-dollar bill lived a long time ago. His last communication - the "Farewell Address" of 1796 - was really a long time ago. In fact, the address wasn't even a speech (and certainly wasn't announced on TV, over the Internet, or via an iPod, as would be the case with the avant-garde Obama). Washington presented his cas

Arthur Laffer and Kennedy’s Rising Tide

by Donald Lazere

President Reagan’s guru Arthur Laffer continues to preach the gospel of supply-side economics. Unabashed by the slight financial glitches in the wake of eight years of Reaganomics Redux under Bush, Laffer insists that it is not too much reduction of taxes on the rich that has contributed to our current problems, but not enough.  He also continues to invoke President John F. Kennedy as an advocate of enabling the rich to get richer without limits, as in the following passage from an

The White-Collar Working Class: Has the American Middle Class Gone into Foreclosure?

by Brian Purnell

            Last year, according to the New York Times, the average debt in the United States was $121,650, while the average savings was just shy of $450. You don’t need a PhD in Economics or an MBA to know that something is terribly wrong and imbalanced with those figures.            Since the end of World War II, debt has become a way of life in the United Sta

An Election in History

by Morton Keller

There is universal agreement that Obama’s victory was “historic.” But the significance of the 2008 election goes beyond the towering fact that America has elected its first African-American president. It should also be viewed in the context of a political culture that dates not from George Bush and the early 2000s, or Bill Clinton and the 1990s, but from Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 1930s. Before then, American politics was defined by a century-old system dominated

Economics 101: Who's Up, Who's Down

by Robert Brent Toplin

Customers at my local Barnes & Noble store are likely to get the impression that books about Franklin D. Roosevelt are all the rage these days. When they stand in line to pay the cashier, they come upon a large display of volumes dealing with FDR and the Great Depression. All of these books tend to portray Roosevelt as a remarkably gifted politician who effectively shepherded the American people through difficult times. FDR is more popular now as a historical icon than he has been for y

Shattering the Old Symbol of the White House

by Matthew C. Sherman

The recent election of President Barack Obama made me recall a high school memory.  It has proven to be one of the most memorable events in my high school career, which occurred as I was running an errand for my mother.  I had just received my license and was eager to go anywhere, even if it was to the post office that was only six blocks away from my house.  What I saw on that day, though, would forever change my opinions about race relations in this nation. I grew up

Welcome Back, 1970s

by Lisa Szefel

As a child of the 1970s who stopped watching television around the time the Berlin Wall fell, I felt like Rip Van Winkle when I returned to the medium in 2007. I had just begun my first tenure-track job teaching modern American history at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon when I began watching “Gossip Girl,” the CB drama that follows the exploits of Manhattan’s Upper East Side prep school elite. The last time I encountered such a group was in “Metropolitan,&rdquo

Why We Need to Revitalize the Union Movement

by Michael Honey

Sixty years ago, in the wake of Nazi genocide and World War Two’s unspeakable atrocities, Eleanor Roosevelt crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This historic document, adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948, declared that rights adhered to all persons, no matter their place of birth, race, gender, or religion.  The declaration codified rights Americans considered the birthright of all persons: freedom of speech, assembly, association, belief and w

HNN Debate: Should Obama Lead from the Center or Not?

by Allan Lichtman and Gil Troy

HNN EditorRecently, Allan Lichtman recommended in a post on the Britannica Blog that Barack Obama should adhere to four simple rules followed by FDR. Three of the rules sounded the same notes being heard all over Washington these days: 1. Strike early. 2. Bring the people with you. 3. Think big and broadly. But the fourth rang a controversial bell: Don't govern from the middle.

The Strong Wind at His Back

by Robert Brent Toplin

Well, the pundits were wrong. White voters didn't change their minds in the voting booth. Barack Obama's victory proves that some analysts gave too much weight to race, not only in gauging today's opinions but also in judging how the American people's attitudes have been taking shape for decades.Polls released in October suggest that Obama's recent political progress may have changed some ideas about race in America. A New York Times/CBS poll showed that nearly two-thirds of the people as

Picking Up Where FDR Left Off

by Ira Chernus

As the economic crisis ripples through the world, some liberal commentators say that the only solution to it is a globalized New Deal. That's a fine idea if it globalizes the heart of the domestic New Deal: the promise of protecting everyone from the threat of abject poverty. U.S. foreign policy has never done that before. Now is the time to start. The New Deal of the 1930s aimed to give every American "a margin of security against the inevitable vicissitudes of life," as Frank

The Bible, Home Ownership, and the Housing Crisis

by Joshua Berman

In the wake of the mortgage crisis, a growing chorus of economists today questions the status of home ownership as the fulfillment of the American dream.  An argument supporting home ownership is found – of all places – in the Hebrew Bible.  Although usually read as part of

Another Great Depression? Very Close.

by John Paul Rossi

The U.S. is in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.  The  question is: how close are we to another Great Depression? The answer is: Very close.  Here’s why.The Great Depression was the result of the combination of the1929 financial crisis and serious structural problems in the American economy such as widespread poverty.  After the 1929 stock market collapse these factors joined to deeply cut business investment and person

Why Americans Are Reluctant to Admit Their Presidents Are Kings

by Frank Prochaska

'There is a natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government’ observed Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  It was a view the Constitution did little to silence.  Vario

How Not to Deal with the Oncoming Depression: The Case of New York State

by Lawrence S. Wittner

New York State's public services—particularly education, healthcare, and programs for the poor—are currently in turmoil thanks to state budget slashing led by Governor David Paterson.In the spring of 2008, shortly after the legislature adopted the 2008-09 budget, Paterson ordered a 3.35 percent cut in the operating budgets of state agencies. Later in the year, pointing to a $630 million deficit that had opened up in the 2008-09 budget and to a projected $6.4 billion defici

How Lincoln Might Fix Our Economic Mess

by Richard Striner

     As America grapples with the worst economic chain-reaction since 1929 —— and as President-Elect Obama takes time to consider more closely the methods of Abraham Lincoln —— it is time to reconsider a monetary method that Lincoln and the Civil War Republicans used, a monetary method that America’s leading economists attempted to revive in the 1930s.  It’s a method that could work right now, but with a critical revision to adapt i