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Anti-War? Unenthusiastic About Kerry? The Recipe for a Bush Victory

by John Mueller

The chief political achievement of the Vietnam antiwar movement was to help get Richard Nixon elected in 1968. There is some possibility its successors will perform the same service for George W. Bush in 2004. The choices in 1968 were distinctly unattractive for those opposed to the Vietnam War. Nixon was a congenital anti-Communist hawk while his opponent, Hubert Humphrey, was vice president to Lyndon Johnson and had accordingly been deeply associated with the escalation and prosecu

Column: Why You Shouldn't Pay Much Attention to Those Bush Poll Numbers

by P.M. Carpenter

Liberals are depressed and conservatives delighted over George W. Bush’s sustained public support. Despite the worst national management since Herbert Hoover, despite the worst international management since Lyndon Johnson, despite a month of scandalous public testimony and a spate of best-selling books detailing presidential blunders, W’s approval rating hovers around 50 percent. It can’t get any better than this, think conservatives. The AntiMidas, George II, is s

If Only W. Were More Like Ike

by P. M. Carpenter

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of American history is familiar with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell speech, the famous address in which he spoke of the "military-industrial complex." Given the dangers of the Cold War era, said Ike, no one could doubt America's "imperative need" for "this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry." So much for the upside. He then let drop the other well-known shoe

Is the FCC Working Hand in Glove with the Republican Party?

by Bob Batchelor

Each week, about 40 million households tune in to "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" featuring the cerebral Gil Grissom (William Petersen) or "CSI: Miami" with the compassionate Horatio Caine (David Caruso). The success of the franchise has bolstered the CBS's fortunes for several years. A "CSI: New York" is even in the works. In addition to familiarizing the public with various lab tests, chemicals, and other tricks of the crime scene trade, viewer

Has Bush Learned the Lessons of Other War Presidents?

by Gary Hess

President George W. Bush's commemoration of the first anniversary of the launching of the war against Iraq coincides with the beginning of his campaign for re-election as a "war president." Not since 1944 has an incumbent president sought re-election in the midst of a war. In 1952, the unpopularity of the war in Korea reinforced Harry Truman's private resolve not to seek another term and in 1968, the divisions within the country and his own party resulting from the Vietnam

What Gay Marriage Teaches About the History of Marriage

by Hendrik Hartog

Four years ago I published a book in which the long legal history of marriage was structured around a discontinuity. The premise was that the marital ways characteristic of the nineteenth- and early twentieth- century United States belonged to an irretrieveable past. In the past few years, however, as issues relating to same-sex marriage have bubbled along -- in Hawaii, Vermont, Canada, Massachusetts, San Francisco, and, of course, in the nation's capital -- I have come to reali

Column: Bush's Phony Budget

by P. M. Carpenter

First, there's the Columbia Guide to Standard American English , which defines understatement as an expression that “provides less information than might be warranted.” And then there's the Bush administration, which declares this year's $521 billion deficit a “subject of concern.” Just more proof the Bushies are sinking to uncharted linguistic and managerial lows. A half-trillion-dollar hole in the budget is, of course, a mere “subject of concern” only to the eschato

Stay Tuned. Iraq's Problems, Bad as They Are Now, Will Only Get Worse

by P. M. Carpenter

Watching the truth unfold is almost comical. No unwholesome weapons, no bug-filled canisters, no imminent threats, no grave or gathering anything except Saddam Hussein's pixilation. Turns out that while St. George the tyrant slayer was hornswoggling the world about Babylon 's frightful menace, the swarthy Führer was writing novels. The Bush administration got everything wrong. Whatever intelligence findings weren't dead wrong on arrival, the White House soon perverted. The inevi

More Evidence that Bush Is a "Dry Drunk"?

by Katherine van Wormer

Paul O’Neill’s revelations, the primary source for Ron Suskind’s book The Price of Loyalty concerning the timing of George W Bush’s plans to overthrow Saddam in Iraq should have come as no surprise. The ostensible reasons for going to war -- the claimed link between Iraq and al-Queda and the claimed possession of weapons of mass destruction -- have been shown to be without substance. The typical explanation offered by the mainstream press and political pundits was that

There's Never Been a Veep Like Cheney

by Timothy Walch

Vice President Dick Cheney is featured in a new bestseller, and he isn't very happy about it. He is front and center in Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty, an insider account of the Bush administration written with the cooperation of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. Based on information provided by O'Neill, Suskind implies that Cheney is the key source of authority in the Bush administration. It is safe to say Cheney is not your old-time vice president. Quietly,

Is America a Biblical Nation?

by Glenn Melancon

   The myth that the United States is founded on the"Judeo-Christian Bible" persists and prospers despite readily available evidence. Contrary to popular belief, the Founding Fathers rejected the biblical model in favor of a secular model of government.      The authors of the United States Constitution had first-hand experience with governments created and supported by God.  Preaching at the

Column: How the Democrats Are Helping Karl Rove Do His Work for Him

by P. M. Carpenter

Oh, how today's Democratic pols make one long for the era of smoke-filled rooms and corrupt bargains. Perhaps the bygone focus leaned a bit too heavy on the equitable distribution of graft and patronage rather than the best nominee, but on the upside, party bosses didn't spend their time writing splendid ads for the Republican National Committee. Times have changed. In pursuit of the party's highest nomination – a rather dubious prize in ‘04, you must admit – Democratic hopefuls are

Column: Should Liberals Lower the Volume?

by P.M. Carpenter

The radical wing of the revolutionary faction of America's extremist party - a peculiar collective still, for reasons unknown, called the conservative movement - has managed yet another selfless public service in calling for civility in political discourse. Weird, but true. More to the point, still-frothing conservatives in radio, television, print and public office are orchestrating a new bugaboo of - get this - liberal incivility. It's the latest in right-wing table

The Massachusetts Court Decision on Gay Marriage Is No Shocker

by Andrew Schocket

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, that state's highest court, decided this month that the state's constitution does not forbid same-sex civil marriages. It therefore paved the way for legal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages there. The decision has already heightened the national debate concerning same-sex marriages. And if at least one similar long-ago ruling from the same court is any indication, it's going to provoke a long, protracted, bitterly contested debate

Column: Why Liberals Are Angry

by P. M. Carpenter

Akin to politically motivated charges of rising liberal incivility is the seductive, if not surprising, topic of very real liberal anger: seductive, because pondering its origins is fun; surprising, because anger seems so out of character with liberals' rather spineless image they themselves allowed to prevail. When liberals got fingered by militant detractors for unraveling America's moral fiber (a neat trick the liberals pulled off with satanic glee, of course), they abruptly laid low and

Replace FDR on the Dime with Reagan?

by Colin Gordon

Representative Mark Souder (R-IN) is pushing to replace the profile of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- on American dimes since 1946 -- with that of Ronald Wilson Reagan. Why? By most accounts, this is a simple and predictable episode of political symbolism. Conservatives, angered by now-infamous Reagan miniseries, are looking for a way to honor Reagan with the most common respected coin (pennies don't count) in America . Their choice of the dime is perhaps ill considered, as the connect

Politicians Should Stop Quoting the Bible

by Nathan Abrams

The 5,280-pound monument of the Ten Commandments installed by the Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore may have been removed from the rotunda of the Montgomery, Ala., judicial building by federal court order, but the issue he raised of the proper place of religion in American public life will not go away. Unless an un-breachable wall between religion and public life is properly and fully erected, the problems raised by Moore's original act will keep recurring.

Comparing Gore's Support with Clinton's

by Martin Halpern

Historians' Petition Against the Nomination of Charles Pickering, Sr.

President George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear President Bush:On behalf of eighty historians of the South and the African American experience—most of them teaching and writing in the South—we are writing to urge that you withdraw the nomination of Judge Charles Pickering, Sr. to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. As scholars and researchers who have spent our career teaching and writing

Forgetting and Remembering a Deported Alien

by Marc Stein

As far as we know, he came to the United States with his family from an economically troubled region of a U.S. ally, hoping for a better life. But he arrived at a time when the U.S. government was targetting a variety of imagined domestic and foreign enemies and was waging cold and hot wars at home and abroad. He was 21-years-old when he became a permanent resident of the United States and over the next decade he worked, lived, bowled, and prayed in New York. There h