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“Getting Medieval” with the Presidential Debates

by Dyan Elliott

As a medieval historian I am sensitive to the increasing marginalization of my field of study. This is not simply paranoia speaking: confronted by a mounting number of retirements, departments are increasingly reluctant to expend their dwindling number of lines on a field that, to many, seems arcane and expendable. My anxiety expresses itself in the "real world" by a thirst for medieval relevance which often renders me shamelessly undiscriminating. I have savored the slings and arr

The Big Question that Needs to Be Asked at the Presidential Debates

by Tom Palaima

If you have seen the film Black Hawk Down or read We Were Soldiers Once and Young or visited the Imperial War Museum in London, you might think, as Douglas MacArthur did, that Plato said, "Only the dead have seen an end to war." Plato could have, but he didn't. It was George Santayana, looking at World War I veterans celebrating in a British pub, who uttered the sad words: "The poor fellows think they are safe! They think that the war is over! Only the dead h

Calling Bush's Views Manichean Is an Insult to the Manicheans

by Dan Skinner

Since George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech on January 29, 2002, his polarizing politics have often been characterized in terms such as a “Manichean struggle with a single overarching enemy called terrorism” (Washington Post, April 19, 2002). Since September 11 the term “Manichean” has been bandied about carelessly in the media as though it were a mere synonym for “binary” or “polar”—suitable for use in describing

Why this May Be the Most Important Election Since 1860

by Martin Halpern

A number of leading Democrats commented at their convention that this year’s election is the most important one in their lifetime. They’re right. In fact, this is the most significant election since that of 1860. Then, as now, the very survival of a republican form of government is at stake. We have to look back to James Buchanan, the fifteenth president of the United States, to find a president as reactionary as the current

History Proves that Presidential Debates Matter

by Rick Shenkman

The perceived winners of presidential debates, in every case since the first one held forty-four years ago, have always gone on to win the presidency. Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II ... each was generally regarded as the over-all winner in the presidential debates that occurred during the year in which they were elected.In 1960 Kennedy, relaxed, witty and tan, easily beat Nixon, who, especially in the first debate, came across as awkward, insincere, and tired. As an

Just How Bad Is Bush?

by Robert S. McElvaine

The recent Republican National Convention presented George W. Bush's presidency as a triumphant success. Most professional historians take a radically different view. A significant number of historians, in fact, rank the Bush presidency as the most disastrous in American history. They're wrong.An informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by HNN found that eight in ten historians responding rated the

How to Turn the Tables on Republicans Who Claim Kerry's No Patriot

by Jonathan M. Hansen

Democrats are disheartened to see the recent discrediting of John Kerry's patriotism. Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was supposed to have robbed Republicans of the initiative on patriotism and thrown the Bush campaign on the defensive. The speech had precisely the opposite effect. Why? One reason is that Kerry, by staking his candidacy on his service in Vietnam, capitulated to the Republican canard, now a generation old, that

85 Years Before 9-11 ... Manhattan Was Blasted in a Now Forgotten Act of Terrorism

by James Ottavio Castagnera

Since September 11, 2001 -- when the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed by Al-Qaida terrorists -- tourists have been barred from climbing to Lady Liberty’s crown. Since July 30, 1916, visitors to Liberty Island have been barred from climbing into the Lady’s torch. At about two o’clock on that Sunday morning, an explosion of such severity rocked adjacent Black Tom Island that Philadelphians felt the shock wave. The Statue of Liberty sustained 100,000 1916-dollars w

Column: Deficit. What Deficit?

by P.M. Carpenter

On the heels of the Gingrich Revolution ten years ago, President Bill Clinton's budget director warned that Republicans' demagogic "tax-cutting frenzy" would, if left unchecked by the White House, "throw fiscal discipline to the winds," be fed by "dishonest numbers" and lead to "a bigger budget deficit." Soon-to-be-Speaker Newt Gingrich pooh-poohed the warning, bizarrely citing the Reagan administration years that tripled the national debt as p

30,000 Nukes ... And the Voters Don't Know Where Bush and Kerry Stand?

by Lawrence S. Wittner

In the run-up to the Iraq war, the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) were exhaustively discussed by the politicians and the pundits. But, in the aftermath of that conflict, when no WMDs were to be found, they became an embarrassment to the war enthus

Bush on the Couch

by Justin Frank

If one of my patients frequently said one thing and did another, I would want to know why. If I found that he often used words that hid their true meaning, and affected a persona that obscured the nature of his actions, I wou

The Meaning of August 29

by Van Gosse

Nothing like it has happened in the 170 years since American political parties began meeting in convention to choose their presidential candidates. Half-a-million people marched for six hours in broiling summer heat to repudiate a sitting president at the moment and place of his triumphal renomination. Now the urgent question becomes: How can this huge new antiwar movement, led by the United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), engage with practical politics and actually affect policy, rather

Is God an American?

by Carl Mirra

During the Vietnam War, discussions of American civil religion emerged as people challenged sacred notions of American decency and global leadership. Then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara felt that a "theology of containment" too readily pushed the U.S. into Vietnam. The war on terror has resurrected this national religious discourse. Recall that George W. Bush announced that a battle between good and evil commenced following the 9/11 catastrophe, and that &q

Quiz: In What One Way Is Ralph Nader Like Lenin?

by Jonathan Coopersmith

Why would Richard Egan, who has raised over $200,000 this year for the George W. Bush presidential campaign, and his family donate $6000 to Ralph Nader, whose political positions are certainly not in the GOP mainstream? Why are so many other wealthy Republicans sending tens of thousands of dollars to Nader’s presidential campaign? They are following the advice of an old proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” By aiding Nader in an effort to take votes aw

Would Any Historian Take the Swift Boat Vets' "Truth" Seriously?

by Jonathan Rees

Near the beginning of his autobiography, the historian Howard Zinn explains the philosophy he had regarding objectivity in his classes before he retired from Boston University: I would always begin a course by making it clear to my students that they would be getting my point of view, but that I would try to be fair to other points of view. I encouraged my students to disagree with me. I didn't pretend to an objectivity that was neither possible n

Column: So You Were Surprised by the Approach the Republicans Took Last Week?

by P. M. Carpenter

All last week editorialists across the country fumed over the Republican Party’s orchestrated hypocrisy in New York. It was a crying shame, they wrote, that the Grand Old Party would wallow in such political Tartuffery – hiding from television viewers its regnant princes of darkness while parading a few moderate warlocks onto the convention stage. There at the prime-time podium, for example, stood liberal California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, bulging with conservative c

Michael Beschloss & Richard Norton Smith: Their Commentary on the Republican Convention

by Bonnie Goodman

As part of PBS's coverage of the Republican National Convention in New York last week, historians Michael Beschloss and Richard Norton Smith provided historical perspective. The first day of the convention the discussion focused on war presidents, the second on party perspectives, the third on the effect of outside events on the course of the election, and the fourth on acceptance speeches. The following is a summary of their commentaries. Day One: War PresidentsTh

How the Bush Administration Used 9-11 to Advance Its Agenda

by Marilyn Young

The genius of Michael Moore’s film, Fahrenheit 9/11 is that it restores September 11, 2001 to its proper historical context. Despite the title, the film does not begin with the attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon but with the fraudulent election of George W. Bush in November 2000. Some of the multiple failures of the democratic system in that election are well known. Hanging chads, for example, will probably make it into the next edition of Webster’s Diction

Keep Picking on Bush for His Bushisms ... His Handlers Love It

by Chris Bray

“Bushisms,” those much-discussed cultural artifacts that demonstrate the apparent stupidity of our poorly spoken president, really are pretty revealing. They’re also likely to backfire horribly. A couple of examples will illustrate the problem. Ben Tillman wasn’t an ordinary farmer, but his political opponents helped him to become one. As the South Carolina politician waged a vaguely populist battle to seize control of his state’s Democratic Party through

How Bush's Bad-Boy Image Helps

by Jim Sleeper

I am looking at a photo of the George W. Bush that you've probably never seen before. It's a sports-action close-up of him at Yale, over a caption written prophetically by a fellow undergraduate more than 30 years ago:"George Bush delivers illegal, but gratifying right hook to opposing ball carrier." Never mind that this is a rugby game, alien to most Americans, and that the caption writer's assessment wasn't political. I think it explains one reason why Bush hasn't slid in the polls si