Roundup: Media's Take

Marian Wright Edelman: Black History, American History

[Marian Wright Edelman, whose latest book is The Sea Is So Wide And My Boat Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation, is president of the Children's Defense Fund. For more information about the Children's Defense Fund, go to www.childrensdefense.org.] A century ago, a two-day race riot in Springfield, Illinois, where White mobs lynched two Blacks, turned out to be the final straw for a small interracial group of Americans c

John Barry and Evan Thomas: Obama’s Vietnam

[ John Barry is a national security correspondent for Newsweek's Washington bureau. Evan Thomas is a staff writer at Newsweek and author of six books, including his most recent, Sea of Thunder: Four Naval Commanders and the Last Sea War. ] About a year ago, Charlie Rose, the nighttime talk-show host, was interviewing Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the military adviser at the White House coordinating efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have never been beaten tactically in a fire fight

Jonathan Kay: Iraqi democracy is Bush's true legacy

[Jonathan Kay is a National Post columnist.] On Saturday, Iraq conducted what may stand as the freest, fairest and most genuinely representative democratic elections the Arab world has ever witnessed. Yet even as the votes are being counted, the man responsible for this remarkable political revolution — who believed that Saddam Hussein's hellish dictatorship could be turned into a model Arab democracy, and mobilized the might of the most powerful nation on earth to do something abou

Peter Berkowitz: Bush Hatred and Obama Euphoria Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

[Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.] Now that George W. Bush has left the harsh glare of the White House and Barack Obama has settled into the highest office in the land, it might be reasonable to suppose that Bush hatred and Obama euphoria will begin to subside. Unfortunately, there is good reason to doubt that the common sources that have nourished these dangerous political passions will soon lose their potency.... To be sure

Steven J. Rosen: Obama and a Settlements Freeze

[Steven J. Rosen is director of the Middle East Forum's Obama Mideast Monitor, and former Director of Foreign Policy Issues for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).] Nothing has more potential to undermine the relationship between the United States and Israel than the issue of settlements. Mideast Peace Envoy George Mitchell said in 2003, "Opposition to the government of Israel's policies and practices regarding settlements…has been consistent through the Carte

David E. Sanger: Should the U.S. rescue have grand ambitions?

[David E. Sanger is White House correspondent for The New York Times.] As President Barack Obama and Congress barrel toward the latest emergency program to resuscitate the U.S. economy, one question is looming over their search for a cure: Can the government fashion a fast and efficient economic stimulus while also seizing the moment to remake America? For now, Obama and his aides are insisting that they can accomplish both goals, following their mantra of using the urg

Amity Shlaes: FDR Was a Great Leader, But His Economic Plan Isn't One to Follow

[Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression."] One evening in the 1930s, a 13-year-old named William Troeller hanged himself from the transom of his bedroom in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. William's father was laid up in Kings County Hospital awaiting surgery for an injury he'd suffered on the job at Brooklyn Edison. A federal jobs program was paying

Sarah Baxter: 'Jimmy Carter' tag has Obama wincing

[Sarah Baxter is Washington correspondent for the Times.] LESS than two weeks into his administration, President Barack Obama is being portrayed by opponents as a new Jimmy Carter - weak at home and naive abroad - in an attempt to dim his post-election glow and ensure that he serves only one term. The charge has stung because it was made privately by Hillary Clinton supporters during a hard-fought primary campaign and plays to fears about Obama’s inexperience.

Iain Martin: History can teach leaders to avoid schoolboy errors

[Iain Martin writes for the Telegraph.] The thing about history, Tony Blair might have said, is that it is all in the past. New Labour was founded on the idea that there is virtually nothing our ancestors could possibly teach us. Consequently, neophilia became the defining characteristic of the Blair era. "We are a young country," he said when heralding the emergence of Cool Britannia. But Britain is very old, with an extraordinary history and an ageing popul

Johann Hari: The Republicans' Fatal Misreading of FDR -- and How It Would Worsen The Depression

[Johann Hari is a columnist for the Independent.] The Arctic wind of a depression is colder with each passing week. There's still an air of unreality: can dole queues really swell and economies really shutter like they did in the history books? Is there a way out? It is here, in the falling darkness, that the differences between the main political parties - too narrow for too long - are becoming plain. There is a deep disagreement between the Democrats and the Republica

Peter Steinfels: The Holocaust Furor and the U.S. Bishops

Does the Roman Catholic Church believe that popes, in conducting the ordinary affairs of the church, can never make mistakes? Ask any Catholic bishop that question, and he will reply, “Of course not.” That is a common misconception, the bishop will say; on the contrary, history attests that popes can prove all too human, and the idea that they are preserved by God from error applies only to very solemn pronouncements on very special questions of faith and morals. Anothe

Alan Gorg: Global Warming And Indigenous Wisdom

[Mr. Gorg, (B.S. 1952 and M.F.A. 1970, U.C.L.A.), is a teacher/writer/producer/director/actor.] American history taught in our schools and colleges omits the one American society with the most outstanding record of peaceful coexistence ever in human history. The name Hopi means “Peaceful People” because long before the Dalai Lama or Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, long before the European invasion, they lived in peace for a thousand years on the high desert o

Steven Malanga: Can Free Markets Survive In a Secularized World?

[Steven Malanga is an editor for RealClearMarkets and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.] The 18th Century English cleric and theologian John Wesley was troubled by a paradox that emerged as his teaching spread. He, like other Protestant thinkers stretching back to Calvin, taught that one could honor God through hard work and thrift. The subsequent burst of industry and frugality generated by Wesley’s message improved the lot of many of his working-class followers and helpe

Will Bunch: Why Reagan Still Matters Today

[Will Bunch is author of the new Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future, published by Free Press, which examines the calculated effort by the modern right wing to canonize the 40th president, and how that's harmed America on everything from runaway debt to failed energy policies to unchecked greed on Wall Street. He is senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and author of its popular blog, Attytood.] Jan. 20, 2009, was such

Charles Peters and Timothy Noah: Four million jobs in two years? FDR did it in two months.

[Charles Peters is the founding editor of the Washington Monthly. Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.] President Obama's $825 billion economic-stimulus package needs a lot less PWA and a lot more CWA. The PWA was the Public Works Administration, led by Harold Ickes Sr. The CWA was the Civil Works Administration, led by Harry Hopkins. Both were New Deal agencies created in 1933 to get Americans quickly back to work at a time when unemployment reached 25 percent, its highe

Alexander Heffner: The Rhetoric Men

[Alexander Heffner, president of Scoop Media and editor-in-chief of Scoop44 launching on President's Day (2/16), is currently completing a rhetorical history of the 2008 presidential campaign. He is an undergraduate at Harvard University.] Two veteran political speechwriters, JFK's prominent aide and Obama mentor Theodore Sorensen and LBJ press secretary Bill Moyers, felt loud vibrations of the 1960 presidential campaign as Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency. As

John Dickerson: Obama Raises the Bar: a brief history of presidential drinking

[ John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent.] ... Bush famously did not drink, and though drinks were served in his White House and the president often wistfully referred to his drinking past, the easy and relaxed atmosphere of the cocktail party was not a theme of his tenure. I remember once hearing John Ashcroft, Bush's first attorney general and a devout Christian and teetotaler, discussing with an aide whether to serve any"intoxicants" at a fundraiser. (It was alwa

Brian DeBose: Dissing Pulpit Politics

[Brian DeBose is a frequent television and radio commentator. He has been covering Washington politics for the last 12 years.] How about a little respect for the black minister politicians who got us here? Two days before President Barack Obama's inauguration, the Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy retired as pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington D.C., and in a strange way those two seemingly unrelated events may serve to chronicle a momentous shift that has taken place in b

David Stokes: Bipartisanship or Groupthink?

[Mr. Stokes is the senior pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA.] “They could write like angels and scheme like demons.” This is how author Edward J. Larson describes two of our nation’s founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – in his book, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign. Those wonderful and often cantankerous giants also grew to define the partisanship of their day. This difference of phi

Harvey Wasserstrom: This President’s Day remember that George Washington raised hemp and probably smoked it

[Harvey Wasserman’s HISTORY OF THE U.S. is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with PASSIONS OF THE PATRIOTS by “Thomas Paine.” This article was originally published by http://freepress.org. ] George Washington raised large quantities of hemp. So did Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and virtually every other 1700s American farmer. It is also highly likely at least some of them smoked its poten