Roundup: Media's Take

E. J. Dionne: Obama Aims to Overturn the Reagan Revolution, Quietly

[ E. J. Dionne is a Washington Post columnist.] President Barack Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends. He will cast extreme individualism as an infantile approach to politics that must be supplanted by a more adult sense of personal and collective responsibility. He will honor government's role in our democracy and not degrade it. He wants America to lead the world, but as much by example as by force. And in trying to do all these things, he wil

Ben Macintyre: Welcome back Tom Paine, unsung American hero

[Ben Macintyre is Writer at Large for The Times.] A drunken and dishevelled English journalist, a rebel once condemned as a Godless rabble-rouser, played a starring role in the inauguration of Barack Obama this week. This strange man had been, in his time, a pirate, a maker of ladies' corsets, a schoolteacher, a failed tobacconist and a jailbird. He first set foot in America at the age of 37, and died 200 years ago this year, poor, cantankerous and all but unmourned. Th

David Brooks: The Politics of Cohesion

In 1962, Daniel Bell published a book called “The End of Ideology.” The title struck a nerve because it reflected the view, common at the time, that the United States was about to leave behind the brutal, ideological politics that had characterized the 1930s and the early cold war. The 1960s, it was believed, would be a decade of cool pragmatism. Keynesian models would be used to scientifically regulate the economy. Important decisions would be made empirically. Instead, we got what

Deborah Needleman: Free the Blue Room

[Deborah Needleman is the editor in chief of Domino magazine.] IN an interview last month, Barack Obama spoke of his and Michelle’s plans to “open up the White House and remind people this is the people’s house.” He said they wanted to host jazz musicians, chamber music recitals and poetry readings, “so that once again we appreciate this incredible tapestry that’s America.” Enlarge This Image Pia Fischer; Photograph by Associated Press The allusion t

Jon Meacham: From 1776 to Sumter, from Selma to Obama, we've been shaped by the fights for freedom

On New Year's Day 1941, in his study at the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt was searching for the right words. He was at work on his State of the Union address, and he was thinking in epic terms. Much of the world was at war. Great Britain, under Winston Churchill, had held out against Hitler's Germany through the long months after the invasion of France in May 1940. America, however, remained largely isolationist. Roosevelt's re-election in November had been a reassuring suggestion that the

Rupert Cornwell: Can Obama match Abe Lincoln's gold standard?

[Rupert Cornwell has written articles published in The Independent.] Young Malia Obama at least is not getting carried away. "First African American president – it better be good," was the 10-year-old's wise comment about the address her father will deliver immediately after being sworn in to office at noon today. She picked the right spot too, during a family visit last week to the Lincoln Memorial, at the opposite end of the Washington Mall from the Capitol where Barack

Natalie Haynes: Barack Obama - he's Emperor Titus 2,000 years on

[Natalie Haynes is a classicist and stand-up comedian.] The day after the US election, I received a text telling me that Barack Obama had run so “our children could fly”. Mildly stomach-turning though this was, it reminded me that the devotion of his supporters seemed almost bizarre at times; such passionate sincerity belongs to a different time from the cynical age in which we usually live. It kept reminding me of something, and I couldn't think what. Then I dusted th

Tom Leonard: Obama's faith in Lincoln may be misplaced

[Tom Leonard is the Daily Telegraph's New York correspondent.] Will Barack Obama namecheck Abraham Lincoln in his inauguration address today? He hardly needs to, given how much he has said already of his reverence for the US president that saved the Union and freed the slaves. But little has been said of what Lincoln would have thought of him. The matter is addressed in an excellent piece in the New York Times. The authors, a pair of Lincoln experts - Henry Louis Gates

Harry Middleton: Obama slighting Johnson

[Harry Middleton was formerly director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. He served as a White House speechwriter during the LBJ presidency.] The road stretching from Tuesday, when America will inaugurate its first African-American president, back a-century-and-a-half to the end of slavery, has been long and rough and often torturous for black citizens. But in the space of five years, four decades ago – the road got smoother…once-impassable

Bruce Anderson: History will vindicate George Bush

[Bruce Anderson writes for the Independent.] It is not difficult to make the case against George Bush. There have been mistakes. But in their abuse of him, many of his liberal critics demonstrate their own weak hold on reality. In trying to belittle him, they merely reveal their own littleness. George Bush is a much more considerable figure than the caricature version. As he has set great events in motion, it will be impossible to judge his Presidency for many years. It is not impos

William Rees-Mogg: Obama has the courage of a great leader

[William Rees-Mogg has had a distinguished career with The Times and The Sunday Times.] The great American presidents have emerged from the great challenges. The greatest president of the 20th century was Franklin Roosevelt who had to overcome the challenges of the Great Depression and the Second World War. The greatest president of the 19th century was Abraham Lincoln, who had to meet the challenge of the Civil War. The presidency of Barack Obama will also be shaped by the challeng

Peter McKay: I'm sorry, Obama is no Lincoln

[Peter McKay is a Daily Mail columnist.] We are told Barack Obama's inauguration speech tomorrow will be inspired by Abraham Lincoln, America's 16th and best-loved president. Most presidents hark back to Abe. Ronald Reagan liked to pre- empt jokes about his age by saying he and Lincoln had been contemporaries. But surely Obama is in danger of overdoing it. At the weekend, he took a special inaugural train to Washington, just as Lincoln did. After winning,

Jon Meacham: Who We Are Now

The message seemed mixed. It was 3 o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 3, 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson had come to the foot of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to sign the unsexily named Immigration and Nationality Act. It was a grand and sentimental stage for Johnson, who loved the grand and the sentimental. There he was, less than a year into a term he'd won in the greatest of landslides over Barry Goldwater, at the mythic gateway to America, Robert and Ted Kennedy in the

Ian C. Friedman: The W Years ... In His Own Words

[Mr. Friedman is the author of three books for Facts on File (Library in a Book: Education Reform, American Rights: Freedom of Speech and the Press, and A to Z of Latino American Athletes).] The words of a president distill the meaning and consequence of their times.  They frame our collective understanding of important events and serve as enduring reminders of the impression left by the chief executive’s years in office. Like his predecessors, President George W. Bush&rs

Frank Rich: White Like Me

I cannot testify to what black Americans feel as our nation celebrates the inauguration of our first African-American president. But I can speak for myself, as a white American who grew up in the segregated nation’s capital of the 1960s. Barack Obama’s day is one that I never thought would come, and one that I still can’t quite believe is here. Last week I joined a group of journalists at an off-the-record conversation with the president-elect, a sort of preview of the administratio

Rupert Cornwell: Obama: In the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln

[Rupert Cornwell has written articles published in The Independent.] America is living a strange and magical moment. In a fickle universe, US presidential inaugurations are a quadrennial rock of predictability, like leap years and the football World Cup. But never has there been one quite like the inauguration this week of Barack Obama. The event is always a republican version of a coronation, quasi-ecclesiastical even as it flaunts its populist trappings. But when Obam

Mark Levey: Leave the New Deal in the History Books

[Mr. Levey is senior managing director at Lotsoff Capital Management in Chicago.] When Barack Obama takes office on Tuesday, his first order of business will be a stimulus package estimated to be close to $1 trillion, including $300 million in tax cuts and the largest new government spending program for infrastructure since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sages nod that replicating aspects of FDR's New Deal will help pull the country out of a recession. But the experience under FDR large

Ishmael Reed: Hail to the reader in chief: Barack Obama

Ishmael Reed, who lives in Oakland, is the author, most recently, of "Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies and Other Reflections" (Da Capo Press). He received the 2008 blues songwriter of the year award from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame for his song "The Prophet of Doom," recorded by Cassandra Wilson. Barack Obama, a Celtic African American with a golden tongue and a golden pen, will not be the first literary president. John Quincy Ad

Nate Silver: History May -- or May Not -- Judge Bush More Kindly

Although George W. Bush's approval ratings have rebounded slightly, as often happens at the end of a president's tenure, he will nevertheless finish his presidency with among the lowest scores since approval ratings came into widespread usage. Gallup pegs Bush's final approval numbers at a -27 net (34 percent approve, 61 percent disapprove), the worst for any outgoing president save Richard

Jonathan Alter: How Obama can score in the first 100 days

[For two years prior to joining Newsweek, Alter was an editor at The Washington Monthly. He has also freelanced articles for such publications as The New Republic, Esquire, Slate and The New York Times. A Chicago native, Alter received his B.A. in history with honors from Harvard in 1979. Besides "The Defining Moment" (Simon and Schuster), widely praised by critics, he is coauthor of "Selecting a President" (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux) and the coeditor of "Ins