Roundup: Media's Take

Jacob Heilbrunn: Ronald Reagan, the Anti-Reaganite

[Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at the National Interest, is the author of "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons."] A Ronald Reagan boomlet is sweeping the nation, thanks in no small part to an army of conservative admirers who have never missed a chance to buff his image — and then use it for their own ends. Nothing looms larger for Reagan worshippers than the centennial of his birthday on Feb. 6. Fittingly, Californians were first off the mar

John Diamond: The Gulf Gap

[John Diamond is the author of "The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence From the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq."] Twenty years ago this week, despite fears of "another Vietnam," the House and Senate voted to authorize the use of force against Iraqi troops occupying Kuwait. After days of impassioned debate, the House supported President George H.W. Bush's policy by a comfortable margin. The Senate's 52-47 vote was the close

Dalton Conley and Jacqueline Stevens: Build a Bigger House

[Dalton Conley is a professor of sociology, medicine and public policy at New York University and the author of “Elsewhere, U.S.A.” Jacqueline Stevens is a professor of political science at Northwestern and the author of “States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals.”] WITH the Senate preparing to debate filibuster reform, now is a good time to consider a similarly daunting challenge to democratic representation in the House: its size. It’s been far too long since the House expan

James Traub: Is It Time for America to Dump The Arab Autocrats?

[James Traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of, most recently, The Freedom Agenda. "Terms of Engagement," his column for ForeignPolicy.com, runs weekly.] The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks prompted a radical rethinking inside the administration of President George W. Bush about the purposes of American foreign policy -- above all in the Middle East. "Realism died on 9/11," as an administration official said to me several years later.

Rebecca Traister: Only Cowgirls Run for Office

[Rebecca Traister is the author of “Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women.”] Whether or not you believe there is any connection between the first assassination attempt ever made on an American female politician and the gun-slinging rhetoric of the first Republican woman ever nominated for the vice presidency, what’s undeniably true is that despite the vast philosophical and intellectual chasms between them, Representative Gabrielle Giffords of

Selwyn Raab: Omertà May Be Dead; the Mafia Isn’t

[Selwyn Raab, a former reporter for The Times, is the author of “Five Families: The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires.”] QUITE a coincidence: In January 1961, Robert F. Kennedy, newly appointed as attorney general of the United States, orchestrated the first concentrated attack on the American Mafia. Almost to the day 50 years later, the government swept up more than 120 people in a smorgasbord of racketeering indictments, mainly in the New York a

Robert D. Kaplan: One Small Revolution

[Robert D. Kaplan, the author of “Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia and the Peloponnese,” is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a correspondent for The Atlantic.] THE West stands captivated by Tunisia, where a month of peaceful protests by secular working- and middle-class Arabs has toppled a dictator, raising hopes that this North African country of 10 million will set off democracy movements through

Horace Campbell: 50 Years After Lumumba -- the Burden of History

[Horace Campbell is a teacher and writer. Professor Campbell's website is www.horacecampbell.net. His latest book is 'Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA', published by Pluto Press.] In the experiences of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and of Africa, the iterations of assassinations were meant to kill the genuine self-determination of the African peoples. Of these crimes, the murder and cov

Jack White: President Obama and the New America

[Jack White, a former national editor of Time magazine, is a frequent contributor to The Root.] Today is the midpoint of Barack Obama's first term as president of the United States of America. When scholars look back at this moment a century from now, what will they make of it? They, of course, will have the advantage of knowing facts about which we can only speculate, starting with whether Obama was re-elected to a second term. And with the passage of time, they will b

Howard Fineman: Sputnik II And The State Of The Union

[Howard Fineman is the Senior Political Editor of the Huffington Post.] WASHINGTON -- In 2008, Barack Obama's supporters saw him as Franklin Roosevelt reincarnate: the smiling, amendable guy who wanted to use Big Government to pull the nation out of its misery, New Deal-style. As President Obama prepares for his State of the Union address to Congress next Tuesday, his aides are looking toward a different Democratic president as a political template: John F. Kennedy.

Bruce Laingen: Time to Build Trust with Iran

[Bruce Laingen, a Bethesda resident, was chief of mission at the American Embassy in Tehran and a hostage during the 1979-81 hostage crisis.] It is time, long overdue, to get serious about talking with Iran. Thirty years ago today, this country saw the end of its 444-day vigil with 53 Americans — I was one of them — who had been taken hostage Nov. 4, l979 by militant students in Iran. Thirty years since that fateful day that saw, that morning, the end of the last formal

David Rothkopf: As We Say in Chinese, "Why is This State Dinner Unlike Any Other?"

[David Rothkopf is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and President and CEO of Garten Rothkopf.] The agenda for the state visit was dominated by trade and economic issues. The world was recovering from a recent global economic crash. There was a certain tension because the visitor had strong autocratic tendencies and according to some, imperial ambitions. He had also regularly made statements that could be interpreted as hostile to U.S. and Western

Larry McMurtry: The Charm and Violence of Tucson

[Larry McMurtry, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is the author of 30 novels, including "Lonesome Dove," "Terms of Endearment" and "The Last Picture Show." He lives in Tucson.] The shooting of 19 innocents in Arizona, one of them a girl only 9 years old, brought forth a flood of commentary, raising questions not easily answered about the possible effect that overheated political invective might have on the least stable elements of the body po

WSJ Editorial: Red Scare Reprise

Of all the differences between dictatorship and democracy, probably none is so overlooked as the ability of the former to project strength, and the penchant of the latter to obsess about its own weakness. In 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik and the U.S. went into a paroxysm of nerves about our supposed backwardness in matters ballistic. Throughout the 1980s Americans lived with "Japan as Number One" (the title of a book by Harvard professor Ezra Vogel, though the literatu

Artemy Kalinovsky: Obama's Gorbachev Predicament

[Artemy Kalinovsky is Assistant Professor of East European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan, to be published in May 2011.] In recent months, as U.S. President Barack Obama struggled to enact his legislative agenda and his party lost its majority in the House of Representatives, commentators have seized on any number of historical metaphors. Although comparisons of Obama to former U.S. Presidents Truman

Berel Wein: The Blood Libel: Canard of Jewish History

[Berel Wein is an American-born Orthodox rabbi, scholar, lecturer, and writer.] In light of Sarah Palin’s recent characterization of herself as the victim of a “blood libel” and the subsequent uproar it has received in the media, it seemed a fitting time to explain what the “blood libel” is in Jewish history. A typical “blood libel” followed this pattern. First, the body of a non-Jew, usually a child, would be found dead. A Jew would then be accused of the murder, and t

Nadia Marzouki: Tunisia’s Wall Has Fallen

[Nadia Marzouki is a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.] For the first time in decades, Tunisia is free of one-man rule. The extraordinary events of December 2010 and January 2011 have been nothing less than a political revolution: The consistent pressure of popular fury forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali first to make an unprecedented promise to relinquish power; then pushed him to step down; and finally halted an attempt at unconstitu

Fouad Ajami: Hillary Clinton Echoes the Bush Doctrine

[Mr. Ajami is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.] 'In too many places, in too many ways, the region's foundations are sinking into the sand," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Arab autocrats in a remarkable speech in Qatar last week. The Arab landscape all around her provided ample confirmation. In Tunisia, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, a despot who has been in power for nearly

Mohamed Ali Horrath: Why 14 January 2011 will go down in history

[Mohamed Ali Horrath is CEO of Britain’s Muslim television station, the Islam Channel.] 14 January 2011 will historically mark the democratisation of the Middle East. The Arabs watch Tunisia in solidarity, while every Arab dictator watches nervously at the tide of collective power of the people. Tunisia is the Poland of the Arab world and this is our 1989, the tide is turning, we will see many corrupt Presidents and dictators who abused their positions running from the people.

Stephan Salisbury: Extremist Killing Is as American as Apple Pie

[Stephan Salisbury is cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a TomDispatch regular. His most recent book is Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland.]The landscape of America is littered with bodies. They’ve been gu