“Second Term Begins With a Sweeping Agenda for Equality,” ran the eight-column banner in which The Washington Post captured the essence of Obama’s second inaugural. There he declared: “What binds this nation together … what makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea, …
Rarely have second terms lived up to the hopes and expectations of presidents or their electorates. FDR’s began with an attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices and a second Depression of 1937. He was rescued only by the war in Europe in 1939 and the GOP’s …
“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” is Newton’s third law of physics. Its counterpart in geopolitics is “blowback,” when military action in one sphere produces an unintended and undesirable consequence in another. September 11, 2001, was blowback. George H.W. Bush had sent an army of half …
In the 20th century, only two presidents shaped new governing coalitions that outlasted them. They were the only two men to appear on five national tickets. The first was FDR, who rang down the curtain in 1932 on the seven decades of Republican hegemony since Abraham Lincoln that had seen …
“Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream of thinking … on most issues regarding foreign policy,” says GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham. Neocon William Kristol concurs: Hagel is “out on the fringes.” But where, exactly, is the mainstream on foreign policy in 2013? Since the Bush II years, “the three amigos” …
Eight days after the massacre of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary, where each child was shot with a Bushmaster .223, The Nation’s Gun Show, the biggest east of the Mississippi, opened. “A line already snaked around the building shortly after the three-day event began at 3 p.m., and the …
At the Potsdam conference with Harry Truman and Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill learned that the voters of the nation he had led for five years through World War II had just voted to throw him out of office. “It may well be a blessing in disguise,” said his wife Clementine. …
When Socialist President Francois Hollande took office, he swiftly made good on his pledge to raise the top tax rate on Frenchmen who earn a million euros a year — to 75 percent. The regime would now confiscate three of four dollars that the most successful Frenchmen earned. Paris also …
You must be logged in to post a comment.