People ask why a few of us presidential junkies would like to see Presidents’ Day changed back to Washington’s Birthday. The technical explanation has to do with a misguided law called HR 15951 that was passed in 1968 to make federal holidays less complicated. The real answer is simply this: George Washington is our greatest [...]
Abraham Lincoln never was a doctrinaire; he rose from very low estate to very high estate, and he knew the savagery which lies so close beneath the skin of man, and he knew that most men are good only out of obedience to routine and convention. Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks [...]
Theodore Roosevelt was the obvious victor in both of the “battles to transform American capitalism.” He refused to do the bidding of the coal operators and instead helped engineer a compromise. American capitalism was not so much transformed as tamed in the process. The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan and the Battle to [...]
Gerald R. Ford took office at a time when “we didn’t need to look into the future but assure ourselves we had one.” And though biographer Richard Norton Smith argues that Ford was not a visionary, he did recognize the “long-term consequences of a public sector growing faster than the private economy that sustained it.” [...]
Biographer Troy Senik insists that though Grover Cleveland’s was not a “great presidency,” his subject is “one of our greatest presidents." And it is the fundamental soundness of Cleveland's character that goes a good deal of the way toward explaining why this might well be so. A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable [...]
“They say you won’t succeed because ‘making a man President cannot change him.’ But making a man President can change him! Great emergencies awaken generous traits which have lain dormant half a life. If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine.” On September 22, 1881, [...]
Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy. President Gerald R. Ford, Remarks at His Swearing-In Ceremony, August 9, 1974 My dear friends, my fellow Americans: The oath that [...]
While Joe Biden's $6 trillion in total spending is spread over several years, it represents a claim on the nation's wealth equal to 30% of GDP — a figure comparable to FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. Where does he propose to get the money to pay for this great leap forward for government? [...]
The only apt comparisons to the Biden-Harris law-and-policy agenda are the New Deal and the Great Society. But how does the political and popular mandate for the current administration's agenda compare to those of these past programs? President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris purport both to rule expansively and permanently alter the country [...]
Make no mistake: Joe Biden is determined to emulate FDR and LBJ and to be remembered as a president who raised federal power to new heights. And once a Western democracy expands central power and control of the nation's resources, it never willingly gives up those gains. If Joe Biden's American Jobs Program, outlined in [...]
According to the Constitution, due process, and everyday legal practice, Donald Trump did not receive a fair trial in the Senate. And beyond that: What did the impeachment trial look like? According to the Supreme Court, “Justice must satisfy the appearance of justice” (Offut v. United States). So, what’s next for the courts under Democratic [...]
Suggestions that Congress use Article I Section VIII to restrict the president’s power to engage in war, nuclear or otherwise, are both unconstitutional and imprudent. Last week, 30 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Biden asking him to “review the ways in which you can end the sole authority you have to launch a [...]
There is a specific Trumpian agenda, with which he is alone associated, that is becoming the issues agenda of the conservative movement and the party base, if not the party elites. “I don’t know if he’ll run in 2024 or not. But if he does, I’m pretty sure he will win the nomination.” So says [...]
The current presidential selection system is broken. The way to fix it is by returning to strong parties at the national, state, and local levels. The 2004 Senate election and 2008 Presidential election of Barack Obama demonstrate how outside actors can create political momentum to capture a political party. This results in a party that [...]