Political History

In Barack Obama's now famous remarks to rich donors in San Francisco in early April, he attributed the fact that white Democrats in small towns were resisting his candidacy to their anger over their economic misfortune. "They get bitter," Obama said, "and cling to guns or religion... as a way to explain their frustration." Obama seemed to be implying that social conservatism is a toxic byproduct of economic distress -- and it may have hurt him in Pennsylvania last week,… more

This article is adapted from Widmer’s January 2008 presentation at “The Liberal Foreign Policy Tradition,” a conference cosponsored by CIS, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the History and Democracy Project.

We can't do much better than reclaiming the Declaration of Independence as a fundamental foreign policy document in American history. We have a tendency to read it in a simplistic way, and to think of it only as a sort of airy declaration of what were then human rights,… more

In May 2004, as the presidential campaign was beginning to gather steam, an unnamed senior Bush administration official was asked to comment on the dilemma John F. Kerry faced in criticizing the handling of the war in Iraq. His response: “It’s never stopped being 1968” for Democrats.

A more telling description of Democratic vulnerability on national security issues is difficult to imagine. The year 1968 is shorthand for the 40-year political caricature of Democrats as “soft” and “weak” on military affairs.… more

Behind the controversy over whether Sen. Obama's description of rural Pennsylvanians as "bitter" about their economic circumstances was condescending, there is another argument, one that's been lurking, unspoken, since the beginning of the Democratic campaign. It's a debate about the legacy and meaning of the last 16 years of the Democratic Party, and both candidates have said some highly provocative things, putting cards on the table that they've been holding for months.

First, Sen. Clinton. In the "Compassion Forum" Sunday night,… more

Darth Vader makes a better villain than Mr. Magoo. A sinister mastermind is not only more dramatic than a myopic bumbler but more reassuring, because a universe controlled by a malevolent intelligence is at least controlled by intelligence. For this reason, explanations of the Bush administration's disastrous foreign policy in Iraq and the world in terms of Halliburton profits and alleged connections between the House of Bush and the House of Saud satisfy many who recoil from the depressing thought… more

Join us for a conversation with former New York Times Washington Correspondent Adam Clymer, who will discuss his new book, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right. Clymer argues that domination of the debate over the Panama Canal Treaties gave conservatives emotional appeal and helped build the foundation of the American conservative movement. After the death of William Buckley, many pondered the origins of the modern conservative movement. But,… more

Barack Obama's speech acquired a title nearly as soon as it was delivered. On both the campaign website and YouTube, where it has been seen more than two million times, it was identified as "A More Perfect Union."

The four words refer, of course, to the preamble to the Constitution, which was appropriate both as a gesture to Obama's hosts (Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, conveniently located in Pennsylvania) and as a reflection on our very imperfect society. It is a strange… more

Below is a longer version of the article published in The Nation. For the version appearing in The Nation, please click here.

Historical analogies are never exact. Yet many of the choices we have before us today are similar to ones that an earlier generation of progressives faced as the 1932 election approached. As we do today, the progressives of the 20th century confronted a society beset by a huge gap between classes and an economy laid flat by… more

It has been more than five decades since any political party in America has had a brokered convention, and for political junkies a heated battle at the Democratic convention seems like a tantalizing possibility. But for Democrats, a protracted nomination battle, culminating in a convention fight, could undermine the party's hopes of reclaiming the White House this fall.

Since voters in Ohio and Texas breathed new life into Hillary Clinton's campaign, some have argued that the current stalemate will not hurt… more

One might well have imagined over the last few years that we were headed toward an era of deeply partisan politics. Under the tutelage of Karl Rove, the Bush Administration “played to the base.” Most of the energy on the other end of the spectrum came from “netroots” bloggers who flamed Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, and the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference with nearly the same contempt they showed for George W. Bush and Karl Rove. Yet here we find ourselves at a moment many describe a “post-partisan”… more