Image via Wikipedia The Obama campaign refrain, “We are the people we have been waiting for” was meant to be a revelation of responsibility – not to wait for others to shape the world the hopeful want, but to do it themselves. Obama’s political enemies (let’s be straight: they’re not critics – they’re enemies) represented […]
Elections Are Short, Wrong Is Long
Analysts have regularly been anticipating the results of yesterday’s election with comparisons to 1994 and 1982, the midterm elections of Clinton’s and Reagan’s first terms. Here is another comparison. Elections to the United States House of Representatives were held in 1862, mostly in November, in the middle of President Abraham Lincoln’s first term. His Republicans […]
Election 2010 – Remember
The Face of Things to Come?
Given tomorrow’s well-predicted outcome, let’s sharpen our focus, all extraneous considerations aside. Historian Sean Wilentz a couple of weeks ago gave us this essential consideration of Elmer Gantry Father Coughlin Lonesome Rhodes Glenn Beck’s extracted essence of John Birch Society and the lesser known Willard Skousen. Much to his own credit, Ron Radosh conservatively gave […]
What’s Coming to Us
Are you an optimist? Then what are you reading me for? Seriously. (No, I’m just joking.) Optimism and pessimism are about reading signs. They are tilts of the head as we read. P goes this way, O that. Sometimes, it seems to me, O is tilting so far he’s practically looking up from below, spying […]