Slate Magazine - History Lesson

Sarah Palin = Dan Quayle.

David Greenberg — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:41:13 EST

John F. Kennedy believed that being passed over for vice president by the Democratic convention in 1956 saved his political career. That year, Adlai Stevenson, the presidential nominee, had left the selection of his running mate to the convention delegates—the last time a nominee did so. The choice came down to Kennedy and his Senate colleague Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, who had lined up too much early support even for the attractive young war hero to overcome. In the end, Kennedy had it both ways. He benefited from the television exposure and was spared the blame—which as a Catholic, he would have shared—for Stevenson's walloping by President Eisenhower that November. As for Estes, except for crossword puzzlers, nobody much remembers him.

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Forget about McChrystal; Obama's real problem is MacArthurism.

David Greenberg — Fri, 9 Oct 2009 13:30:11 EST

Sixty-seven years after his famous vow, Gen. Douglas MacArthur has returned.* Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recent warnings that the White House had better heed his call for an Afghanistan surge have provoked comparisons to the showdown between President Truman and his truculent commander in Korea. To the left, McChrystal's shot across President Obama's bow amounts to insubordination; some have demanded his firing. To the right, McChrystal is a soldier carrying out his mission, giving his superior his best advice on how to meet his own stated goals successfully.

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We still don't understand how fringe conservatism went mainstream.

David Greenberg — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:17:40 EST

A few years ago, in this column, I proposed a moratorium on drive-by references to historian Richard Hofstadter's classic essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Too often, pundits invoked the title of that Goldwater-era exploration of right-wing fringe politics without giving much attention to the essay's actual content, let alone the context in which Hofstadter wrote it.

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Why Arlen Specter's defection should terrify the GOP.

David Greenberg — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:36:15 EST

On Aug. 11, 1971, John Lindsay, the Republican mayor of New York City, radiating calm and charm after a 10-day camping trip in Colorado and Utah, stepped before a crowd in the ballroom of Gracie Mansion to announce that he was becoming a Democrat. After explaining where he believed his party had gone astray—Vietnam, wiretapping, neglect of urban problems, and subservience to big business led the list—the 49-year-old mayor portrayed the decision as one forced on him by his party's own choices. "I regret that new directions cannot emerge from a Republican Party that has … stifled dissent and … rejected internal reform." Yet he insisted that he would retain the maverick streak that had come to characterize his place in the GOP. "I have no illusions about the Democratic Party," he said, "and I will work as a Democrat without abandoning my personal independence."

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The four most useful lessons of Columbine.

Dave Cullen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:05:51 EST

How "leakage" and the "active shooter protocol" have prevented other tragedies.

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