Politics

Rating the Presidents—and Obama

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator. I’ve been getting emails from bewildered colleagues asking about a survey of presidential scholars that determined that Barack Obama is the 12th best president in the history of the United … Continue reading

Crossing the Line on Health Insurance

In a recent television interview, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, head of one of America’s largest health insurers, commented that selling insurance across state lines is “an outdated concept” in the discussion of healthcare reform. Bertolini went on to explain the … Continue reading

Fake News, Executive Orders, and Immigration

The controversy over so-called “fake news” does not seem to be going away. However, the press’s frustration about it is increasingly misplaced. After the presidential election the media fixated for months on a handful of fictitious headlines from suspect websites … Continue reading

President-Elect Trump: The New Whig President

As someone who served as a Republican delegate from Pennsylvania during the 2016 election, and as a professor of political science and presidential history, I have some fresh political-historical observations untangled from partisan gossip about Donald Trump and his future … Continue reading

The Roots of the New Trump Order

Ronald Reagan won a convincing popular and electoral victory in 1980. Campaigning for income tax cuts, smaller government, and a resolute stand against communism, Reagan earned a mandate to carry out his conservative vision. Part of his victory was owed … Continue reading

Death by Fidel

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator. Fidel Castro is dead. To say those words is so strange. I’ve never known a moment when he wasn’t alive. Castro came to power seven years before I was born, … Continue reading

Grandchildren of the Sixties

College students in the streets protesting a Trump presidency are not so very different from the demonstrators who took over Columbia University in April 1968. Nevertheless, what took place in less than three weeks back then did a lot to … Continue reading

Why Were the Presidential Polls Wrong?

The election-night coverage of the 2016 vote began with images of the Clinton campaign team gathering in the Javits Center—under the symbolic glass ceiling. Hillary Clinton supporters were enthusiastic, upbeat, and expectant. The polls gave them every reason to expect … Continue reading