presidential history

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• SOURCE: LA Times
  2/17/20
  

  Truman and Coolidge go up, Jefferson and Jackson go down. How history remembers presidents

  Rating presidents has long been an American obsession. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/16/20
  

  Renowned presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin finally takes on George Washington

  For all the iconic presidents she has profiled — Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson among them — Goodwin has never written a biography of George Washington.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/16/20
  

  What We Still Don’t Get About George Washington

  by Alexis Coe

  There continue to be ways to look with fresh eyes at our founding-est founding father.

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• SOURCE: Time
  2/16/20
  

  Abraham Lincoln Healed a Divided Nation. We Should Heed His Words Today.

  by Edward Achorn

  Abraham Lincoln repeatedly tops polls as our greatest and most revered president. But few people thought so on March 4, 1865, when he took the oath of office for the second time.

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• 2/16/20
  

  Why Trump Is Different than Reagan, Either Bush, Dole, McCain, or Romney—He’s Evil

  by Water G. Moss

  Like Trump’s six previous Republican presidential candidates (and like many Trump supporters), all of the major 2020 Democratic candidates are decent human beings. Trump is evil.

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• 2/16/20
  

  Jimmy Carter: The Last of the Fiscally Responsible Presidents

  by Joe Renouard

  Jimmy Carter’s Economy Was Better than You Think

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/9/20
  

  The Democrat who cried (maybe) in New Hampshire and lost the presidential nomination

  The “Canuck letter” was part of the dirty-tricks campaign waged by Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President and helped turn the 1972 race for the Democratic nomination upside down.

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• 2/9/20
  

  JFK's New Hampshire Primary Hope Resonates Today

  by William Lambers

  The day before the 1960 New Hampshire presidential primary, candidate John F. Kennedy talked about America's great hope for disarmament. Speaking at the University of New Hampshire, JFK said "No hope is more basic to our aspirations as a nation" than disarmament.

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• 2/9/20
  

  Should the Democratic Presidential Candidates Announce Their VP Picks Now?

  by Joel K. Goldstein

  History suggests that these well-intended proposals rest on mistaken judgments about the way the vice-presidential selection system now operates, exaggerate the benefits of the proposed reforms, and underestimate the difficulty of implementing those remedies.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/2/20
  

  Losing Iowa doesn’t always spell disaster — just ask Bill Clinton or Donald Trump

  Over the years, several candidates who fell short in the Iowa caucuses went on to win their party’s nomination.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/1/20
  

  Impeachment Then and Now: What Three Presidential Sites Can Teach Us

  We visited the presidential museums, libraries and sites dedicated to Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton to talk to visitors about the impeachment facing President Trump.

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• SOURCE: CU Boulder Today
  2/3/20
  

  It’s been worse: Doris Kearns Goodwin reflects on America’s tumultuous past

  “As difficult as the situation is today, we have lived through far more troubled times before."

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• 2/2/20
  

  The Remarkable Success of Midwestern Front Porch Campaigns

  by Jeffrey Normand Bourdon

  No presidential electioneering technique has ever been as successful while appearing and disappearing as quickly as front porch campaigning.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  1/29/20
  

  Beware the brokered convention that breaks up the party

  by Calvin Schermerhorn

  They are rare – the last one happened in 1952 – but when they do occur, they can be perilous for the party involved.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/28/20
  

  Why I Fear a Moderate Democratic Nominee

  by Ibram X. Kendi

  Some Democrats are afraid of nominating a progressive, but a moderate may be more likely to ensure Trump’s reelection.

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• SOURCE: BBC History Extra
  1/21/20
  

  A brief history of presidential impeachment

  by Adam I P Smith

  Which presidents in US history have been impeached? How does impeachment work? And what might impeachment proceedings mean for President Donald Trump? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Daily Beast
  1/2/20
  

  Yes, Bernie Sanders Could Be the Nominee—and It Would Be an Epic Nightmare for Democrats

  by Ronald Radosh

  Sanders is where he is today in part because no one has really attacked him. But just wait until Republicans spend a billion dollars painting him as an extremist.

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• SOURCE: LA Times
  12/26/19
  

  Why demagogues were the Founding Fathers’ greatest fear

  by Eli Merritt

  Washington’s greatest fear that summer of decision in Philadelphia was that unwise, self-seeking politicians — even if fairly elected to public office — would tear down the central government and its constitutional laws for the sake of their own advancement and glorification.

• 
• SOURCE: USA Today
  12/22/19
  

  How America went from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in one head-spinning political decade

  by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian Zelizer

  Obama’s America and Trump’s America feel like separate nations, but they are bound by Newton's law: For every action, an equal and opposite reaction.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/17/19
  

  History is clear: Voters reward, rather than punish, political courage

  by Jon Meacham and Michael E. Shepherd

  Over the past six decades, courageous high-profile votes have tended not to cost the courageous their seats. From Southern Democrats who supported the Civil Acts Right of 1964 to Republicans who backed Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 through the Clinton impeachment in the 1990s, tough votes have been difficult but not necessarily fatal.