Free Republic

How can one write history so that it seems like a thriller? How does one write a biography without making the subject the centerpiece of the narrative? I have no idea if David Pietrusza asked himself these questions — or this one: How can history be written as a newspaper headline? Call this a biography by indirection. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defined by competing individuals and movements: Huey Long, Father Coughlan, Al Smith, the Liberty League, Earl Browder and the Communist Party, Dr. Francis Townsend and the Townsend Plan, Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party. They threatened FDR’s majority in...

The further back you go in history, the more you learn. Take the case of “collusion” or the interference by one nation in another nation’s electoral process. There are a lot of examples: Barack Obama urging Brits to reject Brexit; Harry Truman’s propping up anti-Communist parties in post-war Italy, the Communist Party USA’s control of Henry Wallace’s 1948 Progressive Party presidential bid (in 1944, the Communists had formally endorsed FDR), British Ambassador Sir Lionel Sackville-West being accused of favoring Democrat Grover Cleveland (“For Canada and for England, No Doubt But What He’ll Do/But America Wants for President an American Through...

Hillary Clinton may not have been indicted by the FBI, but she will likely face a barrage of stinging rebukes from Donald Trump and others as she battles for the presidency in November. “How many different ways can you spell ‘reckless behavior’ commercials?” said Franklin and Marshall College professor G. Terry Madonna. “They will be ubiquitous.” Slammed by what FBI Director James Comey called “extreme carelessness” for using a personal email server rather than her official email while in Barack Obama’s Cabinet from 2009-12, Clinton will find a tough road ahead.

No one said politics was painless, but no one said it had to be quite this painful, either. We’re still about six months out from the 2016 presidential election, but it already feels like we’ve been doing this for two years—because we have. The election season to date has been contentious, uncomfortable, and, more than occasionally, certifiably nuts. No matter where you line up on the political spectrum, we can all agree on that. But not all is lost. Democracy is messy, and we have a host of zany elections under our belt as a nation. Luckily, most of them...

Nowadays, the “smoke-filled room” is mostly just a metaphor—but there was a real room that started it all. Well, sort of. The compelling image of the smoke-filled room, a “place of political intrigue and chicanery, where candidates were selected by party bosses in cigar-chewing session,” per William Safire, arose during the 1920 Republican convention. That year, Sen. Warren G. Harding of Ohio was the come-from-behind nominee for president, selected after ten ballots. According to historian David Pietrusza, author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, the room in question is often credited with the phrase “because the people who...

The Making of the President, 1960 By Theodore H. White (1961) 1. Reporter Teddy White kicked up a sensation with his narrative of the tumult, gamesmanship and drama of the 1960 campaign. He rendered in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells and sensations of the spectacle. On Election Day at Hyannisport, John Kennedy didn’t just light up a cigar while awaiting election results—it was a “Havana Royal panatela.” After lunch the candidate emerged from his house wearing a pair of shoes, one of which was “glossily polished, as usual—the other scuffed and dirty.” Thus did White transport his readers to...

In the Republican presidential primary in New York, the Sun urges a vote for Senator Ted Cruz. It hasn’t been our normal practice to endorse in the primaries, but this year the vote, set for Tuesday, will take on outsized importance as we career toward a contested convention. The junior senator from Texas has emerged from a crowded field by dint of his fidelity to principles — limited, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a strong foreign policy — that couldn’t be at higher premium. They are the true New York Values.

Over a year ago, I went looking for a book--any book--on the 1932 presidential election. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit of sucker for books about presidential elections. (Imagine my dilemma: I despise Karl Rove, yet he's got new book out about the 1896 election!) I couldn't find anything other than something that looked rather amateurish and plenty of court history about the New Deal. I wanted something that dealt in detail with the campaign, especially FDR's messaging. Not having found anything good, imagine my joy when I saw that my favorite campaign historian, David Pietrusza had a...

There's no escaping Trump, even at the Democratic debate, where candidate Martin O'Malley labeled him as a fascist and Hillary Clinton charged he is "becoming ISIS' best recruiter." With Trump dominating Sunday talk shows as he fired back at Clinton, there was mounting press speculation that the Trump-bashing by all three Democratic presidential hopefuls was a tactic designed to rally more Republican support for the most controversial of their candidates.

Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were the big winners of the latest Republican presidential debate-so say political thinkers I interviewed following the battle. While Donald Trump's statement that he would support the eventual GOP nominee was certainly newsworthy, it was the clash of sons of Cuban immigrants and the scenario of a nomination fight coming down to Rubio and Cruz that captivated almost everyone.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt loved to keep secrets. He didn't want the public to know he was bound to a wheelchair, so he went to elaborate lengths to hide his inability to walk on his own. And when he was dying, his doctors hid it from the public. Even Roosevelt himself didn't want to know. Secrets of a different sort lie at the heart of two new books about Roosevelt the candidate and Roosevelt the president, with a special guest appearance by Adolf Hitler, before he became der fuehrer. David Pietrusza's 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR--Two Tales of Politics,...

Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were almost universally judged the big winners Tuesday night by a group of neutral observers who spoke to me shortly after the fourth and latest televised forum concluded in Milwaukee. They almost unanimously put Carly Fiorina in the winner’s circle with Rubio and Cruz. Their praise of the California businesswoman’s performance on stage Tuesday was in sharp contrast to the widespread panning she drew after the last debate in October. “Cruz and Rubio built on their previous strong performances at [the last debate in] Boulder,” historian David Pietrusza, author of four acclaimed books on...

Marco Rubio was the big winner Wednesday night in the third debate of Republican presidential hopefuls, according to a group of neutral observers who spoke to me shortly after the nationally-televised forum ended. The same group — pundits, academics, and Republican political consultants—also concluded that Ted Cruz made significant strides with his debate performance. Almost the entire panel felt that Jeb Bush, who badly needed to jump-start his troubled campaign, clearly fell short of meeting the hopes of his supporters.

Although the panel of neutral observers I spoke to Thursday after the Republican presidential debate offered varied views of which candidate gained and lost ground, it was debate sponsor CNN and the three-hour forum itself that drew the worst reviews. Almost to a person, the observers — pundits, political consultants, and a pollster and a historian, who are not aligned with any candidate — panned the questions, format, and time management of the debate. “The debate was too long, too uneven in terms of time between candidate’s being questioned, and there was too much emphasis placed on Trump,” concluded G....

A group of neutral observers almost unanimously agreed Thursday night that Donald Trump fared poorly in the second Republican presidential debate. The big winners in the eleven-candidate extravaganza, most felt, were Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie. Most in the group also gave high marks to Marco Rubio, for his grasp of foreign policy. Several, however, noted that Trump thus far has not been hurt in polls by bad performances and cautioned against “instant analysis” of the CNN-sponsored show-down at the Reagan Presidential Library. My group included pundits, an historian, a pollster, and political consultants.

On today's "Coffee and Markets" podcast historian David Pietrusza discusses the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo with host Brad Jackson.

ARLINGTON, Va. The perfect symmetry of alabaster headstones, majestically holding formation along this national cemetery's pastoral hills, reminds you that our soldiers are sentinels guarding our republic, even in death. On a sunny spring day, a lone figure held a tiny flag blowing vigorously in the wind as he knelt before a headstone. He held a conversation with a lost service member, perhaps a son or daughter, alternating between amusement and grief. Taps played from off in the distance. Only the heartless could fail to be touched by the raw emotion of that moment or by the somber presence of...

The motion picture is often not only a lively art, but a political art, whether in the controversies surrounding "American Sniper" and "Selma" or stretching back to an 1898 recreation of the sinking of the battleship Maine — with prominent stops in between including, but hardly limited to, "The Birth of a Nation," "Gabriel Over the White House," Dr. Strangelove, "All The President’s Men," and "Frost/Nixon." The most defined and most spectacular incident regarding the film industry politics, however, involved Hollywood’s New-Deal-era infiltration by the Communist Party USA, a subsequent House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) probe, and the industry-wide blacklist...

Less than a week after Jeb Bush announced that he was "seriously exploring" a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, there is disagreement over whether being the son and brother of past presidents will help or hurt his candidacy. Asked whether Bush's two terms as governor of Florida (1998-2006) were too far removed from the present, veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told a Christian Science Monitor press breakfast that "his problem is more Bush than governor." Lake's reply is the standard assessment these days from the punditocracy and political scientists about the prospects of a "Bush 45" in...

It’s hard to get too far into reading a newspaper these days without hearing about how nasty the political game has become. At first glance, it’s an easy assertion to buy into: between the government shutdown, Congress’ inability to pass any meaningful legislation, the vitriolic opposition to compromise coming from both sides of the aisle, etc., etc., things do seem to have changed. The media plays a role in selling the idea, too. Magazine covers and op-eds all trumpet the same message: America just doesn’t seem to work any more. Our collective memory is startlingly short. Anyone who has read...