For 20 of the last 31 years a Republican president has occupied the Oval Office. Two of those presidents – the first and second George...

John Nance Garner is mostly forgotten now days. If he’s remembered for anything it was for his alleged pity comment that the “vice...

So many things we associate with the modern American presidency, including its imperial nature, where created by Franklin D. Roosevelt...

Thomas E. Dewey, the one-time mob busting New York City prosecutor and later governor of New York, made three different runs at the White...

Elections and the Court When the Obama Justice Department announced last week that it had asked the United States Supreme Court for an...

At pivotal moments in American history it has often been the case that the right leader somehow emerged from the chaos of the moment and...

When Its Lost Can it be Found Again? I’ve had a good deal of fun over the last few weeks teaching a college-level political science...

I’d argue that ever modern American presidential election comes down to one fundamental question: do we change or do we continue? In...

I’d argue that ever modern American presidential election comes down to one fundamental question: do we change or do we continue? In...

It is not really true, as is often said, that history repeats. No historical analogy is ever 100 percent correct. What history does...

John Weaver, an experienced GOP political operative and former top advisor to John McCain, says his party’s presidential field is “the...

It’s raining in northeastern Montana today. A wet spring following a long winter. The water stands in the wheat and hay fields along U.S....

OK, I never thought I’d find a connection among the “greatest” heavyweight of all time, Franklin Roosevelt and the man now in the White...

Noted documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has waded into the fray over eliminating federal funding for the Corporation for Public...

I only had the chance to see Ronald Reagan in the flesh a handful of times. I distinctly remember when he came to Idaho to campaign for...

Fresh from re-election a month earlier to an unprecedented third term, Roosevelt used one of his tremendously effective “fireside chats”...

There are no perfect historical parallels. Nothing is ever precisely like it was in another time. At best, history can help illuminate...

In 1943, Franklin Roosevelt made the long, dangerous journey to Tehran for a wartime conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin....

I wrote yesterday about Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s hasty retreat from a controversial Confederate History Month proclamation. Some how...

Valentin Berezhkov – that’s his photo at the top of this post – had quite a life and I’m confident my interview wasn’t on his Top Ten...