As President Trump attends the G-20 summit in Japan this week, a score of Democrats who want his job are debating in Miami — vying for a nomination that looks increasingly worth having. Major polls taken in the late spring showed President Trump trailing his top Democratic challengers both nationwide […] Read more »
Democrats and the ‘electability’ trap. Can anyone define what it means?
“Electability” is the watchword among many Democrats this spring as they begin to evaluate the ever-growing field of candidates for their party’s presidential nomination. The question of who can beat President Trump weighs heavily in voters’ assessments. But is that the real measure that produces presidents? Electability is an elusive […] Read more »
Could Howard Schultz Help Re-elect the President?
At this point in the 1992 election cycle, George H.W. Bush’s approval rating was over 80 percent. A little more than a year later, he trailed the independent candidate Ross Perot in national polls. So it is probably premature to confidently assess whether there’s an opening for Howard Schultz, a […] Read more »
How George H.W. Bush enabled the rise of the religious right
Following Wednesday’s state funeral for George H.W. Bush at Washington National Cathedral, the former president’s casket will be flown to Houston where a memorial service will be held at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church the following day. Unlike his son George W. Bush, the elder Bush, a lifelong Episcopalian, was less […] Read more »
Dissecting George H.W. Bush’s Unusual Electoral Record
President George H. W. Bush, who passed away last week, achieved a number of important accomplishments in public life: He signed into law both the Americans With Disabilities Act and Clean Air Act, and negotiated for the North American Free Trade Agreement. But his political career is also marked by […] Read more »
What George H.W. Bush’s Theology Teaches Us About the UCLA Theory of Parties
When biographers are interviewed about George H.W. Bush, they often emphasize that he was more interested in governing than in campaigning. In the 1992 debates, he famously looked at his watch as if he would rather be somewhere else. In First to the Party, I show that he made a […] Read more »