A new book tells the story of a president who made his name as an entertainer and a Democrat before moving to the Republican Party and then launching a bid for the presidency. This candidate won his party’s presidential nomination despite objections from some party stalwarts that he was unelectable […] Read more »
In ‘The Retreat of Western Liberalism,’ How Democracy Is Defeating Itself
In his insightful and harrowing new book, Edward Luce, a columnist for The Financial Times, issues a chilling warning: “Western liberal democracy is not yet dead,” he writes, “but it is far closer to collapse than we may wish to believe. It is facing its gravest challenge since the Second […] Read more »
Trump’s contradictory coalition roils elections in Virginia, Georgia
It’s been two years and a day since President Trump announced his candidacy for the top office — and the Republican Party hasn’t been the same since. Trump upended the traditional GOP politics, and his presidency offers near-daily evidence of strains within the party that aren’t going away anytime soon. […] Read more »
Donald Trump Is Making Europe Liberal Again
… So if you’re keeping score at home, right-wing nationalist parties have had disappointing results in Austria, the Netherlands, France and the U.K., and they appear poised for one in Germany, although there’s a long way to go there. I haven’t cherry-picked these outcomes; these are the the major elections […] Read more »
Britain: The End of a Fantasy
To understand the sensational outcome of the British election, one must ask a basic question. What happens when phony populism collides with the real thing? Last year’s triumph for Brexit has often been paired with the rise of Donald Trump as evidence of a populist surge. But most of those […] Read more »
What makes populist leaders tick? Here are 3 things we’ve learned.
… For decades, most political theories tended to assume that people were rational, which suggested that it didn’t much matter exactly who held power. Of course, psychologists have known for a long time that this assumption wasn’t always true, but it was difficult to study top decision-makers to draw general […] Read more »