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Lawrence Glickman Profile picture
Lawrence Glickman
@LarryGlickman
Historian at Cornell University. Views expressed here are my own.
11 subscribers
Oct 5, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
One important point missing from the discourse about Steve Scalise calling himself ‘David Duke without the baggage,’ is that, when he used the label, this was already a viable political lane, one used to describe other politicians, before Scalise. /1
theguardian.com/us-news/2023/o… In 1990, the Alexandria Town Talk used the phrase "David Duke without the baggage" to describe a winning political formula in Louisiana politics. /2 Image
Sep 28, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
A central fact is that, in the midst of a UAW strike, Trump spoke last night at a nonunion factory. Yet the @nytimes mentions this only at the end of the 6th paragraph and the @washingtonpost brings it up in only the 19th paragraph. These are failures of framing./1 It seems disingenuous for the Times subhed to claim that both Trump and Biden spoke to people "affected by the United Automobile Workers strike," without mentioning at the outset that only one of them spoke directly to striking workers. /2
nytimes.com/2023/09/28/us/…
Mar 27, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A few comments on this piece, which makes some good points but also imo mischaracterizes key issues. /1 nytimes.com/2023/03/27/bri… To say, "Today’s left is less...patriotic than the country as a whole and less concerned about crime and border security," is to take the conservative critique of "the left" as accurate rather than the perspective of those who self-define that way./2
Mar 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
No doubt, GOP rhetoric in 2024 is "dark," perhaps unprecedentedly so, but this piece understates the continuity in the apocalyptic style in conservative political speech./1
washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… There's not much "sanguine optimism," in Ronald Reagan's fearmongering 1961 anti-Medicare speech, which ends with his claim that "you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children... what it once was like in America when men were free."/2
americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronal…
Mar 10, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Republican claims of being angry--visceral or otherwise--is often reported as being newsworthy in itself, in a way that it is not for other groups in society. One of the modes of elite victimization is to take claims of anger among the powerful to be a self-justifying force, rather than to address the question of what justifies that anger. /2
Mar 8, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I'm not sure I agree with George Packer that focusing on "terrible subjects" necessarily produces "fatalism" or "shame."/1 "Punctured myths make us better students of history, but they leave nothing to live up to. Shame is a shaky foundation for any project of renewal." I'm not sure why the first claim necessarily follows or why history should necessarily promote a "project of renewal." /2
Mar 1, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Very informative interview by Dave Davies on ⁦@nprfreshair⁩ with Jeanna Smialek about her new book on the Fed. I will link to it next but wanted to highlight a problem in the definition of “politicization” which n the highlighted passage./1 Here's a link to the interview with the passage in question highlighted. /2
npr.org/2023/02/28/116….
Feb 20, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This piece is very misleading about George McGovern, whom @jeffersoncowie called "the most pro-labor candidate ever produced by the American two-party system" (STAYIN' ALIVE, p. 7)./1 nytimes.com/2023/02/20/bri… Read the 1972 Democratic Platform which calls for, among other things, "universal National Health Insurance which covers all Americans with a comprehensive set of benefits including preventive medicine, mental and emotional disorders." /2
presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1972…
Feb 19, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
"The flag was defended by many in the state as part of South Carolina’s heritage, even though for Black citizens and many Whites, it was a symbol of racism." I wish Balz had been more clear that Haley was one of those defenders.
washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… For example, there is this 2010 interview:
Feb 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
As many people have noted, "socialism" has been a shifting shifting signifier, employed since the New Deal to condemn pretty much any proposal to expand state capacity on behalf of ordinary citizens. Here's a passage from my book, FRE ENTERPRISE, on the slippery slope logic of the socialism charge.
Jan 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Excellent and wide-ranging @jbouie column on the connection between economic and political freedom./1 nytimes.com/2023/01/10/opi… "One of the key insights driving the creation of the modern welfare state was an adaptation of the older republican idea that self-government could not be sustained in the absence of economic security and independence." /2
Jan 8, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The idea that Ted Cruz’s “plan” to defund Obamacare represents the "Pre-Trump G.O.P." is unpersuasive, since the Trump administration itself came within one John McCain vote from repealing the ACA in 2017? nytimes.com/2023/01/07/opi… I disagree with the view that Trump "resolutely refus[ed] to campaign on the True Conservative™ catechism." As I wrote in 2016, on the main issues of concern to the GOP--tax cuts, ACA repeal, pro-gun, anti-choice--Trump campaigned very much in this vein.
baselinescenario.com/2016/02/03/don…
Jan 4, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The grounds for opposition to McCarthy continue to appear to have nothing to do with policy. His opponents are described here as "hard-right" and "ultraconservative, but personality and internal House procedures seem to the sticking points./1
nytimes.com/2023/01/04/us/… WaPo: "The reasons for the holdouts’ opposition were varied, from claiming that McCarthy’s proposed House rules package...does not go far enough in giving members leverage to simply wishing McCarthy was someone else."/2
washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…
Jan 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
"Universities are factories of human knowledge. They’re also monuments to individual ignorance. We know an incredible amount, but I know only a tiny bit." For context, I recommend Brian M. Ingrassia's great book, THE RISE OF GRIDIRON UNIVERSITY./1
nytimes.com/2023/01/03/opi… Brian's book is precisely about the dilemma created by the rise of the research university, which emphasized specialized, cutting-edge knowledge rather than the preservation of shared traditions./2
kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700621392/
Dec 16, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
No question the 1971 Powell Memo was an extremely important document but, as other historians have shown and as I argued in FREE ENTERPRISE: AN AMERICAN HISTORY, and in many threads, we shouldn’t overemphasize its originality./1
Here’s Thurman Sensing in 1949, making a point that Powell emphasized in 1971. The idea that “business must wake up” and defend itself aggressively was a consistent theme of anti-New Deal politics, and not a fresh insight when Powell said something similar./2 Image
Dec 10, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The most laughable claim in this consistently off-the-mark analysis is that Musk's actions are somehow "improving the image of his new $44 billion property."/1
nytimes.com/2022/12/10/bus… How can Peters say that Musk, who has, as his piece documents, amplified fringe conspiracy theories, urged people to vote Republican, and convincingly embraced the persona of a right-wing troll, "defies easy political categorization"?/2
Nov 16, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I agree that Trump governed "as a fairly conventional Republican" but disagree about the extent to which he ran to the "left" of the party "on issues like foreign policy, health care and entitlement reform."/1 nytimes.com/2022/11/15/opi… Notably, this list leaves out the single most important issue, & not coincidentally, the GOP's only legislative achievement: tax cuts for the rich, which Trump supported. On on health care, he called for repealing ACA without ever even pretending to come up with a replacement./2
Nov 12, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
It's hard to find a time when backlashers, or their spokespeople, did not claim to be "opposed to, or simply disoriented by, the speed at which social mores are shifting." "Disorienting change" is less a social fact than a cultural construction./1 Image Here's an 1870 article from the Democratic Press in Ravenna, OH warning that the GOP was rushing equality too quickly. Note the deadly threat at the end of the paragraph. /2 Image
Nov 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Continetti offers very little of substance in promoting DeSantis. He "combines competent administration and conservative principles with a Trump-like pugilism and grass-roots suspicion of liberal elites and expert opinion."/1
nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opi… Continetti mentions no signature policies or successes in governance (other than asserting his "competence") & mainly highlights tone. And I'm not sure that the anti-elitism of this Yale/Harvard grad will play any better
for DeSantis than it has for Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley./2
Nov 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Ann Coulter’s claim that Trump “handed domestic policy to [his] son-in-law and Gary Cohn” is getting a lot of attention. But the person whose guidance Trump followed was Paul Ryan. Remember that his top priorities were taking away health care and cutting taxes for the rich. /1 Here’s a brief thread on Trump’s fealty to the Ryan agenda, notwithstanding his supposed “populism.”/2
Nov 11, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Has there been another American politician whose moods and emotions were so obsessively scrutinized by the media, seen as being newsworthy? I tweeted about this a lot when he was president. Here's an example.