Director of political studies at @NiskanenCenter. On Twitter, I speak for myself.
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Dec 17, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
It was evident two decades ago that academic historians were hollowing out their profession by elevating ideology & fads over the needs of students, public & long-term interests of univ & discipline. These figures are sad but reflect a generation of professional irresponsibility
Academics have long ceased to examine higher education as a field of sociological or political study — no surprise that the responses to the cutbacks in history positions are so intellectually unimpressive
Dec 2, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It was a great experience and an honor to talk to Philip Zelikow on my most recent podcast -- he is both a scholar and practitioner of political problem-solving as well as a modern counterpart to the Wise Men of yesteryear
niskanencenter.org/how-america-ca…
It was also quite humbling to realize that in this pandemic year he found time, along with all of his other responsibilities, to publish a book that overturned literally a century of historical consensus on the missed chance for peace in the Great War:
1. I recently finished George Packer's "Last Best Hope," and it is a marvelous dissection of where the country is at the present unhappy moment
us.macmillan.com/books/97803746…2. I've already Tweeted about Packer's taxonomic breakdown of the four Americas: Free (libertarianism), Smart (meritocracy), Real (populism), and Just (social justice/critical theory), as summarized in his Atlantic piece
1. A very nice salute from @TheEconomist's Lexington columnist to the Never Trumpers, the "most remarkable of all" the forces in the broad Biden coalition.
economist.com/united-states/…2. Lexington notes that "Not since Lyndon Johnson crushed Barry Goldwater in 1964 have so many leading lights in one party backed the nominee of the other" -- for reasons that, btw, I explain in my latest @madebyhistory column in the @washingtonpost!
1. In case you missed it, @NiskanenCenter has put up a recording of today's webinar with myself and @jerry_jtaylor, @lindsey_brink, and @hamandcheese discussing Brink and Sam's new agenda paper, "Faster Growth, Fairer Growth." This is important because...
2. Policy ideas are in rather short supply on the right these days -- the GOP couldn't come up with a platform this year and its real animating ideas are, per @davidfrum, too loathsome to be expressed openly without sparking backlash
1. It was recently announced that US debt would exceed 100% of GDP and that the 25 ppt surge in debt was the largest annual leap since the 1790s. This news provoked statements of serious concern by neither party and consternation among nobody, because...
wsj.com/articles/u-s-d…2. ...none of the dire predictions debt hawks made about what would happen when we crossed this line have come true -- no interest rate spike, no inflationary spiral, no loss of confidence in the dollar. And austerity seems 100% wrong in a pandemic. But..
1. My NYT piece on QAnon compared the current conspiracy to the John Birch Society in the '60s but argued the GOP & conservative movement condemned the latter while Trump embraced the former. This is part of a wider historical and political debate...
nytimes.com/2020/08/25/opi…2. ...as seen in @jonathanchait's piece that came out the same day, on the "burn it all down" debate about whether a post-Trump GOP is worth saving. Jon sees conservatism as the real problem -- it hasn't been corrupted by Trump b/c it was always corrupt
1. Arguments have closed in the Harvard Asian-American admissions case. I used to enjoy writing about meritocracy but now it has become a dreadful, stomach-churning subject that I usually try to avoid nbcnews.com/news/asian-ame…2. I covered meritocracy while writing about Kingman Brewster's reform of Yale admissions in the '60s. I believe it was brave & necessary to admit talented students from all backgrounds in place of the traditional clientele of advantaged WASP males... archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/99_12/a…
Dec 18, 2018 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
1. How should the left think about the right? The past week brought 4 examples of different approaches. Start with George Packer's historical overview of "The Corruption of the Republican Party"... theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…2. Packer's a smart guy. He's correct that the actions of the GOP-controlled state legislatures in MI & WI are textbook political corruption and a disgrace to US democracy, as well as further confirmation that Scott Walker has always been toxic newrepublic.com/article/118145…
Oct 9, 2018 • 24 tweets • 8 min read
1. My Politico article critiquing liberal historians of conservatism provoked far more negative, ad hominem responses than anything I'd ever written. Prudence would dictate I not revisit the subject, but I can't help poking the bear, or at least asking... politico.com/magazine/story…2. Did we learn anything from this? At the least I wish I had, titular provocations aside, more explicitly emphasized that our understanding of conservatism *has* been enhanced by many of those liberal histories, some of which I mentioned in this thread:
1. @DouthatNYT is right, we're insufferable, but here's my take on Brett Kavanaugh. I was a year behind him at Yale, knew him slightly and considered him a frat bro & unfriendly jock wannabe. So what does l'affaire Kavanaugh say about the meritocracy? nytimes.com/2018/10/03/opi…2. I was at Yale across three decades as undergrad, grad student & faculty, and also wrote a book on Meritocracy 1.0, as it happened at Yale in the '60s. The focus of The Guardians is Kingman Brewster Jr., Yale president from 1964-77 & uber-WASP reformer amazon.com/Guardians-King…
Sep 11, 2018 • 21 tweets • 6 min read
1. I used to be a TNR columnist, so when I heard the mag was doing a takedown of my Politico piece on histories of conservatism, I worried a little. Fortunately, TNR is no longer what it was: newrepublic.com/article/151127…2. I appreciate Jeet Heer's praise for my book on moderate Republicans, but he doesn't seem to have read it because the views he ascribes to me are more or less the opposite of what I believe. Start with the idea that I "lamented" the new wave of scholarship on conservatism...
Aug 15, 2018 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
1. This is a fair request. Never Trumpers, like moderate Republicans, can exaggerate the greatness and goodness of the bygone conservative movement/GOP when contrasting the past with the present shambles.
2. Many do concede that the current D'Souza/Trump variety of populism has a long history on the right, even if it hasn't always defined it. I wrote about that here: politico.com/magazine/story…
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