Think the Press Is Partisan? It Was Much Worse for Our Founding Fathers

A Scheming and Salacious Newspaper Reporter Targeted Hamilton and Jefferson—and Nearly Ruined Them

It is a common complaint that the drive for traffic at news sites in the digital age has debased our political dialogue, turning a responsible press into a media scramble for salacious sound bites. But partisanship and scandal-mongering go way back in the American political tradition. And there was no internet to blame in 1793, the year an especially vicious and salacious newsman arrived on American shores and soon after set his sights on the founding fathers.

Despite efforts to unify the early United States around President George Washington, two …

By Christopher B. Daly | October 10, 2016

The Rhetorical Power of Always Being at War

American Presidents Both Overstate Constant Threat and Understate the Human Cost as a Way to Ensure Faith in Government

By William Astore | August 26, 2016

An essential goal of American presidential rhetoric is to keep the public thinking the nation is constantly under threat, and thus reliably deferential to their ostensibly protective government.

You can see …

Obama’s Unsung Legacy in the War on Income Inequality

As Clinton and Trump Try to Out-Populist Each Other, the Obama Administration Gets No Credit for Its Impressive Efforts to Boost Economic Equality

By Ron Formisano | August 15, 2016

You’d never know, from this year’s presidential campaign rhetoric, that anyone in Washington has been paying any attention to economic inequality. Donald Trump has hijacked the Republican Party with his …

Don’t Underrate Ike—Or Breakfast At McDonald’s

October 9, 2012

Mark Peterson, a professor of public policy, political science, and law at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, has lived in the East (Washington, D.C.), the Midwest (Ann Arbor, Michigan), …

presidents