Presidency
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How RealClear Will Cover the New Administration December 31, 2024
Dear Reader,When Donald Trump returns to the White House, you can be sure that RealClearPolitics will feature supporters of his agenda. And also critics.RCP has covered the Biden presidency in the same way, showing perspectives from all sides. The Re...
In His Reading, Jimmy Carter Favored 'Anything but Politics' December 31, 2024
When Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, he was new to the national scene. Of the many questions reporters asked to fill in the picture of the man, one was almost impossible for him to answer: his favorite book. A voracious speed reader, proficie...
How Trump Can Help America Celebrate 250 Years December 30, 2024
In just over 18 months, the United States will turn 250 years old. Current turmoil only adds to the importance of the impending public pageant. In recent years, American political battles have grown toxic, with a widening divide between ordinary citi...
Gen Z’s Politics Are Hard to Categorize December 24, 2024
We live, at first blush, under the absolute dominion of celebrity. The former and future president of the United States spent more than a decade as a reality TV star. Taylor Swift just concluded the largest and most lucrative pop music tour in the hi...
The Case for Greenland December 24, 2024
This past weekend, in a post announcing his selection of PayPal and Founders Fund co-founder Ken Howery for Ambassador to Denmark, Donald Trump stated that “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute...
Johnny Come Late Night December 23, 2024
In 2006, the cable channel TV Land surveyed the greatest catchphrases in American television. The winner? “Heeeeerrre’s Johnny!” the nightly words, spoken by sidekick Ed McMahon, that brought out Johnny Carson to start another episode of The Tonight ...
Trump, Monarchy and the Waning Power of Hollywood December 18, 2024
Donald Trump has yet to comment on the Prince Andrew ‘Chinese spy’ story, and online sleuths are already trying to join the vague dots between Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Duke of York. But the real story about Donald Trump and monarchy is the ext...
Decline of Evangelicalism Helped Elect Trump December 09, 2024
A whopping 80% of evangelicals voted for President-elect Donald Trump in 2024. But behind that headline number, the dramatic fall in these Christian’s cultural influence played a much more profound role in Trump’s victories than evangelical voters di...
A Resilience Paradigm for Trade December 09, 2024
After several decades during which tariffs were discarded by the bipartisan establishment, trade protectionism is back at the center of American politics. Donald Trump ran and won on tariffs in 2016, put them at the heart of his triumphant 2024 campa...
Trump Must Break Up the College Cartel December 09, 2024
Perhaps no sector better exemplifies the economic recklessness, inflation, and elitism that Americans rejected last month than academia. What was once a beacon of Western enlightenment has devolved into a profiteering industry that survives on Washin...
The Last Reaganite December 09, 2024
The greatest presidential servants are those who are modest and self-effacing, whose sole purpose is to help the president succeed without regard to their own reputation or status. Speechwriters especially are meant to blend in with the background wa...
The Amazing, Disappearing Johnny Carson November 07, 2024
For thirty years, from October 1, 1962, to May 22, 1992, Johnny Carson presided over American popular culture from the 11:30 P.M. throne of “The Tonight Show.” At its peak, the show was regularly watched by seventeen million people. (The current late...
It’s Not Because She’s a Woman November 07, 2024
There was a moment last night, shortly before the major news networks begrudgingly announced that Donald Trump had won the state of Pennsylvania, when the journalists manning MSNBC’s election desk began looking a bit uneasy. The writing was on the wa...
What Do I See In a Republican Victory? November 07, 2024
The Republican Party reveals itself as a national middle-class party. A party that is friendly to earned success and those in need looking for a hand up. A party where the middle, bottom, and top are not divided and play a zero-sum game but are inste...
Twilight of the Elites? November 07, 2024
In light of Donald Trump’s second election to the presidency, many observers, especially those in the luxury-belief class, are bewildered. Branding Trump and his supporters as everything from “fascist” to “deplorable” to “racist” to “garbage” did lit...
Writer's Diary November 07, 2024
A terrible era is over. I don’t think I realized how much it weighed on me—on everyone. I don’t think anyone’s really willing to admit how boring life had become. How normative, and how unromantic. I guess you could call it the oppression of a false ...
Seven Objects—And What They Say About the Election November 05, 2024
The most physically imposing picture of Donald Trump is the one he almost didn’t survive. You’ve seen it: The former president stands silhouetted against the sky, fist pumped, jaw jutted, bright red blood streaked across his face like war paint. The ...
The Best Precedent for the Next President November 04, 2024
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are both intimately familiar with the White House—Trump as a former president, Harris as next-in-line to President Biden—but the 235-year record of the presidential office has much to teach even these experienced leader...
The Untethering November 04, 2024
One question I’ve wrestled with, as a writer, is how another Trump presidency would subsume the arts. As I’ve offered already, I do not know who will win the presidential election and speculation like this shouldn’t be taken as an assertion that Dona...
The Smearing of Gay Republicans November 01, 2024
The issue of childhood transitions is a personal one for Clarkson Lawson, a 26-year-old gay content creator who’s voting for Donald Trump for president next week. I met him for coffee in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, last month. He’s spoken out a...
An Insider’s Portrait of Obama-Era Hope July 03, 2024
The 2008 election of Barack Obama electrified a generation of Americans, who projected onto him almost limitless meanings. It also spawned a cottage industry of public thinkers whose affiliation with the Obama administration helped launch their caree...
Why Liberals Lose July 03, 2024
Since 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron has been the de facto leader of the Western liberal democracies. By comparison, Trump is too nationalist, Biden too old, British politics have been too turbulent, Trudeau is too vapid, and Scholz too pliab...
