Recently in History Category

A very happy 232nd birthday to our American republic. In the year 2008, frankly, our record is mixed. On one hand, we've continued to stand by while our witless joke of a president has assumed many of the dubious royal prerogatives that originally propelled our forefathers toward Independence. On the other, we stand poised to make history this November in a way that would make the founding generation gasp in awe at how far we've come.

So, let's enjoy the 4th, and take a moment not only to remember how precarious the American experiment once was, but also to ponder what we hope to make of it in our own time. For, regardless of how terrible the past eight years -- or forty years, for that matter -- have been, "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Update: The Muppets are celebrating too. (Via Bitten Tongue/Gideonse Bible.)

"After examining the film the three experts are certain: The find from Buenos Aires is a real treasure, a worldwide sensation. Metropolis, the most important silent film in German history, can from this day on be considered to have been rediscovered." Ave Maria! The original Ghost in the Machine has been found! Before this and this and this and this and this and just about anything else you can think of in the sci-fi department, there was Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and it's been rediscovered in an Argentine film vault. (Tour Lang's city here.)

This unearthed original print is rumored to be 210 minutes long, a full hour and a half longer than any version seen since 1927. "Among the footage that has now been discovered...there are several scenes which are essential in order to understand the film: The role played by the actor Fritz Rasp in the film for instance, can finally be understood. Other scenes, such as for instance the saving of the children from the worker’s underworld, are considerably more dramatic. In brief: 'Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s most famous film, can be seen through new eyes.'"

"'The use of patriotism as a political sword or a political shield is as old as the Republic,' Obama said. 'Still, what is striking about today's patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s -- in arguments that go back 40 years or more. In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic.'"

From Unity (NH) to Independence (MO), Sen. Obama -- pushing back against the current GOP strategy -- delivers a long and eloquent speech on the issue of patriotism. [Transcript.] "His speech put the issue in a sweeping historical perspective, speaking of charges that Thomas Jefferson had sold the nation out to the French and that John Adams was in cahoots with the British. He also questioned policies enacted in the name of patriotism, from Adams' Alien and Sedition Act, Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans...'I give him credit. He is taking this very seriously,' said presidential historian Robert Dallek."

"Like other broad-minded and big-hearted works of American culture from the first half of the 20th century -- H.L. Mencken's American Language, John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy of novels, the Federal Writers' Project American Guide series, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music -- Names on the Land reflects a glorious union of two primal forces in the American mind. On one hand, Americanism: the inclination toward the large-scale and industrial, toward manifest destiny and the farthest shore...On the other, Americana: the craving for the local and the lo-fi, for the inward heart of things, for the handcrafted and the homemade." In Slate, Matt Weiland sings the praises of George Rippey Stewart's Names on the Land.

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope." -- Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, 1925-1968, taken from us 40 years ago today. [See also "The Ballad of Bobby."]

"The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking." -- Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, June 6, 1944. And, while remembering fallen heroes, today is also the 64th anniversary of D-Day.

"They shook hands. But Obama didn’t let go, leading Lieberman -- cordially -- by the hand across the room into a corner on the Democratic side, where Democratic sources tell ABC News he delivered some tough words for the junior senator from Connecticut...Reporters watched as Obama leaned closely in to Lieberman, whose back was literally up against the wall." Taking a page from the LBJ school of physical persuasion, Sen. Obama seems to warn Joe Lieberman privately about the perils of Zelling out. Update: Holy Joe pushes back. Hard to imagine Lieberman remaining a committee chair after November at this point.

"Elvis was not first; I was the first son of a gun out here, me and Chuck Berry. And I'm very sick of the lie...You know, we are over that black-and-white crap, and that was all the reason Elvis got the appreciation that he did. I'm the dude that he copied, and I'm not even mentioned...I've been out here for 50 years, man, and I haven't ever seen a royalty check." Bo Diddley, 1928-2008.

In the trailer bin, assassin-prodigy James McAvoy foregoes the doldrums of cubicle life for quality time with Angelina Jolie in the new domestic trailer for Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted, a.k.a. this summer's big dumb Matrix-y action flick (and, mind you, I don't mean that perjoratively in the slightest.) And director Alex Gibney of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side takes on the Good Doctor in the new trailer for Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. Not sure if the latter will make it to this area, but I'm looking forward to it.

A busy day traffic-wise here at GitM: In a speech before the Knesset today, Dubya compared Obama to Sen. William Borah of Idaho (and not in complimentary fashion, although that case could be made too.) Here's GWB: "Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Now, as it turns out, Sen. Borah was the subject of my undergraduate thesis and features prominently in my dissertation. So, notwithstanding the self-serving idiocy and sad invoking of Godwin's Law in Dubya's words, I do want to take a moment to defend Sen. Borah, before -- just as Philip Roth Cheneyed up Burton Wheeler -- he disappears down the memory hole and is reinvented as simply a kneejerk reactionary. (I know Dubya brought him up to bash as a weak-kneed surrender-monkey, but I've also read several left-leaning comments out and about today that make note that Borah was a Republican, and thus belongs in Dubya's camp. He really doesn't.)

However wrong he was about Hitler in his final years, and obviously he was very, very wrong (although not perhaps as wrong as George Prescott Bush), Sen. Borah is neither the apostle of appeasement nor the GOP stooge that Dubya and folks pushing back would respectively make him out to be today. With La Follette and Johnson, Borah was one of the leading progressives in the Senate for decades, and one of its strongest civil liberties advocates in the years after World War I. In fact, if Dubya wants to ponder aloud the words of Borah, may I suggest the following?

Lincoln laughs last? It seems that due to rewrite issues with the rumored Abbie Hoffman film, Steven Spielberg has put his Lincoln biopic back on the front-burner, to be shot right after Tintin (a la Jurassic Park/Schindler's List and War of the Worlds/Munich.) Other than Liam Neeson and Sally Field as President and Mrs. Lincoln respectively, no other casting has been announced.

Another personal plug: As part of the online rollout for a new edition of Walter LaFeber's The American Century, I recently composed four brief classroom essays on various 20th century events, as evaluated from a 21st century (re: ruthlessly presentist) perspective. In case anyone's interested, they've now gone live: The Versailles Conference | The Military Industrial Complex Speech | The Tet Offensive | A Second American Century? Now, that's edutainment.

"'The board was in crisis mode,' one of the authors, Jennifer Hooper McCarty, who studied the archives, said in an interview. 'It was constant stress. Every meeting it was, "There’s problems with the rivets and we need to hire more people."'' Sorry, Jack and Rose (and, of course, the 1517 real casualties): It seems the Titanic may well have foundered due to corporate cut-corners, namely substandard riveting. "Adding to the problem, in buying iron for the Titanic’s rivets, the company ordered No. 3 bar, known as 'best' -- not No. 4, known as 'best-best,' the scientists found. Shipbuilders of the day typically used No. 4 iron for anchors, chains and rivets...The scientists argue that better rivets would have probably kept the Titanic afloat long enough for rescuers to arrive before the icy plunge, saving hundreds of lives."

They may have lost some luster due to Scott Templeton garnering one for the Whiting/Klebanow regime. Nevertheless, the 2008 Pulitzers were announced yesterday, and they included 6 for the WP, Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought in the history category and a special citation to the freewheeling Bob Dylan "for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." Well, ok then.

To give credit where it's due, tonight's installment of John Adams went in exactly the direction I'd hoped, spending much more time on the political and less on the personal than previous episodes. We had Hamilton and Jefferson fighting over Federalist fiscal policy, Jefferson and the Adamses debating revolution and the health of France, Citizen Genêt, the Jay treaty, the consternation of Washington over the Republican-Federalist divide, and the first transfer of presidential authority, all of which I greatly enjoyed.

I have only two minor quibbles: Some mention of the Whiskey Rebellion would've been grand (and could've been used to further dramatize Adams' fear of the Mob, as soon to be represented in the Alien and Sedition Acts.) And, more importantly, the forgotten Founder in the series thus far has been James Madison, who -- unless he's been one of the backgrounders -- has yet to appear. Even the good Doctor, Benjamin Rush, has had more screen time (although that's probably due to his reconciliatory role in Episode 7.) Madison was in the House while Adams presided over the Senate, so shoehorning him in might've been unwieldy. Still, I'd have been content to have seen even a tiny nod to the writer of the Constitution -- Instead of screen time, they could've just "cast big" a la Rufus Sewell for Hamilton, signalling Madison's importance with a decent-sized cameo. (Now that I think about it, they should've done the same with Tom Paine earlier on.)

But, like I said (and my fondness for Franklin's Parisian shenanigans notwithstanding), this was probably my favorite episode since part 2, on the Continental Congress. Heck, I even made my peace with Morse's putty nose tonight. “I am fairly out and you are fairly in! See which of us will be the happiest!"”

"Remember, Jeannette Rankin was elected before women could vote. So who says men don't vote for a woman?" Resorting to a blatant gender pitch once more, Sen. Clinton name-drops Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, the nation's first female representative. (She also took hold of the recent Kinsley meme: "'Do you realize how much longer it takes for me to get ready than my opponents?" Clinton said. 'I think I should get points for what I do, plus having to spend so much time getting ready.'")

Just to set the record straight, Jeannette Rankin was a committed pacifist who not only led the "Jeannette Rankin Brigade" to protest the Vietnam War late in her life, but voted against American entry into both World Wars (and was the only person to vote against entry into WWII.) So, their common womanhood aside, I think it's safe to say Rankin would be thoroughly disgusted by Clinton's record on Iraq and Iran, and might well roundly reject the comparison.

A personal plug: Also out in stores this week, my fourth collaboration with Democratic pundit Bill Press (1, 2, 3): Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and not a moment too soon). If you couldn't guess from the title, it basically argues that, just as the New Deal era lasted from 1932-1968, the Age of Conservatism that began in '64 with Goldwater, hit its stride in the 70's and 80's, and gave us the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, and, of course, Dubya, has now hit the proverbial, inevitable, historical brick wall. So let's survey the wreckage: On one hand, from Katrina to Abramoff and Ed Meese to Alberto Gonzales, right-wing attempts at governance over the past thirty years have usually degenerated into dismal experiments in cronyism and/or incompetence. On the other, conservatism has strayed so far from its ideological roots in the Reagan and particularly Dubya eras that the likes of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk, and William F. Buckley would never even recognize it. (Case in point, the Ron Paul candidacy, wherein a traditional Taft conservative ended up being treated by his esteemed Republican contemporaries in every debate as either a fringe joke or a terrorist-sympathizing dupe.) Either way, the right-wing ascendancy is over, and it's our time again now (and, though it's not reflected in this tome, I think y'all know who I'd prefer to be carrying our progressive standard into battle in 2009 and beyond...)

"Not one lawyer in 100 can identify Ohio congressman John Bingham as the main drafter of the 14th Amendment. Yet Bingham is a fascinating historical figure: he served in Congress in the 1850s as the country was torn apart and in the 1860s as it was stitched back together. He was a federal judge and the nation's minister to Japan. As a prosecutor, he convicted John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators, and as a member of Congress he gave closing arguments in President Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. All that, plus he drafted Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which is perhaps the single most important paragraph of our Constitution." Over at TNR, Doug Kendall pleas with Obama and others to remember the Reconstruction amendments.

"'There is no doctor who can heal me.But I know that a man like Pol Pot, he is even sicker than I am. He is crazy in the head, because he believed in killing people. He believed in starving children. We both have the horror in our heads." Dith Pran, 1942-2008.

"Historians and novelists are kin, in other words, but they’re more like brothers who throw food at each other than like sisters who borrow each other’s clothes. The literary genre that became known as 'the novel' was born in the eighteenth century. History, the empirical sort based on archival research and practiced in universities, anyway, was born at much the same time. Its novelty is not as often remembered, though, not least because it wasn’t called 'novel.' In a way, history is the anti-novel, the novel’s twin, though which is Cain and which is Abel depends on your point of view." By way of The Late Adopter, historian Jill Lepore surveys the origins of -- and often-thorny relation between -- history and the novel.

"'He United the States of America' is the miniseries’ motto, giving credit to Adams for everything. Franklin (Tom Wilkinson) is a rascal; Washington (David Morse) is a sapskull. Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) is distracted and, finally, deluded. And poor Thomas Paine seems never to have been born...“John Adams” is animated as much by Adams’s many private resentments as by the birth of the United States. It is history, with a grudge." Speaking of Jill Lepore, her review of HBO's John Adams appeared in The New Yorker a month or so ago. Now that we're four weeks in, I'll say that John Adams has worked as a decently acceptable Sunday night methadone for early Wire withdrawal. I particularly enjoy Stephen Dillane's Jefferson, and (like many Americans of the early national period, I'd presume) would rather spend more time with him than with Giamatti's Adams. Tom Wilkinson's Ben Franklin is also worth relishing, but he's somewhat hamstrung by the fact that virtually every other line he gets is one of Franklin's famous epigrams. (The jury's still out on David Morse and his putty nose -- I'll reserve judgment until after Washington's presidency next week.)

My biggest problem with the show thus far, and this reflects my own historical biases more than anything else, is the sheer amount of time spent on John and Abigail's relationship and family trials. This is not to say I'm totally averse to the social history: The smallpox inoculation, for example, was a intriguing addition to Episode 2. But, more often than not, I'd rather see much more birthing of the United States and much less of the domestic drama. Tonight's episode, for example, spent more time on the respective travails of the Adams children than it did on the writing of the Constitution. Now, granted, this is partly because John Adams had very little to do with said writing (although you'd get no sense here that he was nevertheless defending it from afar.) Still, Adams and Jefferson discussed our founding charter for only one brief scene, thus shoehorning Jefferson's thoughts on generational revolution, Franklin's "republic, if you can keep it" riposte, Jefferson as "the American Sphinx," the brewing of the Adams-Jefferson conflict, and the venerable undergraduate essay question, "Was the Constitution a continuation or repudiation of the American Revolution?," all into five or so minutes. As a political history aficionado, I eat this stuff up like catnip. But then there's at least 30-40 minutes devoted to John and Abigail doing variations on their Saltpeter-Pins schtick, and/or Sarah Polley and the rest of the Adams kids all grown up, courting and drinking. (Gasp!)

Now I understand McCullough's book is above all else a biography, and some of this is par for the course. But -- call me old-school, top-down, whatever -- I'm really hoping the final three episodes, and particularly the next two on the "Age of Federalism," spend significantly more time concentrating on the affairs of the early republic, and both John and Abigail's important role in them, than on the domestic bliss and family squabbles of the Adamses themselves.

"'I really didn't want to rehab and come back this season because I don't think that was possible,' Webber said. 'Plus, because the way the team is playing, the chemistry is great with these guys, they're on a roll. I feel like they're going to win, they have a great chance to go very far in the playoffs. I just felt it was time to let the game go and be able to be happy about what I accomplished without trying to keep coming back.'" Undone by knee injuries, longtime NBA forward Chris Webber calls it quits. (He had recently returned to the Golden State Warriors.)

I always liked C-Webb, and wish he'd won a ring with one of the early-00's Sacramento outfits. On the debit side of the ledger, there's his unfortunate timeout and, more importantly, his criminal contempt plea in his perjury trial (concerning loans he received from a booster while at Michigan.) But, still, you have to have some respect for a guy who parlays his NBA millions into an impressive and widely-circulated African-American history collection (probably the coolest basketball-related public project this side of fellow Warrior alum Adonal Foyle's campaign finance reform group.)

"Despite sustained efforts to tear down the New Deal -- from the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 to President George W. Bush's ill-fated 2005 efforts to dismantle Social Security -- the 1930s-vintage infrastructure has proved remarkably durable...Although the Tennessee Valley Authority has yet to pitch in, four 70-year-old agencies are helping to cushion the blow of the housing bust. Let's count them." Slate's Daniel Gross examines how the New Deal is working to mitigate today's credit crisis. (He also has a funny line about Sen. Clinton's bizarre call yesterday to have Greenspan wave a magic wand to fix things: This "is a little like Chicago appointing a cow to a panel on preventing disastrous fires.")

By way of my bro, Underground Online queries numerous celebrities and luminaries on the most pressing issue of our time: Who would win in a fight between a minotaur with a trident and a centaur with a crossbow? Those weighing in on the debate include David McCullough, Ridley Scott, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris, Marc Singer, and the Battlestar and Wire crews. I was asked before being shown the site, and you can count me in the centaur camp. Screw the dice: If this is happening outdoors and not in close quarters, ranged cavalry > heavy infantry (although admittedly there's something to be said for the existential Nolte thesis.)

"As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told 'you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant...And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me." Jeremiah Wright is defended by a brother from across the pew, Mike Huckabee. Gotta say, I don't agree with basically any of Huckabee's policy positions, but, he can be a seriously likable guy at times (even if he did fold a defense of Falwell into his remarks.)

In the wake of the Wright controversy, Sen. Obama delivers a thoughtful and nuanced speech on race in America. Video below:

Now, on one hand, I sorta wish Sen. Obama had never had to give this speech, that we were as far along with regard to race in this country as it had first seemed after Iowa. That being said, since events of recent days in particular have suggested how far we still have to go on the racial recrimination front, this speech was both a necessary and important one. It's been garnering rave reviews across the political spectrum, and I'd throw my hat in there too -- my main quibble with the address is that Obama wrote it himself. C'mon, Sen. Obama, think of the speechwriters. When political leaders write speeches as memorable and moving as this one, it's going to put a lot of people out of work!

Seriously, tho', I thought the address moved beyond soundbites to give a substantive and nuanced view of race in America, the type of which we haven't heard in this country from a politician in a very long time. (I particularly like the Faulknerian flourish on the legacy of history.) And it -- in true Obama form -- showed that the Senator has an understanding of the grievances on both sides of the racial divide, and went out of its way to establish that Ferraro and Wright were two manifestations of the same intrinsic problem. Like TNR's Michael Crowley, I am somewhat concerned about whether the nuance of his message will come through to undecided voters, once the Hardballs, Hannitys, and Blitzers are done with it. Still, today's address was the type of leadership moment that I frankly can't see either Sen. Clinton or Sen. McCain providing, and it showed once again how much our country stands to gain by electing Sen. Barack Obama our next president in November. Black, white, latino, or asian, leaders this wise, intelligent, thoughtful, and inspiring do not come along often.

"This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn...your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."

Breaking news! As an eagle-eyed commenter at TPM discovered, it appears one Frederick Douglass, an orator of some repute in the African-American community, and one whom Senator Clinton has called "one of my heroes" and "a great American," actually despises our great nation, and has given public remarks filled with hate-mongering toward patriotic Americans.

I for one was planning to vote for Senator Clinton, but now I am very concerned. She should reject and denounce this fellow Douglass immediately, although it may be too late. After reading this, I totally feel Clinton is not proud of America and I fear where she would lead this country.

Update: All kidding aside, Sen. Obama gave some eloquent remarks on the politics of division in Indiana today, citing RFK's elegy for MLK in Indianapolis. "I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment, where we cannot forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us. We have to come together. That’s what this campaign is about. That’s why you are here. That’s why we're going to win this election. That’s how we're going to change the country."

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." I saw this yesterday and was going to leave it well enough alone, but since it's growing into a full-fledged dustup today, and since Team Clinton recently made a point of calling for Samantha Power's scalp: former veep candidate and Crossfire host Geraldine Ferraro makes some rather unfortunate remarks about Sen. Obama. To quote Ambinder (whom I generaly find irritating, but he pegged this one): "Because running as a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama is soooo easy." At any rate, if the door is now open to playing this ridiculous identity game, I think it's rather obvious to all that if Ferraro herself was a white man, we'd never have heard of her, since her gender was basically the sole reason for her inclusion on that historically terrible '84 ticket. Similarly, if Sen. Clinton wasn't the spouse of a former president, it's hard to imagine her still in this race, particularly given her virtual mathematical elimination and all.

Perhaps, before Ferraro makes any more dubious claims about an easy road for black males in our society, she should read Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson's editorial today in the NYT, where he examines the old-school racial fears stoked by Clinton's infamous 3am ad: "I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image -- innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger -- it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society." Some pundits argue that Patterson is over the top here, but I actually think he's on to something (and, note, I've recently defended the Clinton ad people on charges of intentional racism.)

As Chris Orr notes, this wasn't just a warmed-over Mondale/LBJ Cold War leadership spot. Team Clinton explicitly turned it into an old-school home invasion ad, the kind that's so passé that even Slomin's Shield has moved on. The Clinton campaign still could've forestalled any possible racial subtext by changing the race of the family, but, as it is, you'd have to be willfully naive not to see a problem with the Clinton version of "Barack Obama is a menace that will harm your sleeping (white) children in their beds" as it came out. At the very least, the ad gurus at Camp Clinton are guilty of willful ignorance about racist cultural tropes in American history, and perhaps a good deal more. Update: In response, the Clinton campaign points to a blink-and-you'll-miss-her African-American child in the ad, although, given the lighting, that wasn't immediately obvious, to say the least.)

Update 2: Ferraro blows a gasket, now claiming: "I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?" Well, if it's any consolation, Rep. Ferraro, I'm sure your fellow national embarrassment, Sean Wilentz, agrees with you. (Patterson rebuts Wilentz here.) Update 3: Ferraro's done this before, back in '88: "If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."

Update 4: "It wasn't a racist comment, it was a statement of fact." Ferraro can't seem to stop digging herself deeper. At this point she's either dogwhistling to Pennsyltucky or just completely off the rails. Either way, Keith Olbermann's disbelief about Ferrarogate last night is worth watching. Update 5: She's gone, and not very gracefully.

"'This convention,' wrote H.L. Mencken, the most famous reporter of the age, is 'almost as vain and idiotic as a golf tournament or a disarmament conference.'" Those political junkies out there pining for a brokered convention, be careful what you wish for: The WP's Peter Carlson reminds everyone of the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York, which stalled out between Al Smith and William McAdoo before finally deciding on Wall St. lawyer John W. Davis, who in turn lost to Republican Calvin Coolidge and -- in twelve states -- Progressive Robert La Follette. (For the longer version, see Robert Murray's The 103rd Ballot. Which reminds me, having spent the day myself in 1924, it seemed a strange confluence to find this staring back at me upon my return to 2008.)

A disaster for the Democrats that year, the "unconventional convention" did at least provide choice grist for political wags then, and has ever since. "This thing has got to come to an end," Will Rogers pleaded well into the nine-day stretch. "New York invited you people here as guests, not to live." (Rogers also noted on the day of the infamous KKK resolution that it "will always remain burned in my memory as long as I live as being the day when I heard the most religion preached, and the least practiced, of any day in the world’s history.") When William Jennings Bryan, after days of thundering himself hoarse, wheeled around to support the final Davis ticket (which included as a sop to the Bryanites his younger brother in the veep slot), one reporter quipped: "If monkeys had votes, Mr. Bryan would be a champion of evolution."

And then there were the snafus. The Carlson piece talks about the Democratic decision to broadcast the convention on the newfangled radio, which turned out be a public relations catastrophe for the party. And there was worse. The Texas delegation -- aghast that they shared a block with St. Patrick's Cathedral and a city with Wall Street and the House of Morgan -- had to be talked out of burning a cross. And when the convention band tried to appease their southern guests at one point by striking up a "Dixie" song, they obliviously settled in on "Marching Through Georgia." Speaking of the Civil War, progressive Republican Hiram Johnson quipped once the Democratic ordeal was over, "How true was Grant's exclamation that the Democratic Party could be relied upon to do the wrong thing at the right time." (Let's try not to live down to that assessment this year, please.)

"If National Review is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." A farewell to one of the left's most formidable and forthright adversaries, who began his career as a nonconformist and, from the war on drugs to Dubya and the neocons, relished bucking the trend until his final days. I hardly ever agreed with the man, and, indeed, found many of his strongly-held views repellent. But, particularly as far as arch-conservatives go, I did have a good bit of respect for him. William F. Buckley, 1925-2008.

"The Obama campaign has yet to reach bottom in its race-baiter accusations...They promise to continue until they win the nomination, by any means necessary." Taylor Marsh, Ph.D? A Clinton supporter from Day One, he at first dismissed Obama as merely the newest in a long tradition of "beautiful losers," like Adlai Stevenson and Bill Bradley. (If you come 'round here often, you can probably guess that didn't sit too well with me. In fact, it's basically the same argument recently made by friend and colleague David Greenberg, before he went the way of the Great White Hope.) Well, if today's TNR piece is any indication, historian Sean Wilentz only knows how to lose ugly. Despite the fact that Wilentz has been ranting worse than Krugman for most of this election cycle, I've been inclined to give him a pass, partly as a professional courtesy of sorts to a well-esteemed historian of whom I once thought quite highly, and partly because of his well-publicized Dylan fandom. Well, no more. Wilentz has been writing increasingly blatant pro-Clinton spin pieces throughout the campaign, which is his wont as a Clinton supporter, I suppose. But here he's penned a shrill and intemperate screed which, frankly, is more embarrassing than anything else. It's the type of angry, weirdly conspiratorial rant you'd expect to be written by an anonymous, and possibly drunk, Salon poster, not one of the more venerable American historians in the profession.

Am I overstating the case? Well, let's take a look at some of the spleen-venting on display here: "After several weeks of swooning, news reports are finally being filed about the gap between Senator Barack Obama's promises of a pure, soul-cleansing 'new' politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp--over allegations about the circulation of a photograph of Obama in ceremonial Somali dress--will be exposed by the press as the manipulative illusion that it is." Calculated, deeply dishonest conduct? Ploy? Manipulative illusion? Tell us what you really think, Prof. Wilentz.

And that's just the first paragraph. It gets worse. Check out this unsightly sentence: "As insidious as these tactics are, though, the Obama campaign's most effective gambits have been far more egregious and dangerous than the hypocritical deployment of deceptive and disingenuous attack ads." Riiight. I really started to buy your case after that fifth negative adjective or so.

I'd spend time refuting Wilentz point for point if I thought he was trying to make a reasonable case here. But he spends most of the article just shrieking "race baiter race baiter race baiter!", punctuated with occasional whiny, Clintonesque accusations of pro-Obama media bias. (One of the many targets of Wilentz's wrath, Frank Rich, has recently pointed out the problems with that line of argument.) But, in general terms, in order to buy what Wilentz is selling here, you'd have to believe all of the following:

From Senator Obama's impressive victory speech in Wisconsin this evening:

"The politics of hope does not mean hoping things come easy. Because nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere stood up when it was hard; stood up when they were told – no you can’t, and said yes we can.

Yes we can reclaim that dream. Yes we can heal this nation."

The progressives are back!

"The biggest barrier to rolling up our sleeves and preparing for a better future is our own apathy, fear or immobility. We have been living in a zero-sum political environment where all heads have been lowered to avert being lopped off by angry, noisy extremists. I am convinced that Barack Obama is the one presidential candidate today who can encourage ordinary Americans to stand straight again; he is a man who can salve our national wounds and both inspire and pursue genuine bipartisan cooperation. Just as important, Obama can assure the world and Americans that this great nation's impulses are still free, open, fair and broad-minded."

In the WP, Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, endorses Obama for president. "My grandfather was pursued by both political parties and eventually became the Republican nominee...He went on to win the presidency -- with the indispensable help of a 'Democrats for Eisenhower' movement. These crossover voters were attracted by his pledge to bring change to Washington and by the prospect that he would unify the nation. It is in this great tradition of crossover voters that I support Barack Obama's candidacy for president. If the Democratic Party chooses Obama as its candidate, this lifelong Republican will work to get him elected and encourage him to seek strategic solutions to meet America's greatest challenges."

Take that, Lincolnbots. The Chicago Tribune's Eric Zorn makes the "experience" case for William H. Seward of New York.

"Obama's no Abe Lincoln. But, as I observed last February...Abe Lincoln was no Abe Lincoln at this stage of the game either. I point this out simply as a reminder that Lincoln and history went on to make fools of those whose obsession with his shortcomings and failures blinded them to the singular promise of his gifts. Not often, but fairy tales do come true."