Obama: Don’t Tread on Me.

“‘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.

The Vietnam-9/11 connection?

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today’s struggle — those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001.” Every time he thinks he’s going to wake up back in the jungle…In a fit of self-serving revisionism, Dubya attempts to reinvent the lessons of Vietnam before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, arguing that our problems really began because we withdrew from Southeast Asia too early. (Also, apparently we lost the war because of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.

So, on the bright side, it looks like Dubya is progressing along his high-school reading list.) As you might expect, this line of argument is not sitting well with many historians, among them the venerable Robert Dallek: “What is Bush suggesting? That we didn’t fight hard enough, stay long enough? That’s nonsense. It’s a distortion,’ he continued. ‘We’ve been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It’s a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out.‘”

Life of Lyndon.

“[I]n writing ‘LBJ: Architect of American Ambition,’ Woods has produced an excellent biography that fully deserves a place alongside the best of the Johnson studies yet to appear. He is more sympathetic and nuanced than Caro, more fluid and (despite the significant length of his book) more concise than Dallek — and equally scrupulous in his use of archives and existing scholarship. Even readers familiar with the many other fine books on Johnson will learn a great deal from Woods.” Columbia’s Alan Brinkley (also my advisor) takes a gander at Randall Wood’s new biography of Lyndon Johnson.