James C. Thompson, Jr., teaches history at Harvard. He has worked at both the White House and the State Department.
Three years ago Dean Rusk is said to have complained to a staff aide that “some young men around here think we’re going to change our China policy. I can tell you,” he added with a flash of anger, “they’re dead wrong.” As it turned out, Secretary Rusk was proved right at the time. What […]
Everyone cares about Oliver Twist. Now we need to help the Artful Dodgers.
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Revisit writing from this year that we’re proud to have run.
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We’re providing new ideas for a stronger America, but we need your help.
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It was a beautiful North Carolina spring day in 2000 at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh, and Governor Jim Hunt was sprinting down the giant ruby-red stairs. I was his then-young press aide, and we were running late because he had been on the phone with President Bill Clinton. Naively, I noted something about their discussing a state issue. Without missing a beat, the governor said of Clinton, his fellow Democrat, “I was telling him what he was doing wrong with the country and how to fix it!” So began my real education in politics, which I was quickly learning…
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While Trump muscles the media and renames the Kennedy Center, history will get the last laugh. Just ask the good people of Appleton, Wisconsin.
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Revisit writing from this year that we’re proud to have run.
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To pay for tax cuts, Republicans cut graduate student loan support for female-dominated professions. That turns out to be bad policy and terrible politics.
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