The airwaves are consumed with talk of former president Donald Trump’s possible arrest. Seventy years ago, another ex-chief executive had an encounter with a cop. Though the two situations were far from similar, it’s worth revisiting. You’ve just wrapped up the world’s most demanding job. You used the atomic bomb for the first time, helped
It’s a fundamental fact: You can’t take gimmicks out of presidential politics. Because like it or not, gimmicks work. One of the all-time greats was in 1840. A newspaper snidely editorialized about William Henry Harrison, “Give him a barrel of hard cider, and … a pension of two thousand [dollars] a year … and he
You’ve just wrapped up the most demanding job on earth. You used the atomic bomb, transitioned the economy from war footing to peacetime, helped create the United Nations, and stood up to communist aggression in Korea. So, what do you do next? Take a road trip, of course. To appreciate this story fully, you must
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. — Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer,” 1943 Harry Truman understood Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer.” Because of this, NATO’s founder would surely resist NATO expansion. In 1947, Truman was confronted with
As we look back on the 2020 election and the subsequent transition from the Trump to the Biden administrations, it seems almost certain that this will be viewed by both historians and the public as among the worst transitions in American presidential history. But it does not stand alone. While it is absolutely clear a