Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the programme on International Politics, Economics, and Security.
Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was the most powerful, rousing, and pointed of any presidential address in decades. The first line captured the theme of the night. “America is back…and we are just getting started.” It ended with a peroration that his administration would “take up the righteous
“The First Hundred Days” was the iconic phrase for Franklin Roosevelt’s rapid-fire acts as the new president. Donald Trump intends to top that with “The First Hundred Hours.” Three months is far too slow for the new president. He made that clear by signing some 200 executive orders on his first day back in office.
The most important takeaway from the vice-presidential debate between Senator J.D. Vance and Governor Tim Walz is that this is what a serious debate for high office should look like. It was calm but impassioned, thoughtful, and truly helpful to any voter who wants to understand the policy differences between the two tickets. The candidates
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America has a peculiar way of deciding national elections. Instead of a cumulative national vote, the president and vice president are determined by fifty separate state elections. The top ticket in each state (except Nebraska and Maine) receives all that state’s electoral votes, no matter how slim the margin of victory. Each state’s electoral votes
If Kamala Harris is elected president – and that’s a big ‘if’ since the race is still tight – she won it on the debate stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. True, her answers were often vague, but they were also inspirational and forward-looking. She avoided the ‘word salads’ that have so often marred her (rare) comments without a
The lengthy interview between Donald Trump and Elon Musk on X last night began 40 minutes late, a technical glitch much of the media celebrated with unrestrained joy. They hate, hate, hate Elon Musk (despite his electric vehicles) – and they hate a media rival. They hate his transformation of Twitter, now X, into an open forum
Joe Biden delivered a eulogy for his presidency and his political career from the Oval Office Wednesday evening. It was a sad, sluggish ending to a life in politics, decades in the Senate, two terms as vice president, and finally a single term as president. President Biden needed to accomplish three things in the speech: explain
After weeks of pressure from Democratic party insiders, Joe Biden has finally said he won’t seek re-election. ‘I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term,’ he said in a one-page letter, offering his ‘full support and endorsement for
These weren’t the Lincoln-Douglas debates. They weren’t Kennedy-Nixon. If those were graded ‘A’, then this was ‘C-minus’, at best. Both candidates filled the air with hyperbole. Trump led the way, as usual, calling everything he did ‘the best ever’, and everything Biden did ‘the worst’. He doesn’t favour shades of grey. The President looked dreadful
The indictment and trial on a thin charge, the gagging of a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign, and the judge’s consistently biased rulings amount to deliberate judicial interference in the 2024 election. The process was led by a Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who ran on the campaign platform of going after
Among the many political advantages of the presidency, surely one is the ability to extend warm wishes to Christians, Jews and Muslims on their holidays. It’s a golden opportunity to invite a few for pictures at the White House and explain how much the holiday has always meant to you. Easy-peasy. For a Catholic president
Super Tuesday is over and so is the primary season. Although some states have not voted yet and a few others have not finished counting, the parties’ nominees are now locked in. They were really locked in several weeks ago. Biden had no serious competition and Trump vanquished his two main rivals in the early
Surprise! Surprise! Hunter Biden faced new charges on Thursday, after the Department of Justice accused him of failing to pay $1.4 million (£1.1 million) in taxes between 2016 and 2019, while living an extravagant lifestyle. According to the indictment, filed in California, Hunter faces three new felony and six misdemeanour tax offences which could see
The next few weeks will be filled with remembrances, fulsome appreciations, and harsh criticism of Henry Alfred Kissinger, who died on Wednesday at 100. His prominence is well deserved. The only modern secretaries of state who rank with him are George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, who constructed the architecture of Cold War containment in
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Freddy Gray is reunited with Charles Lipson and Jacob Heilbrunn to debate the impact of Biden’s Middle East policy, and his shaky reputation at home. Is he a Cold War liberal, out of touch with the modern Democratic Party?
Did American failures contribute to Hamas’s war of terror – its unprovoked attack, its total surprise, its horrific butchering of innocent civilians simply because they are Jews? Yes, but a lesser one. The failures to discover the plans, deter the attack and, having failed at deterrence, to defeat it promptly are Israel’s. The secondary actor
Congressman Matt Gaetz pulled the alarm but, unlike the stunt by his fellow House member Jamaal Bowman – who recently set off a fire alarm to delay a vote – there really was a fire. Gaetz set it himself, with help from seven other Republicans on the party’s populist right. Now the whole party has to
The worst job in America on Wednesday was trying to moderate the second Republican debate. With seven candidates on stage struggling for air time, the moderators, Dana Perino, Stuart Varney and Ilia Calderón, did a creditable job under impossible conditions. They asked the right questions but couldn’t stop the candidates from talking over each other
Deciding whether Ukraine should eventually join Nato is hotly debated. There are good reasons to favour its inclusion, but not now, while the war is ongoing. It would transform the war into a conflict between nuclear-tipped Great Powers and vastly increase the danger. Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, is not happy with the uncertainty over his
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This week Freddy is joined by Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest, and Charles Lipson, professor of political science at the University of Chicago. They discuss Charles’s recent piece in The Spectator’s US edition where he argues that the walls are closing in on old Joe, in relation to the Hunter Biden story. Is the President’s involvement
