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After January 6th

The future of Trump and Trumpism.

By: Charles R. Kesler

Donald Trump’s supporters probably thought it couldn’t get any worse than Election Day, or more precisely the hours and days afterward when the votes swung shockingly in Joe Biden’s favor—the day the winning stopped. Then came January 6, and the attack on the Capitol.

You're Fired!

Understanding Trump's Defeat

By: William Voegeli

Baseball hall-of-famer Vernon “Lefty” Gomez often said, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” The Occam’s Razor interpretation of the 2020 presidential election is that President Donald Trump was neither lucky nor good enough a politician to secure a second term. His bad luck, in particular, was compounded.

The Continuing Crisis

The election and its aftermath.

By: Michael Anton

Five people died in the chaos on Capitol Hill on January 6. An unarmed 14-year veteran of the Air Force, Ashli Babbitt, was shot point-blank by a Capitol Police officer. Four others, one of them another Capitol Police officer, apparently died of medical emergencies. All of these deaths were tragic and unnecessary.

Do-Gooder in Chief

Eleanor Roosevelt's career was a vindication of every misogynist cliché about women in politics.

By: Helen Andrews

In 1996 Bob Woodward embarrassed First Lady Hillary Clinton by revealing that she had attempted to commune with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt during a session with a spiritualist in the White House solarium. Mrs. Clinton explained that her “conversation” with Mrs. Roosevelt served no occult purposes but was merely a psychological exercise to put herself in the mind of the only presidential wife in history more hated than Clinton herself.

The Electoral College by Dawn’s Early Light

The Electoral College is both a steward and a guardian of our democracy.

By: Christopher DeMuth

Consider this stirring account of democratic progress:

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a proposal to elect the president of the United States by national popular vote—though initially favored by James Madison, James Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris—fell flat with most of the delegates. Instead, they adopted a complex, hasty, last-minute compromise no one was enthusiastic about: presidential election by state electors. This system came to be called the Electoral College.

Reason to Believe

Observant Jewish communities offer an example of continuity and adaptiveness found in few other Western communities.

By: David P. Goldman

Britain’s late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once asked historian Paul Johnson, author of an excellent History of the Jews (1987), what most impressed him about Judaism. Johnson replied that Judaism, being a religion of strong individuals and strong communities, presents a rare balance between the individual and the collective.

Explore the full issue here !

"The Unmaking of a President" Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2020/21

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