History As It Happens

This is the fifth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Election of 1932, was published on June 17. George W. Bush's historically narrow victory over Al Gore is remembered for how it was decided: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to end a Florida court-ordered recount of disputed ballots, handing the state's 25 Electoral College votes to the Texas Republican. The campaign itself was relatively tame as the candidates sparred over how best to spend a federal budget surplus. Vice President Gore struggled to escape the shadow of his boss Bill Clinton, as voters did not credit Gore with the economic boom that took place during Clinton's two terms. Bush had a shaky grasp of policy and world events, but he struck voters as genuine. In this episode, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel delve into the election of 2000. If the winner only knew what awaited him on Sept. 11, 2001... 

Far-right political movements achieved power in Europe a century ago, wrecking parliamentary democracies and instigating wars of conquest and genocide. Today’s far-right populists are not the same as yesteryear’s fascists, but their growing popularity on a prosperous, mostly peaceful continent has caught many observers by surprise. In the elections for the European Parliament in early June, there was a clear shift to the right. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that Europe, with its stated commitment to human rights and market economics, is hurtling toward a far-right revolution. The results in France's snap elections dealt Marine Le Pen's National Rally a stunning setback, for instance. In this episode, political scientist Veronica Anghel of the European University Institute explains what's driving Europe's turbulent politics. 

This is the third episode in an occasional series examining major counterfactual scenarios in history. The most recent installment (Nov. 30, 2023) examined what would have happened to slavery in America without the Civil War. The rebellious colonists' victory in the Revolutionary War and the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence are so integral to the American origin story that it is difficult to grasp our modern society without them. Yet, the British came close to capturing General George Washington's army in 1776 in the first major battle after the delegates in Philadelphia signed the Declaration. The rebellion might have been crushed. So why didn't Great Britain win with its advantages of a professional military, powerful navy, and advanced economy? In this episode, University of Virginia historian Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy discusses the reasons why history turned out the way it did. Recommended reading: "The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of Empire" by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy

The last time an incumbent president withdrew from a reelection campaign was 1968. On March 31, under immense stress from the failure of his Vietnam War policy, President Lyndon Johnson told a national TV audience that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for another four years in the White House. Vice President Hubert Humphrey would win the nomination, as all hell broke loose on the Chicago streets outside the convention, during one of the most turbulent years in U.S. political history. By late October, as Humphrey gained ground in the polls against Republican Richard Nixon, LBJ learned that a woman by the name of Anna Chennault was interfering in his 11th hour bid to initiate peace talks with the North Vietnamese government in Paris. The person who orchestrated this dirty trick was Nixon himself. In this episode, University of Virginia historian and researcher Ken Hughes tells the story of the Chennault Affair. Recommended reading: "Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate" by Ken Hughes

During the Cold War it was taken for granted that Soviet foreign policy was driven by the tenets of Marxism-Leninism toward imperial expansion and subversion. Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and even Gorbachev were viewed as ideologues bent on leading their Third World clients to resist U.S. hegemony. In this episode, historians Sergey Radchenko and Vladislav Zubok weigh the role of ideology versus other, more "realist" factors, such as the quest for security and the recognition of the legitimacy of the Kremlin's interests. The focus of the discussion is Radchenko's latest book "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid For Global Power."  Additional reading: Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok  

Why are Palestinians stateless more than 75 years after the founding of a Jewish state in the same land? Why have international law and the rules-based order established after 1945 failed the Palestinian people? Why hasn’t the U.N. with its security council designed to prevent conflict, stopped the Israel-Palestinian conflict? In Nov. 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions to partition Palestine in one of the most consequential votes the body has ever taken. One side achieved statehood; the other rejected the vote. From this point forward international law hasn't helped Palestinians meet their national aspirations. In this episode, Victor Kattan of the University of Nottingham explains why.  

Since achieving its independence in 1948, Burma – now Myanmar – has spent decades under military rule, its people joining ethnic armies at war with the state. With the current war now in its fourth year, pro-democracy activists are being jailed, tortured and murdered. The junta toppled a democratically-elected government in 2021, yet the war doesn’t receive as much attention in the U.S. as other wars where democracy is said to be on the line. In this episode, Priscilla Clapp of the U.S. Institute of Peace discusses Burma's history of military rule and democratic activism, and whether any reasons for optimism exist as the country fragments into autonomous statelets ruled by armed groups opposed to the central government. Clapp served as chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma (1999-2002).

This is the fourth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Elections of 1860 and 1864, was published on May 7. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, the American people faced a paralyzing national emergency of historic proportions. The unemployment rate was 25 percent and much of the nation's wealth had evaporated with astonishing speed. It was a moment of high drama, unlike the election that put Roosevelt in the White House. When voters went to the polls in Nov. 1932, there was little doubt FDR would defeat the hapless Herbert Hoover by a wide margin. Unclear was whether Roosevelt's promised New Deal would pull the country out of the Great Depression. In this episode, historian David M. Kennedy explains how Roosevelt's economic vision made him a transformational figure. Recommended reading: Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.

American public opinion is increasingly intolerant of migrants, given the record numbers who have illegally crossed the southern border over the past several years. The U.S. immigration system is broken, as harsher enforcement in the name of deterrence has not magically fixed the root causes of human migration from Central and South America. Under election year pressure, President Joseph Biden signed an executive order to bar most asylum seekers, but comprehensive immigration reform remains out of reach. The asylum system, codified in 1980, was never designed to handle so many people. In this episode, New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer, the author of "Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here," explains the ins and outs of asylum and the human costs of failing to reform a broken system.

Future historians who write about the 2024 campaign might puzzle over how the Republican nominee, four years earlier, egged on a mob to attack Congress, the futile culmination of a months-long scheme to steal the 2020 election. But rather than end his political career, he would survive to champion the rioters as victims of the same nefarious forces arrayed against him and, by extension, the American people. So it should come as no surprise that the felony conviction against Donald J. Trump for falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme with a porn star may not dent his support very much. What is Trumpism today? Is there more to it than the man's grievances against prosecutors, judges, and his political foes? In this episode, the National Review's Dan McLaughlin discusses the sources of Trump's ongoing dominance of the Republican Party.