Conservative Intellectuals and Richard Nixon explores the relationship between postwar conservatives and the president from 1968 to 1974. Seemingly casting those years out of their history, conservatives have never fully explored how Richard Nixon affected their movement. They fail to realize the extent his presidency helped refocus their fight against liberalism and communism. Mergel uses the Nixon years as a window into the Right s effort to turn ideology into successful politics. It combines an assessment of Nixon s presidency through the eyes of conservative intellectuals with an attempt to understand what the Right gained from its experience with Nixon.
Conservative Intellectuals and Richard Nixon explores the relationship between postwar conservatives and the president from 1968 to 1974. Seemingly casting those years out of their history, conservatives have never fully explored how Richard Nixon affected their movement. They fail to realize the extent his presidency helped refocus their fight against liberalism and communism. Mergel uses the Nixon years as a window into the Right s effort to turn ideology into successful politics. It combines an assessment of Nixon s presidency through the eyes of conservative intellectuals with an attempt to understand what the Right gained from its experience with Nixon.
The Last Liberal Republican is a memoir from one of Nixon’s senior domestic policy advisors. John Roy Price—a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, a cofounder of the Ripon Society, and an employee on Nelson Rockefeller’s campaigns—joined Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and later John D. Ehrlichman, in the Nixon White House to develop domestic policies, especially on welfare, hunger, and health. Based on those policies, and the internal White House struggles around them, Price places Nixon firmly in the liberal Republican tradition of President Theodore Roosevelt, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, and President Dwight Eisenhower. Price makes a valuable contribution to our evolving scholarship and understanding of the Nixon presidency. Nixon himself lamented that he would be remembered only for Watergate and China. The Last Liberal Republican provides firsthand insight into key moments regarding Nixon’s political and policy challenges in the domestic social policy arena. Price offers rich detail on the extent to which Nixon and his staff straddled a precarious balance between a Democratic-controlled Congress and an increasingly powerful conservative tide in Republican politics. The Last Liberal Republican provides a blow-by-blow inside view of how Nixon surprised the Democrats and shocked conservatives with his ambitious proposal for a guaranteed family income. Beyond Nixon’s surprising embrace of what we today call universal basic income, the thirty-seventh president reordered and vastly expanded the patchy food stamp program he inherited and built nutrition education and children’s food services into schools. Richard Nixon even almost achieved a national health insurance program: fifty years ago, with a private sector framework as part of his generous benefits insurance coverage for all, Nixon included coverage of preexisting conditions, prescription drug coverage for all, and federal subsidies for those who could not afford the premiums. The Last Liberal Republican will be a valuable resource for presidency scholars who are studying Nixon, his policies, the state of the Republican Party, and how the Nixon years relate to the rise of the modern conservative movement.
The Vietnam War has been analyzed, dissected, and debated from multiple perspectives for decades, but domestic considerations—such as partisan politics and election-year maneuvering—are often overlooked as determining factors in the evolution and outcome of America's longest war. In Vietnam's Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War, Andrew L. Johns assesses the influence of the Republican Party— its congressional leadership, politicians, grassroots organizations, and the Nixon administration—on the escalation, prosecution, and resolution of the Vietnam War. This groundbreaking work also sheds new light on the relationship between Congress and the imperial presidency as they struggled for control over U.S. foreign policy. Beginning his analysis in 1961 and continuing through the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, Johns argues that the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations failed to achieve victory on both fronts of the Vietnam War—military and political—because of their preoccupation with domestic politics. Johns details the machinations and political dexterity required of all three presidents and of members of Congress to maneuver between the countervailing forces of escalation and negotiation, offering a provocative account of the ramifications of their decisions. With clear, incisive prose and extensive archival research, Johns's analysis covers the broad range of the Republican Party's impact on the Vietnam War, offers a compelling reassessment of responsibility for the conflict, and challenges assumptions about the roles of Congress and the president in U.S. foreign relations.
Conservatives and liberals alike are currently debating the probable future of the Republican Party. What direction will conservatives and republicans take on foreign policy in the age of Obama? This book tackles this question.
For the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy comes a sure-to-be-controversial argument that by virtually any standard, JFK was far more conservative than liberal.
The same skills and strategies can propel an aspiring executive to the top of any organization, be it the Podunk High School Student Council, the Acme Xylophone Corporation, or the government of the United States of America. The student council president may be an unpaid volunteer, and the Acme CEO may bark out orders in an office that is rectangular, not oval. But the paths that lead to those positions are remarkably similar to the trail that ends so gloriously at the front door of the White House. Author G. Scott Thomas spent two years examining the lives of nearly two hundred presidential candidates—winners and losers, the famous and the obscure—with an eye for the tactics and qualities that served their careers well or damaged them beyond repair. He has distilled their experiences into a comprehensive guide to success, Advice from the Presidents. Thomas's book offers a wealth of advice, quotations, and anecdotes that are pertinent to any up-and-coming young man or woman. Which strategies for advancement are effective and which are doomed to fail? Which personal traits should be emulated and which are detrimental? Presidential candidates have learned the answers the hard way, earning the education of a lifetime in the gritty, cutthroat arena of national politics, a field as competitive as any to be found in corporate America. And now, for the first time, their valuable knowledge will be made available to ambitious executives and eager students across the country. Readers will learn the seven time-tested steps that can transform a would-be chief executive or U.S. President into the real thing: Decide upon your long-term goal. Develop your skills and interests. Polish your image and your people skills. Organize a network of mentors and helpers. Control your inner demons and your opponents. Maneuver to improve your position. Succeed with grace and serenity. In this book, readers will follow the career paths of famous American politicians. There have been smart presidents and unintelligent ones, honest and dishonest ones, diligent and lazy ones. But all of these master politicians have remarkably different skills and personalities but had one thing in common. They all followed the same seven-step career plan detailed in Advice from the Presidents. And so can any ambitious person in any walk of life.
Owens provides a historical analysis of the ideological movements and reform efforts leading to the Common Core State Standards, beginning with conservative criticism of public schools in the 1930s and culminating in a convergence of the political right and left in efforts to systemically reform education based on free market principles.
