This issue: June 6, 2011 (Vol. 16, No. 36)

Harbingers of Success

BY WILLIAM KRISTOL

Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Jimmy Carter in 1980, and the subsequent rapid American recovery at home and abroad, didn’t come out of the blue. There were plenty of signs before Election Day 1980 that such a reversal and triumph were possible:

* The late 1970s featured a broad-based rebellion throughout America against big-government, welfare-state liberalism—in the form of tax revolts at the state and national level, the rise of religious conservatism, and popular resistance to elite acquiescence in a foreign policy of weakness and ...

From the Midwest to the West Wing

The formula for a winning GOP candidate.

BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

From the moment the Democratic House passed Obamacare on March 21, 2010, it was clear that November 6, 2012, would be a defining moment in American history. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in many ways, that day will decide the future course of this country: Will our fellow citizens reelect President Obama and thereby ratify his signature legislative initiative, or will they reject both Obama and his namesake? Will they choose liberty and prosperity, or statism and insolvency?

Republicans will have a lot to do with providing the answers to these questions​—​especially those few who must decide whether to enter the presidential race. They should ...

The Third Man

Missing from the Bibi vs. Barack drama in Washington was the man who really torpedoed the peace process, Mahmoud Abbas

BY ELLIOTT ABRAMS

The week of dueling speeches by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu was great political drama, but a key character was missing from the scene: Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. While Abbas was absent, it was in fact his creation on April 27 of a unity government with the terrorist group Hamas that provided the backdrop for what we saw in Washington. So an analysis of what happened last week must begin not with Bibi’s calculations or Obama’s, but those of Abbas.

Mahmoud Abbas is 76 years old and will retire from politics next year, having announced that he will not seek reelection. His tenure as chairman of both the Fatah movement ...

The Reasons Why

Cause and effect in the Civil War.

BY EDWIN M. YODER JR.

The Union War

by Gary W. Gallagher

Harvard, 256 pp., $27.95

The Confederate War

by Gary W. Gallagher

Mr. Rogers Among the Savages

Jonathan V. Last, neighbor

BY JONATHAN V. LAST

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Fred Rogers lately. Mr. Rogers passed away in 2003, but he lives on in an endless series of television repeats on PBS stations across America. In life, he was celebrated as a secular saint and a national treasure. But now that he’s gone it’s clear he was more than that. 

For all of his sweetness, Mr. Rogers was a countercultural figure. His show, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, presented a liberal view of the world that often verged on self-parody. One episode I saw recently featured a nonsexist orange construction sign proclaiming “People at Work.” In another, Mr. Rogers made little bags of homemade ...

Horton Wins a Prize

Scott Horton is the kind of bumbling, inept journalist who seems to exist only in novels. A writer for Harper’s and the Daily Beast, he constantly makes mistakes and fabulates, leaving a trail of corrections and retractions in his wake. But because he has the right politics, Horton keeps getting promoted until, last week, he ascended all the way to receipt of the National Magazine Award for Reporting. 

Handed out by the American Society of Magazine Editors each year, the NMA is more or less a Pulitzer for magazines, and Horton’s story was a blockbuster: He detailed how, in 2006, three ...