This issue: October 29, 2012 (Vol. 18, No. 07)

Presidential Mitt

BY WILLIAM KRISTOL

On September 2, 1939, the day after Hitler invaded Poland, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made clear in the House of Commons that he still entertained hopes for negotiations with the Führer: “If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces then His Majesty’s Government would be willing to regard the position as being the same as it was before the German forces crossed the Polish frontier. That is to say, the way would be open to discussion between the German and Polish Governments on the matters at issue.”

The acting leader of the opposition, Arthur Greenwood, rose to reply to the prime minister. He began by saying he ...

Romancing Ohio

The wooing of swing state voters proceeds apace.

BY DAVID WOLFFORD

Cincinnati
 No candidate has won the presidency without Ohio since John Kennedy, and no Republican has done so ever. At this writing, the state’s 18 electoral votes are in play, and both campaigns are visiting Ohio with the insistence of a determined suitor.

No sooner had Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan as his running mate (after seriously considering Ohio senator Rob Portman) than Ryan stumped at his alma mater, Miami University in Oxford, 30 miles northwest of Cincinnati. Both parties placed leading Ohio politicians on their national ...

‘The Biggest Kiss’

Mitt Romney was right: Dodd-Frank is a gift to big banks

BY C. BOYDEN GRAY AND ADAM J. WHITE

Big Wall Street banks caused a financial crisis and brought the nation to the brink of economic collapse; President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Act to punish those banks and end government bailouts of too-big-to-fail financial institutions. 

That’s what President Obama believes, at least. He said so when he signed Dodd-Frank into law on July 21, 2010: Wall Street banks long had tricked Americans with fine-print traps, opaque investment pitches, and “abusive practices in the mortgage industry,” but Dodd-Frank would foster ...

Reasonable Doubt

A closer look at the Sally Hemings saga.

BY EDWARD ACHORN

Just how awful was Thomas Jefferson? In an academic and media culture that sometimes seems determined to trash all things that hint at the magnificence of America, pretty awful. Jefferson, the brilliant Founder and chief author of the Declaration of Independence, that essential document of the dignity of the individual in defiance of the bullying state, has been found guilty of being the ultimate cad and hypocrite. He had, we are assured, an inherently abusive sexual relationship with his young slave Sally Hemings, who bore several of his children. 

This very old idea—advanced by the corrupt scandalmonger James Callender during Jefferson’s first term as president—was dismissed for centuries, we are told, only because of the ...

The Greatest Story Never Read

Joseph Epstein gets around to ‘In the beginning’

BY JOSEPH EPSTEIN

Academics, I’m told, used to play a game at parties in which each person confessed to some great work he or she should have but never got around to reading. Stakes in this game rose quickly. One might begin by allowing one has never read The Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione and, a few drinks on, end by admitting to never having read Romeo and Juliet. I never attended a party where this game was played. A pity, too, for I could have trumped everyone in the room by announcing, as I am here, that I have never read the Bible. 

When I was a small child, my father read portions of a child’s Bible to me. I recall the story of the Garden of Eden, of Abraham being ...

Bill Collector in Chief

Over the last few years The Scrapbook has watched the rise of the behavioral social sciences with a profound sense of unease. It’s best to be alert to the limits of social science for many reasons, but chief among them is that any supposed insights into human behavior are rapidly seized upon by professionals who manipulate people for a living. 

For a particularly disturbing example of this, look no further than the increasingly Orwellian marketing tactics of the Obama campaign. Earlier this year, Obama for America released a smartphone app that produces maps telling you the political affiliation of your neighbors. The ...