How did this particular man get to the White House and stay there? Why was he reelected? Why was he not impeached? How was it that with plummetting approval ratings he still got most of what he wanted, even down to the recent bailout bill? It's too easy to sneer or dismiss this man. We bloody well must understand how he got where he did, who he represented, who he fronted for, and how even his miserable failure has not driven a stake through the heart of the Republican Party, which is a hell of a lot closer to getting McCain and Palin in the White House than any sane person would expect given current conditions and the last eight years. Stone is not the man to answer these questions, but somebody better. The futrue depends on it.

It failed because the US government lacked the discipline to put systemic needs above national ones, and Nixon wanted to get reelected by futzing with the economy. America set up the system, had all the levers of power, then forget that with great power comes great responsibility. Whereas British governments were in the 19th and early 20th centuries prepared to take economic hits for the benefit of a global economic system that favored them, the US never seems able to put its money where its mouth is and assume leadership when domestic concerns are at stake. The global economy built on the dollar has such huge benefits for America that a serious recession is a price worth paying to keep it intact. But the politicians just don't get this fact, and one day, when the dollar falls off its pedestal and we have to export in order to import, they will curse the men who didn't take one for the team.

The Chinese communists are capitalists. The southern plantation owners were capitalists. That just means that they produce commodities, sell them on the market, and get to keep the profits. Or, like the Fuggers, the Medicis, or the boys from Amsterdam they loan money at interest and get to keep the profits. Capitalists all. It was Adam Smith who argued that a capitalist (not his term, that was coined by Marx) economy worked better if it was built around a free market--his book was an attack on monopolies, primarily. And even the most gonzo free marketeer will grudgingly admit that a market needs rules, somebody to enforce those rules, and a medium of exchange that everyone accpets as valid. That medium is the US dollar, and since its value is to a significant extent set in the market (the Fed can futz with it, but not all that much and mostly in a domestic context) it is hard to bitch about how the Fed is to blame when the market itself is running amuck. Worse, powerful investors are now learning how to profit by playing on the fears of investors, grabbing stocks cheap, running up the price, then cashing in on a selling panic the next day. How the hidden hand will deal with that shit nobody can say, but i think they'll keep this roller coaster going until the bottom drops out, and then it will be too late for all of us to easily pick up the pieces.

Economics is grounded in a set of theories about the world, rather than the history of the world. It is, today, a highly abstract and deeply ideological enterprise. Like Political Scientists, they raid the past for snippets and factoids to support the latest conception that must be true because the theory says it is. Thus, they can coinstruct fictions like "the Great depression had nothing to do with captialism" or "the rising tide lifts all boats" or "if we make the rich richer, they will invest in new plant and equipment, create jobs, and spread the welath." None of these conjectures would pass muster as an historical hypothesis (at best, they apply occasionally and partially to the past, but in these fomulations they are flat-out falsehoods). But, they conform to the freigning ideology, and therefore MUST be true. What are you going to believe, history or a pretty graph in an economics textbook?

The GOP should take a long, hard look at President Eisenhower and see what made it possible to be a Republican president in an era of Democratic predominance. They should try to conserve a few things, change as little as possible, manage the government efficiently with cost-cutting in mind, have a cautious foreign policy which stresses alliances, diplomacy, and the occasional dirty trick over massive armed intervention, and make sure tax income matches federal outlays (remember, it was Ike who slashed the military budget after Korea), enforce the laws, and play nice. This might not make the base happy, but if would get them in the White House and keep them in the White House, because it's the kind of center/right policies that, if Peggy N. had a brain, she'd understand that Americans do want.

OK Mr. Hawk, think about this one: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

You may not like it, but abortion could easily fit into this rubric (or the 4th Amendment's right to one's person and effects). And as for the argument about appointing Justices who thought that free speech didn't apply to criticising candidates, I would argue that such a position is a denial of rights that are well established and that such a doctrine would never fly and be quickly destroyed by an amendment to the Constitution. Extending aboriton rights denies no one their rights, and is in harmony with the 9th Amendment for sure. Denying the right to criticise our political leaders would fly in the face of 200 years of jurisprudence.