politicians — Bunk History

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President John F. Kennedy writing at desk in the Oval Office.

Kennedy Family Values

Why is America’s near-mythic dynasty so nasty up close?

by Alan Pell Crawford via The American Conservative on January 25, 2025

Perle Mesta laughing at a dinner party.

Washington’s Hostess with the Mostes’

Dinner parties in the capital have long been a path to power, but Perle Mesta had her eye on a different prize.

by Thomas Mallon via The New Yorker on January 20, 2025

A cartoon depicting Charles Guiteau.

Echoes of Rage

Our new age of violence looks a lot like the Gilded Age.

by George Dillard via Looking Through The Past on December 18, 2024

Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins, Modern Politics, and Historical Memory

The current political moment is reshaping the narrative about the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet.

by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Made By History on October 21, 2024

A Hundred-and-Nineteen-Year-Old Book That Explains Eric Adams

A collection of political sermons attributed to a crooked machine boss is a handy reference for New York City’s current political chaos.

by Eric Lach via The New Yorker on October 17, 2024

Campaign poster for Tom Watson

The Original Angry Populist

They say there’s never been a man like Donald Trump in American politics. But there was—and we should learn from him. Look back to early-20th-century Georgia.

by Zachary D. Carter via Slate on October 16, 2024

Jimmy Carter speaking into a microphone in front of a crowd.

Unwavering

You can argue over whether Jimmy Carter was America’s greatest president, but he was undoubtedly one of the greatest Americans to ever become president.

by Jim Barger Jr. via The Bitter Southerner on October 1, 2024

A monkey listening to a radio with headphones.

The Scopes Trial and the Two Visions of US Democracy

A new history revisits “the Trial of the Century” and its legacy in contemporary politics.

by Michael Kazin via The Nation on September 30, 2024

Men stand around as John Quincy Adams dies in bed.

John Quincy Adams's America

Historians may never speak of an “Age of Adams” to rival Andrew Jackson, but Randall Woods’s new biography reveals the sixth president’s greatness.

by Daniel N. Gullotta via Law & Liberty on September 6, 2024

Harris on a tv screen.

TV Still Runs Politics

Just about every major development in the current presidential campaign started as a television event.

by Paul Farhi via The Atlantic on August 22, 2024

C. G. Garrett photographed with five Black contemporaries outside of a building in Columbia, South Carolina.

Riding With Mr. Washington

How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction.

by David Nicholson via The American Scholar on August 22, 2024

Richard Nixon.

He Told Richard Nixon to Confess

Most ministers were silent about Watergate. Why was one evangelical pastor different?

by Daniel Silliman via Christianity Today on July 1, 2024

Cover of "American Civil Wars" by Alan Taylor.

Our Civil War Was Bigger Than You Think

Alan Taylor’s case for thinking of it as a continental conflict.

by Casey Michel via The Bulwark on June 21, 2024

Palestinians inspect the ruins of a building destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, October 8, 2023.

The Desire to Annihilate Gaza Wasn’t Born on 10/7 — It’s Part of a Long Tradition

A long Euro-American tradition of genocide and ethnic cleansing imagined freeing a barren Palestine from Palestinian barbarity and heathenism.

by Adam Yaghi via Religion Dispatches on June 17, 2024

Then-Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton speaks at the Human Rights Campaign forum in Washington, July 15, 2003.

Remembrance of Ratf**ks Past

As Cornel West is receiving ballot access help from Republicans, 20 years ago Al Sharpton’s campaign for president was largely orchestrated by Roger Stone.

by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on June 12, 2024

A hallway in the Greenbriar bunker, lined with steel and cement walls

The Town That Kept Its Nuclear Bunker a Secret for Three Decades

The people of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, helped keep the Greenbrier resort's bunker—designed to hold the entirety of Congress—hidden for 30 years.

by Emily Matchar via Smithsonian on April 9, 2024

Indochina Peace Campaign organizers hanging out in Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda's backyard in Santa Monica, California, in 1974.

Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, Capitol Hill Antiwar Lobbyists

In 1974, after years of grinding war in Vietnam had exhausted most of the antiwar movement, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda came up with a new strategy.

by Michael Koncewicz via Jacobin on March 11, 2024

flickr.com/photos/dalelanham

Playing to the Cameras

The prominence of politicos-turned-pundits is a product of cable news' turn to opinion commentary as a cheap and easy way to meet the needs of 24/7 coverage.

by Kathryn Cramer Brownell via HNN on December 12, 2023

The crime scene. A woman's body lies in the middle of a clearning next to the river, surrounded by coroners and police

Bad Shot, Mary

The mistress of JFK, there was a lot more than wealth, whiteness, and femininity to make Mary Pinchot Meyer a target of murder.

by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Apocalypse Confidential on November 22, 2023

A portrait of Andrew Jackson.

Whiggism Is Still Wrong

Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants to "make hard work cool again." He isn’t the first.

by Sohrab Ahmari via The American Conservative on November 21, 2023

President Nixon at the Orlando, Fla. question-and-answer session where he uttered ‘I am not a crook.’

‘Crook’: When Nixon Said He Wasn’t One, There Was Still a Twist to Come

A president’s infamous protestation 50 years ago during Watergate relied on an Old Norse term for things that take a turn.

by Ben Zimmer via The Wall Street Journal on November 17, 2023

Photo of a young Donald Trump greeting Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2000

Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura’s Shocking Election 25 Years Ago Previewed Trump’s

The former pro wrestler says his surprise election as Minnesota governor paved the way for Donald Trump. Now he looks back “shamefully” on their past ties.

by Frederic J. Frommer via Retropolis on November 3, 2023

“The Washington Family” painting by Edward Savage from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Political Nepo Babies Root Back to America’s Founding

How family political dynasties in America came to be.

by Cassandra A. Good via TIME on October 12, 2023

Have We Learned Nothing?

The comparison between last weekend's Hamas attack and 9/11 is apt.

by David Klion via n+1 on October 10, 2023

Joe Biden holding hands with Black members of Congress.

Black Class Matters

Class conflict undermines assumptions about political solidarity.

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via Hammer & Hope on August 30, 2023

Title page and verso of a 1727 printing of Plutarch's Lives

"Those Noble Qualities": Classical Pseudonyms as Reflections of Divergent Republican Value Systems

Writing under ancient veneers allowed partisans to politicize and weaponize ancient history during the turbulent start of the Federal Republic.

by Shawn David McGhee via Journal of the American Revolution on August 3, 2023

Tweet by Josh Hawley of a quotation he falsely attributes to Patrick Henry.

Senator Josh Hawley Tweeted a Christian Nationalist Quote Falsely Attributed to Patrick Henry

It was actually from a 1950s antisemitic and white supremacist magazine. Who cares?

by Seth Cotlar via Rightlandia on July 6, 2023

Police and bystanders at night.

Do Cartels Exist?

A revisionist view of the drug wars.

by Rachel Nolan via Harper’s on June 20, 2023

Politician depicted as vampire bat.

"The Comic Natural History of the Human Race" (1851)

These caricatures of well-known Philadelphians transpose human heads onto animal forms.

by Hunter Dukes via The Public Domain Review on June 1, 2023

Illustration of Freud emerging from Woodrow Wilson's head.

Should We Psychoanalyze Our Presidents?

Sigmund Freud once applied his Oedipal theory to the leader of the free world.

by Franklin Foer via The Atlantic on May 28, 2023

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