ArcaMax

Twenty years ago, former U.S. Transportation Secretary, President of the Red Cross and future North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole was a decidedly long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination -- an honor her husband, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole had won four years earlier, only to lose in the general election to ...Read more

Let's repeat it together three times: Preprimary polls testing would-be presidential nominees have all the permanence of numbers written with a stick in the wet sand at the ocean's edge just before the high tide comes in.

Recent history confirms the unreliability of such polls. In October 2015, the respected Washington Post-ABC News Poll showed...Read more

"History never looks like history when you are living through it" wrote John Gardner. "It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable."

Forty-five years after President Richard Nixon faced certain impeachment by the House of Representatives and Nixon, confronting an overwhelming Senate vote to convict him, resigned his ...Read more

Years ago, when the great American socialist Norman Thomas was speaking at the University of Virginia, he was cross-examined by a self-satisfied undergraduate who charged that Thomas' call for universal health insurance, federal civil rights laws and federal aid to education were all backed by the U.S. Communist Party. Thomas, a man of great ...Read more

Then-Sen. John F Kennedy wrote admiringly in his 1955 book, "Profiles in Courage," about Republican U.S. Sen. Edmund G. Ross of Kansas. In 1868, in a decision Ross knew would end his political career, he broke with his party to vote against the impeachment of then-President Andrew Johnson, the Tennessee Democrat who had succeeded the martyred ...Read more

Back when Richard Nixon was president, a Washington saloon five minutes' walk from the White House named the Class Reunion was the go-to watering hole where press, politicians and real people could rub and bend elbows. To be candid, I was a regular at "the CR," as it was called, but frankly went there more for the uniquely bipartisan ...Read more

The final results of the 1980 presidential election between the Democratic President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan are rightly recorded as a landslide Republican victory. Carter carried just six states: his native Georgia; his running mate's home state of Minnesota; Rhode Island; Maryland; ...Read more

Presidential debates -- even those featuring 10 or more candidates well over a year before Election Day -- can tell us much about those self-confident enough to offer themselves as the nation's next commander in chief.

For example, eight years ago, the candidates of the out party, running to challenge then-White House incumbent Democrat ...Read more

It approaches a year since Sen. John McCain departed these earthly precincts. He is rightly missed for his principled leadership, for his maverick ways and for his -- now increasingly rare -- ability to reach out and collaborate effectively with senators across the partisan divide. I miss all those qualities, but I miss John McCain, too, for his...Read more

Listening to debates among presidential primary candidates invariably reminds me of the 1974 Democratic primary for New York governor. To set the scene: In November of 1973, Republican Nelson Rockefeller, four times elected chief executive of the Empire State who would later be chosen by President Gerald R. Ford to become the nation's 41st vice ...Read more

It is time to remind ourselves of the Four Stages of Political Defeat and whether the losing side -- in this case, the Democrats who suffered an unexpected and stinging rebuke in 2016 -- will be able to recover and compete.

Because political parties are composed of human beings, when a party loses a big election, there is an understandable ...Read more

Our vote for president is the most "personal" vote we Americans get to cast. We're far more likely to base our choice for the U.S. House or the Senate on issues -- such as health care costs, immigration or the environment -- than we are our presidential choice. In a presidential campaign, we voters are beneficiaries or victims of an information ...Read more