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In a candid interview with Stephen Colbert, Vice President Joe Biden gave a moving testimony about his faith amid the pain of recently losing his son to brain cancer. In the past, both Colbert and Biden have been open about their Catholic faith, but in this moment both men found themselves reflecting upon how they have struggled with their faith after losing loved ones very close to them.

The post Seeing in the dark: Catholic theology and Søren Kierkegaard appeared first on OUPblog.

In the spring of 2014, after Russia annexed the Crimea, the German chancellor Angela Merkel took to the air. She jetted some 20,000 kms around the globe, visiting nine cities in seven days – from Washington to Moscow, from Paris to Kiev – holding one meeting after another with key world leaders in the hope of brokering a peace-deal. Haunted by the centenary of 1914, Merkel saw summitry as the only way to stop Europe from ‘sleepwalking’ into another great war.

The post When to talk and when to walk appeared first on OUPblog.

Announced on January 13th by President Obama in his eighth and final State of the Union Address, the multi-billion dollar project will be led by US Vice President, Joe Biden, who has a vested interest in seeing new cures for cancer. Using genomics to cure cancer is being held on par with JFK’s desire in 1961 to land men on the moon.

The post The Cancer Moonshot appeared first on OUPblog.

Franklin D. Roosevelt broke the two-term precedent set by George Washington by running for and winning a third and fourth term. Pressure for limiting terms followed FDR’s remarkable record. In 1951 the Twenty-Second constitutional amendment was ratified stating: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…” Accordingly, reelected Presidents must then govern knowing they cannot run again.

The post From Carter to Clinton: Selecting presidential nominees in the modern era appeared first on OUPblog.

On the eve of this historic election, our friends at SurveyU (a Ypulse advertiser and research sponsor at the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup East) have just released data on college students and early and absentee voting. If anyone is still... Read the rest of this post

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com.  In the article below he reflects on last week’s vice-presidential debate. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

Obama supporters were surprised that Sarah Palin didn’t trip up in her debate with Joe Biden; but they nevertheless thought that she was incoherent through most of it. Palin’s supporters were thrilled that she came back after multiple setbacks with her interviews with Katie Couric with a slam dunk. We have become so divided as a nation that we can’t even agree on which is night and which is day.

The reason, I think, is because Sarah Palin did not answer Gwen Ifill’s questions. When a student refuses to take a test, we cannot meaningfully compare her performance with another.

Right at the outset of the debate, Palin announced her contempt for the debate format: “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.” Palin’s opponents cried foul, but her supporters applauded her contempt of the media and Washington’s rules.

Here was Gwen Ifill’s first question: “The House of Representatives this week passed a bill, a big bailout bill … was this the worst of Washington or the best of Washington that we saw play out?”

This was Palin’s first non-answer: “You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America’s economy, is go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, “How are you feeling about the economy?”

Biden did a classic debate pivot, but he did try to answer the question, saying “I think it’s neither the best or worst of Washington, but it’s evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we’ve ever had.”

Consider Ifil’s third question: “Governor, please if you want to respond to what he (Biden) said about Sen. McCain’s comments about health care?” and Palin’s petulant non-reply “I would like to respond about the tax increases.”

Or Ifill’s seventh question: “What promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you’re not going to be able to keep?” Sarah Palin tried her hand at the pivot trick too: “I want to go back to the energy plan, though, because this is — this is an important one that Barack Obama, he voted for in ‘05.” By pivot I mean, tangent.

In her closing statement, Palin again made clear where her priorities were. “I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they’ve just heard. I’d rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did.” Speak to the American people she did, but answer these tough questions she did not.

We should stop pretending that debates really happen in American politics; even the four organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates no longer qualify. Masquerading for debate, all we get are solipsistic televised addresses delivered to us in alternating segments. Last Thursday, Gwen Ifill was little more than a two-minute time keeper with no control of how Biden and especially Palin used their time.

Let us remember why we care for debates. Because meaningful exchanges between alternative voices stand at the heart of democracy. By controlling for question, we can see how candidates measure up to each other substantively. Instead, American politics today is deluged by speeches and not debates, asymmetric communications in which politicians talk past each other rather than to each other.

Avoiding the questions and eschewing a debate may be good for a candidate but it is bad for democracy. And we should not allow Sarah Palin or any other candidate to tell us that democracy is only about connecting with people and not also debating the issues. Only demagogues insist on trading directly with the people without the watchful eye - Palin calls it the “filter” - of the media or a dissenting interlocutor. Democracy is best served by reciprocity and deliberation, not one-sided assertions to one’s base with no follow-up questions.

While Palin connected last Thursday, she hardly debated. As supporter Michelle Malkin revealingly put it: “She was warm, fresh, funny, confident, energetic, personable, relentless, and on message.” Seven ayes for style, an aye for substance, and nay to debate. The nays have it.

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On April 18, 2008, Douglas W. Kmiec was denied Communion at a Catholic Mass in Westlake, California. Ironically, Kmiec had been invited by a Catholic business group to give a dinner address on the Bishop’s teaching of “Faithful Citizenship.” Kmiec had served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel for both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. But now, he found himself rejected by his faith—simply for endorsing the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama. In a new book just released by Overlook, Can a Catholic Support Him?, Kmiec offers us a thoughtful explanation of his rationale. He addresses the difficult questions at the core of his decision: Can a Catholic support a Pro-Choice candidate? Can there be a reverence for life that embraces a larger set of values? How does a Catholic citizen balance his obligations to the Church and to community? In asking these questions, he challenges those whose partisan interests are provoking a false rift between the Catholic Church and the Democratic party. This inquiry could hardly be more timely. Catholics have been on the side of the top vote-getter in the last nine presidential elections, and make up roughly one fourth of the electorate. This provocative book—at once a legal and religious treatise and a sincere and personal journey of faith—will be an irreplaceable contribution to the conversation, in 2008 and beyond.

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com.  In the article below he Palin’s nomination. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

John McCain’s campaign has turned a 7 point deficit into a 4 point lead according to the new USA Today/Gallup poll. This post-convention bump did not come from McCain’s acceptance speech, which only received an “excellent” rating from 15% of those polled, compared to the 35% Obama received. The bump came from Sarah Palin. Here is the poll’s most important result: before the convention, Republicans by 47%-39% were less enthusiastic than usual about voting. Now, they are more enthusiastic by 60%-19%.

The new McCain campaign message is that change is about reforming Washington, aided in no small part by a Number 2 that has developed/created quite a reputation for reform. This new configuration appears to be overshadowing Obama’s definition that change requires a change in party control of the White House, because it has tapped into the anti-Washington sentiment felt among the Republican base.

Palin is running not as the back-up plan (as most vp candidates have), but as right-hand woman, and this is why Barack Obama took the risk of appearing unpresidential today by attacking Sara Palin directly himself. But Obama’s response - “You can’t just make stuff up” - sounded like a petulant kid crying foul rather than an effective counter-punch. As the campaign fumbles for a working riposte, it will become clear that the answer was always right before their eyes. By an ironic twist of fate, Hillary Clinton, though unsuccessful in her own presidential bid, has become the queen and kingmaker. Sarah Palin would not have risen from political obscurity into national prominence but for the schism generated by Clinton’s candidacy within the Democratic party. Yet Joe Biden cannot perform the role of attack dog as viscerally as he would if Palin were a man, and so ironically, Clinton will have to be dispatched to play this traditionally vice-presidential role. The question is whether the media will give Clinton the time of day now that the primary season is decidedly over.

Safe for the October surprise still to be discovered, the tectonics of the match-up are now mostly settled. With the VPs now selected, two previously toss-up states have moved into the “leaning” category: PA has moved in Obama’s direction because of Biden, and MO has moved in McCain’s direction because of Palin. The only vice-presidential debate sceduled on Oct 2 will be more critical than the first of three presidential debates on September 26. There’s been a lot of talk of Gallup polls conducted immediately after the conventions only getting it right fifty percent of the time, but less acknowledged is the fact that by the first week of October - the week the vp candidates shall debate - these polls have gotten it right almost every time since 1952. On October 2, Biden and Palin will have their one chance to get it right for their respective campaigns.

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com.  In the article below he looks at Senator Barack Obama. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

The talk of town these days is that Senator Barack Obama is either just too cerebral, or refreshingly so.

Assessing the Senator’s weak performance at the Saddleback Faith Forum, Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post, “Obama was fluent, cool and cerebral — the qualities that made Adlai Stevenson interesting but did not make him president. ” Yet to others, cerebral is good. “Obama’s cool, cerebral style may be just what we need,” wrote Eleanor Clift of Newsweek.

It has occurred to me that people who agree or disagree with my thesis about The Anti-intellectual Presidency have tended to be divided on the question of whether or not a president’s political judgment should be based on intellection or intuition. This division may appear to some to map crudely along partisan lines: some liberals and Democrats tend to value reliance on the intellect; some conservatives and Republicans prioritize instinct. I think there is more agreement than meets the eye.

Insofar as there is a partisan disagreement, populist Republicans are probably right that as a general political rule, visceral trumps cerebral. The Obama campaign is starting to recognize this, with their choice of vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden, someone who speaks with passion and sometimes, apparently, without much prior thought.

But I don’t think many people are against intellection as a method for decision-making. It is surely a strawman argument that President Bush does no thinking and that Karl Rove was the brain behind his decisions. The key is that Bush pulls off the semblance of intellectual diffidence, even though he must do a lot of thinking behind the scenes. Like others have said of President Dwight Eisenhower, President Bush has mastered the highest political art that conceals art itself.

Now, there is still an argument to be made for judgment to be based on intuition rather than intellection, but it is a weak one. “Go with your gut” may be a familiar refrain, but even if intuition is less error-prone than intellection, there is one reason that recommends against its excessive use. Intuition is non-falsifiable. No one can prove what he feels in his or her gut. So when President Bush told us that he looked into Vladamir Putin’s eyes and saw a soul, we could only take his word for it that he saw what he saw. We couldn’t test the claim; we couldn’t even debate it. This can’t be what democracy is about, because democracy is conducted with the deliberation of public reasons, not the unilateral assertion of private emotions.

If I am correct, then no one disagrees with the importance of intellection as a decision-making method, even as there is disagreement on the political utility of projecting or hiding such intellection. The disagreement is about the image, but we can scarcely deny the importance of the process of intellection. Because they have failed to make this distinction between image and process, those who disagree with the appearance of intellection have also wrongly concluded that the process of intellection should have no place in leadership.

Anti-intellectualism is politically powerful, but it is in the end self-defeating. Suppose I feel in my gut that intellection is key to decision-making. How will someone who disagrees with my gut instinct prove my intuition wrong? Only by argument, debate, intellection.

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