Presidency

The Presidential Political Circus Has Begun

by Richard M. Ebeling May 7, 2019

Like the carnival side shows at the circus, the candidates for the Democratic party nomination — do I even need to name the more than 20 of them? — are all standing in front of their respective campaign tents trying to attract the potential voter onlookers to join them inside, hope for that campaign contribution and support during the ...

Obama’s Forgotten Frauds and Debacles

by James Bovard April 1, 2019

Former President Barack Obama is again busy lecturing Americans on politics. His speeches have contained many snappy lines that would deserve attention if they came from an untainted source. But Obama as president was guilty of many of the things against which he now warns his fellow citizens. Last September, Obama received the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in ...

George H.W. Bush’s Forgotten Debacles and Demagoguery

by James Bovard March 1, 2019

After former President George H.W. Bush died late last year, he was widely hailed as a great leader and patriot. At the National Cathedral funeral service, biographer Jon Meachan declared that Bush was a “twentieth-century Founding Father.” The minister of Bush’s church in Houston compared him to Jesus. Bush’s gentlemanly manners were lauded by many people outraged by President ...

Who Is the Most Qualified to Be President?

by Laurence M. Vance December 13, 2018

Perhaps it was just a coincidence. George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, died at his home on Saturday, November 30, age 94. Just three days later, on Monday, December 3, Joseph “Joe” R. Biden, the nation’s 47th vice president, said he believed that he was the “most qualified person” to be the president of the United ...

Freedom Frauds: No Halo for George H.W. (video)

by James Bovard December 11, 2018

With the recent death of former president George H.W. Bush, there has been an outpouring of praise for his statesmanship and civility. FFF policy advisor James Bovard know that Bush was no Boy Scout. Go to the audio podcast.

The Imperial Presidency Embodies Political and Economic Hubris

by Richard M. Ebeling November 30, 2018

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger coined the term “imperial presidency” in the 1960s. It was meant to indicate that the role of the president of the United States had dramatically grown in the 20th century from being an important but fairly limited position of implementing the laws of the land as specified in the Constitution and congressional legislation to being ...

Presidential Hubris: “Let Me Run the Country”

by Richard M. Ebeling November 16, 2018

The television news cycle and social media have been filled with comments and criticisms concerning the combative exchange of words between the current president and CNN reporter James Acosta during a recent White House press conference. What seemingly received little or no attention were the words that Donald Trump used in describing his role as the president of the ...

The Rise of the American Imperial President

by John W. Whitehead March 8, 2018

“The presidency will survive. The real question is what leads American presidents into the imperial temptation. When the American presidency conceives itself as the appointed savior of a world in which mortal danger requires rapid and incessant deployment of men, weapons, and decisions behind a wall of secrecy, power rushes from Capitol Hill to the White ...

Trump and the Right to #Resist

by James Bovard March 1, 2018

Since Donald Trump’s election, it has become fashionable for his opponents to use a #Resist hashtag on their social media postings. Public demonstrations have become more fashionable than at any time since the Vietnam War. Federal agencies are actively working to thwart the Trump administration; the Obama holdover chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even refused to vacate ...

Donald Trump as Carnival Hawker and His Leftist Enemies

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2017

Politics has a strange influence on people. People who in their daily lives seem to act quite normal are driven into various forms of madness by politics. For instance, I have friends and acquaintances on both the political Right and Left, with whom totally normal conversations and interactions may be had — unless it turns to politics. Donald Trump is ...

Obama’s Legacy and What It Means for a Trump Presidency

by John W. Whitehead January 13, 2017

“This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with ...

The Libertarian Angle: Obama vs Trump

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 11, 2017

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling talk about the executive powers that Obama is bequeathing to Trump. Go to the podcast.