Presidents have family drama, like all other people. Hunter Biden is simply the latest example of a family member who has brought negative attention to a president’s administration.
During President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, many Congressional Democrats stood and clapped, but the GOP did not.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Americans are not the first to fret over the potential harm that parties can inflict. But parties can also promote the common interest.
John Fetterman, left, relentlessly ridiculed Mehmet Oz, right, with the label ‘carpetbagger’ during the U.S. Senate campaign, which Fetterman ultimately won.
AP
In the hard-fought contest between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz for the US Senate, Fetterman slammed Oz with charges he was a carpetbagger. That may have helped Fetterman win the race.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Prince Charles, now King Charles, speak at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on July 1, 2017.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
The decision to wage war is among the most important a government can make. How and by whom should such decisions be made? Canadians can learn a lot from other democracies.
A Fetterman campaign billboard on the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border.
Fetterman campaign/Twitter
In Pennsylvania, one Senate candidate is pounding the other for his lack of local roots. A political scientist studied accusations of carpetbagging – and found there is a home field advantage.
Abortion-rights protesters shout slogans after tying green flags to the fence of the White House in Washington, D.C. on July 9, 2022.
AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe
Historians of American religious history explain why the Supreme Court’s recent religious liberty rulings are an example of America’s long struggle to define religious freedom.
Reconstructed slave cabins at James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia.
Stephen P. Hanna
Once owned by James Madison, the Montpelier plantation remains a model for presenting a full depiction of the life of the former president as well as the lives of those he enslaved.
Protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting a whiskey tax during George Washington’s presidency.
Archive Photos/Getty Images
Like today, passions were strong and political discourse was inflamed in late 18th-century America. Angry mobs torched buildings. Virginians drank a toast to George Washington’s speedy death.
Many individuals are rejecting the COVID-19 vaccines for personal reasons.
Mark Felix / AFP via Getty Images
America’s founders accepted the reality of human selfishness. But, they also said people were capable of thinking for the good of the whole, which is necessary for a free society.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, standing at center and facing left just above the eagle, takes the presidential oath of office for the third time in 1941.
FDR Presidential Library and Museum via Flickr
A president’s persona is always a public act. In that way, Trump’s shtick – vulgar man of the people – was not exceptional. And every president has had to invent his version of the role.
A 1975 stamp printed in St. Vincent shows U.S. presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were all vocally pro-inoculation and vaccination.
(Shutterstock)
Three approaches were debated during the Constitutional Convention – election by Congress, selection by state legislatures and a popular election, though that was restricted to white landowning men.
Today’s genuine pessimism about America’s future has very old roots.
Aaron Foster/Getty
Think American democracy is ending? You’re not alone, writes a historian. American leaders have often yielded to despair – as far back as the founding of the republic.
President Donald Trump works on a smartphone, a common tool in his political communication efforts.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Associate Research Professor, Political Science, Co-host of Democracy Works Podcast, Penn State