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Saturday Q&A

Only three sections today, but a pretty substantial current events section and a pretty substantial history section.

And if you are wrestling with yesterday's headline theme still, know that "This Week in Schadenfreude: It Pays to Be Ignorant" was originally "This Week in Schadenfreude: Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?"

Current Events

D.I. in Waterloo, ON, Canada, asks: If Nikki Haley was the only person besides Donald Trump to win a county, how did Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) get more delegates?

(V) & (Z) answer: Because in the Iowa Republican caucuses, delegates are awarded proportionally based on total number of votes. Winning counties, or precincts, or congressional districts is not relevant.

We will also point out that the one county that Haley won (Johnson County), she won by one vote—1,271 to 1,270. Again, not germane to the awarding of delegates, but another reminder that the modern Republican Party is a fully owned subsidiary of Donald John Trump.

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D.G. in Fairfax, VA, asks: I'm not particularly interested in the results of the Iowa caucus, which were known before it started. I'm more interested in how the actual process played out. The reason for the caucus as opposed to simply holding a primary is to allow for speeches and attempts to change people's minds. I feel that's where you could actually draw conclusions about momentum. How many of the voters actually talked to each other instead of at each other? Were there voters who had their minds changed, and if so what was the reasoning? I can't really find information about this.

(V) & (Z) answer: When Democratic caucuses are held in Iowa, there's actual politicking after every round of voting, along with some people changing their votes. Republican "caucuses" in Iowa, by contrast, are little more than glorified primaries. After an initial round of speeches (and even that is in SOME places, not all), Republican voters cast their ballots and that is it.

Of course, the upside to doing it the Republican way is that it's easier to get an accurate count. We still don't really know who won the Democratic caucus in Iowa in 2020.

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W.R. in Tyson's Corner, VA, asks: Now that Vivek Ramaswamy has suspended his "presidential campaign," what happens to the three delegates that he won in the Iowa Republican Primary? Do they stay pledged to him? Could he choose to give them to another candidate like Nikki Haley? Could he release them to follow their conscience and be delegates for whichever candidate they think is best?

(V) & (Z) answer: Because it is Iowa, those delegates are now free agents, and can vote for whatever presidential candidate they wish.

There are 14 states where state law places some limits on delegate voting; usually something like they have to vote for their pledged candidate for one round of balloting before becoming free agents. However, Iowa is not among those 14.

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R.M. in Pensacola, FL, asks: Why do you suppose Nikki Haley is finally starting to attack Donald Trump?

Is it desperation on her part? Does she feel he may be vulnerable? Did she just learn that he is running away with the nomination? Chris Christie was the closest to sorta kinda be the one Republican candidate attacking Trump, and now that he is gone, does she think it's her turn? Something else?

(V) & (Z) answer: We can only come up with one explanation, but we think there's a pretty good chance it's on target: The megadonors backing Haley (like, say, the Koch network) communicated to her that they are interested in an anti-Trump candidate, not a handle-Trump-with-kid-gloves candidate.

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D.S. in Dublin, Ireland , asks: I noticed, in looking at the Republican primary calendar, that Nevada has both a primary and a caucus, with the primary happening first, but only the caucus is awarding delegates for the convention. And Nikki Haley appears to be the only one contesting the primary.

So does she get big press out of winning the primary election? even though she's the only entrant and the prize is nothing?

(V) & (Z) answer: We suspect that just as important as winning the primary, to her, is not losing the caucus. If she were to be trounced by Trump in Nevada, then the game is pretty much up. But if she's not even in contention, she can avoid serious damage, and keep things going until South Carolina.

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Z.C. in Beverly Hills, CA, asks: The Republican primary is down to three candidates with less than 1% of delegates decided. If DeSatan comes in a distant third in New Hampshire and drops out, it could be a two-person race with 98% of the delegates still up for grabs. If I recall correctly, you said Nikki Haley's narrow potential path would require the rest of the field to drop out. If Pudding Fingers drops out after New Hampshire, can you envision a viable path for Haley?

(V) & (Z) answer: No, we really can't.

Her fundamental problem is that the Republicans tend to prefer winner-take-all primaries. So, it's not enough for her to keep it close with Trump; starting soon, she will actually have to WIN states in order to collect any delegates. And there's no indication she can do that. Even if the primaries are reasonably close (say, 55% to 45%), Trump will collect piles of delegates and Haley will collect none.

If this was the Democratic primaries, the story would be different, since the Democrats favor proportional allocation. In that case, Haley could linger in second place for a long time (think Bernie Sanders, 2016), and hope that she either gets some miracle momentum, or that Trump collapses due to his legal problems.

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B.G. in Kalamazoo, MI, asks: You wrote: "The second decision, of course, belongs to [Speaker Mike] Johnson [R-LA]. If the Freedom Caucus does move to vacate, then he can either go down in flames after 3 (or so) months, or he can work with the Democrats to save his bacon while neutering the FCers. This decision would seem to be a no-brainer to us, and yet Johnson's predecessor chose to fall on his sword because he just couldn't stomach reaching across the aisle. In any event, we're about 3 weeks away from yet another imminent shutdown."

I just... I don't understand

Why on earth would any Democrat anywhere vote for Mike Johnson for speaker? Mike Johnson organized an effort to ask the Supreme Court to steal a Presidential election. He is not just bad on policy. He is not just your run of the mill opposition. He literally led a failed coup attempt. Casting a speaker vote for someone who participated in any way in a coup attempt, let alone led one, is in itself a betrayal of the USA; it says on the public record that it's not an uncrossable line. Why would anyone expect Democrats to betray the country?

(V) & (Z) answer: You're right, Democrats might not be open to working with someone like him. That said, governance often requires working with odious partners, whether foreign or domestic. And if the Democrats DID work with Johnson, it wouldn't be for funsies, or to be nice guys and gals. It would be in exchange for heavy-duty concessions.

If Democrats take the position that they will not work with anyone who supported "stop the steal" or the 1/6 insurrection in any way, then bipartisanship is dead for a pretty long time, since that describes a fairly sizable majority of Republicans. Democrats may well take that position, and they may well be right to do it, but it's also a recipe for even more gridlock.

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D.E. in Austin, TX, asks: Can't House members organize a discharge petition to get a bill through the House to address aid to the Ukraine, with a border compromise and, if necessary, the situation in Israel thrown in? Since there would appear to be a clear House majority to go with any such legislation that the Senate puts together, they could force a vote in the House on such a bill?

(V) & (Z) answer: Is it possible? Yes. At the moment, with two seats vacant, 217 votes would be needed.

However, we see at least two problems. The first is that we doubt there are 217 votes for any particular combination of aid packages right now, even if that combination managed to get past the Senate.

The second is that using a discharge petition, particularly in such a high-profile circumstance, is an act of rebellion by members of the majority party against the speaker and against the rest of the party. The Republicans who voted for such a maneuver would infuriate Mike Johnson, and would also be excoriated by the right-wing media for enabling the Democrats, for watering down the Republicans' rather draconian border plans, etc. Given that the current members of the House Republican Conference have not exactly shown themselves to be candidates for Profiles in Courage, Part II, we very much doubt the Democrats could round up enough GOP votes, even if those GOP members were OK with the proposal being put forward.

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P.F. in Fairbanks, AK, asks: I'm failing to see why a judge would side with Donald Trump in an argument that Fani Willis' relationship and nepotism hurt the overall case. Unless I'm missing something, it sounds like she put the man on the case despite him being less senior and experienced than other prosecutors. Shouldn't facing a less experienced person be an actual benefit to Trump? They can't seriously be arguing that the case should be thrown out because the prosecution's team was not the best of the best, can they?

It seems to me that any misconduct on Willis' part could be dealt with in parallel with the case at hand.

(V) & (Z) answer: Unless there are some very damning facts not in evidence (and we don't believe there are), then you are right, this should really have no effect on the case against Trump.

So, why make such a ruckus about it? One explanation is that Trump and his co-defendants are grasping at straws. A second explanation is that Trump is less concerned about the legal angle, and more concerned about giving the MAGA crowd something to be furious about. We suspect both of these explanations are correct.

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D.S. in Boston, MA, asks: Is it possible that Trump could claim incompetent counsel for his appeal of the E. Jean Carroll case, or is that reserved for criminal defendants?

(V) & (Z) answer: He is not able to make that claim, for the very reason you suppose: Incompetent counsel arguments are only available to criminal defendants. That line of argument is based on the Sixth Amendment right for a defendant to "have the assistance of counsel for his defense." In essence, a convicted defendant asserts that their counsel was so bad, they effectively did not have assistance, and so their constitutional rights were violated.

What Trump COULD do, at least in theory, is pursue a malpractice claim. However, that would be a longshot, since it's necessary to prove that, but for errors by counsel, the case would have had a different outcome. "My lawyer failed to file essential paperwork, and so my case was dismissed" is a pretty good, provable basis for a malpractice claim. "My lawyer made the judge cranky a bunch" is not, especially since Alina Habba would say she was acting on Trump's instructions.

Further, even if Trump somehow did succeed in making a malpractice claim stick, he would only be able to recover whatever amount Habba's malpractice insurance is for (usually $1-$3 million), plus maybe some of her assets. If the former president gets hit for tens of millions, that's not much consolation.

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D.K. in New York City, NY, asks: If the Chevron decision is overturned, will that apply to the Justice Department's "scheduling" of narcotics and other drugs? Might marijuana, heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine, be legal under federal law?

Asking for a friend.

(V) & (Z) answer: That would certainly be nice, as it would mean that the annual Electoral-Vote.com crack and dachshunds party could be held out in the open.

The real question here is whether the DoJ is deciding which drugs are legal (by putting them on Schedules III-V), sometimes legal (by putting them on Schedule II), or illegal (by putting them on Schedule I). In other words, if the authority delegated by Congress is wiped out, either all drugs would become legal, or all drugs would become illegal (excepting those drugs that Congress has already passed specific legislation about, like pseudoephedrine).

The unhappy news is that the Controlled Substances Act is clearly written in such a way that any and all drugs are not legal UNTIL they are placed one of the "legal" schedules. So, if all drugs were suddenly unscheduled, they would all be illegal.

Politics

B.J. in Arlington, MA, asks: Is there a state in which the Republican Party has sufficient power and nuttiness (governor, secretary of state, legislature, whatever matters in that state) to ban Joe Biden from the general election ballot, which Biden could otherwise win, and which could be determinative in the election?

(V) & (Z) answer: North Carolina? The Tar Heel State has a Democratic governor in Roy Cooper, but the legislature has a rabid GOP supermajority and can override his decisions.

Georgia would also seem to fit your criteria, except that the leadership there has shown little appetite for these kinds of shenanigans, particularly if they work to the benefit of Donald Trump.

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B.B. in St. Louis, MO, asks: Recent campaign videos of the previous president claim that he has been anointed by God. I seem to recall that the Bible contains warnings about the coming of false messiahs. Could Trump's opponents erode his support with evangelicals by portraying him as the antichrist?

(V) & (Z) answer: Very doubtful. Trump does not particularly match Biblical descriptions of the antichrist. He's not from Israel or the Middle East, he's not waging war against Israel, and he's not Jewish. The Jewish part isn't exactly spelled out in the Bible, but it's implied because ostensibly the Jewish people will accept the antichrist as the Messiah, and they are unlikely to accept a non-Jew for that purpose.

And even if Trump did fit the Biblical description of the antichrist, or of false messiahs, his evangelical supporters have shown great dexterity when it comes to theologizing their way out of such problems. Assuming they were persuaded the antichrist is now among us, they would either slap the label on some prominent liberal, or on Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar.

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D.R. in Massapequa Park, NY, asks: Recently, my brother-in-law said Donald Trump should pick Candace Owens as his running mate. While she is certainly not an unintelligent person, I pointed out that she has no elective or legislative experience, never served a second in the military, was not a high powered CEO, and basically her only claim to fame is really being a young, Black, female bomb thrower for the GOP. So, I wondered, what exactly makes her qualified to be a "heartbeat away" from the presidency and all the responsibility that comes with it? His response was "it would drive liberals crazy"! This leads to my question: Who or what was responsible for "Owning the Libs" becoming the most important thing to the Republican Party?

(V) & (Z) answer: Politician answer: Newt Gingrich. Non-politician answer: Rush Limbaugh. They both had the foresight to see that the Republican Party would be in the minority for an extended period, and that the only way to win elections (outside of very red places) was to whip Republican voters into a frenzy, utilizing the same basic dynamics we see in sports fandom.

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D.R. in Phoenix, AZ, asks: I receive Robert Reich's daily musings via e-mail, and I must say I'm usually in complete alignment with his views. My question is: Is there ever a point where Reich could have made a serious candidate for U.S. House or higher? I'm sure he's too old now. If your answer is "no, never," to what extent is his unfortunate last name part of it?

(V) & (Z) answer: He managed to become a cabinet secretary, which is much more rarified air than becoming a member of the House. So sure, he could have been elected to Congress, particularly in the 1990s. That said, he is from Pennsylvania and is very liberal, so he likely would have needed to run in a very blue district, probably in or near Philadelphia. Thereafter, he might have been able to snag a promotion to the U.S. Senate. After all, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) did it, and the two men are pretty equally liberal on kitchen table issues.

We don't think Reich's last name was any sort of obstacle. It's not his fault, and it's also nowhere near as bad as, say, Hitler or bin Laden. Frank Reich (no relation) has had a long and successful career in the NFL; clearly the name was not an obstacle for him.

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S.G. in Durham, NC, asks: I've been a regular daily reader of your site for more than two decades, so I gather I'm more informed about politics than the average guy. So... why is this week the first time I ever heard of United States SENATOR from New Mexico, Martin Heinrich (D)? I actually had to look him up to make sure it wasn't a joke. Does he make any news in the Senate?

(V) & (Z) answer: Heinrich is not a great public speaker and is not especially telegenic. So, he rarely does national TV hits on shows like Meet the Press, preferring instead to communicate through op-eds (usually in New Mexico newspapers) and his blog. He's also VERY focused on constituent services, largely leaving the issues of national interest to his colleagues.

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G.F. in Manchester, VT, asks: I've read stories about new factories, etc., that are being built around the country, but now the companies that built them are having a hard time fully staffing.

So how about this as a solution: Companies can contact Texas and Florida officials to have them bus immigrants directly to pre-designated drop-off points so that they can be evaluated for work. Any possibility this could work?

(V) & (Z) answer: We don't think so. First of all, the governors of Texas and Florida are interested in creating problems, not solving them. Second, if the White House were to play any role in an arrangement like this, there would be screaming from right-wing (and some left-wing) sources that the administration was prioritizing undocumented immigrants over legal citizens for jobs. The fact that unemployment is very low right now would not help to defuse such carping.

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J.B. in Westwood, MA, asks: Could you explain how the margin of error (MoE) is calculated in polls? Is it simply the square root of the number of participants? Does it allow for any biases in the polling methods?

(V) & (Z) answer: The margin of error just considers statistical variations based on the sample size. If you quadruple the sample size, you cut the margin of error in half. The math is a bit more complicated than you propose, but there are many MoE calculators online, like this one, if you want to tinker around.

MoE does NOT consider methodological errors, like Trump voters refusing to answer the phone or young mothers not being willing to talk for 20 minutes at 7 p.m. on a weekday or many people not having a landline anymore or poor people not having any kind of phone.

History

E.G.G.-C. in Syracuse, NY, asks: My question is about the line drawn on the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which was characterized as going straight to the Pacific Ocean. The problem is that at that time, almost all that land belonged to Mexico. My question is: When exactly did the US start to eye that land? The Mexican-American War took place some 25 years after the compromise, and the shenanigans in Texas not long before the War. I know that there were "fringe" ideas about Mexico (such as those from Aaron Burr), and the Monroe Doctrine. Was the idea to take Mexican territory something that could've been born with the Louisiana Purchase?

(V) & (Z) answer: That land did not belong to the independent nation of Mexico until 1821; prior to that it was a Spanish possession. And the U.S. was not likely to attempt a land grab from Spain, because the Spanish were an important ally and a hedge against British power.

However, Mexico achieved independence at around the same time the U.S. began to harbor ambitions of being a bicoastal power, and an economic superpower. In particular, the U.S. wanted to be able to trade with Asia, since that was essential to economic prosperity then, just as it is now. To trade with Asia, you need western ports, and the then-Mexican territory of California had a lot of them.

So, the U.S. undertook efforts to acquire California starting in the mid-1820s, proposing various financial packages in hopes of interesting the Mexican government. It eventually became clear that would not work, so by the mid-1830s, the U.S. had turned to chicanery, trying to convince California to rebel against Mexico, as Texas had. It also became clear that would not work, and so by the 1840s, there was a general understanding among America's leaders that it would be necessary to provoke a war. And, in 1846, James K. Polk did just that.

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M.C. in Santa Clara, CA, asks: Thanks for the fantastic history lesson about the causes of the Civil War.

Still, my friend Keith reacts: "The cost of the Civil War exceeded the price of buying all slaves (e.g. via eminent domain?) and shipping them out, or setting them free." Not to mention, ahem, the concomitant grotesque bloodshed.

So, were people back then just kinda stupid or dim-witted? Something must have caused them to do something that made so little sense.

And, I thought I would never say this, but: Is Trump sorta right (even if he himself would have never succeeded in negotiating a settlement)?

(V) & (Z) answer: The average price of an enslaved person in 1860 was around $800. Some sources put it a bit higher, but we'll stick with the lower figure to make our argument airtight. There were about 4 million people in bondage in 1860. That means that the total value of the South's human capital was $3,200,000,000 (and that is before we talk about the costs of whatever logistics would be needed to pull off the plan.) The North spent $3,100,000,000 on the Civil War, which is obviously less. Yes, those figures are similar, although keep in mind that $100,000,000 was a LOT of money back then. And again, we're using the lowest figure for the cost of purchase, and also ignoring logistical expenses (not the least of which would have been tracking down all the enslaved people, who Southern plantation owners would have worked very hard to hide).

On top of that, it is an awfully big ask for Congress to lay out that kind of money to avoid a war whose nature is unknown. Before the war, and for several months after it started, most people thought it would be a small dust-up. It wasn't until both sides were in it knee-deep that it became clear what kind of conflict it would be. And by then, it was too late.

In short, both your friend and Donald Trump are at least slightly wrong in theory, and are way wrong in practice. There is no way the Civil War could have been avoided with a massive financial outlay.

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L.M.S. in Harbin, China, asks: I have a historical question regarding Chinese immigrants in the 19th century. The Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882 undoubtedly embodied the anti-Chinese sentiment of that era. Did the Congress not realize that the law is not in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment, which was at that time used by the Chinese people to defend themsevles against the hostility?

(V) & (Z) answer: The Chinese Exclusion Act barred new Chinese immigrants from coming to the United States. As these individuals were not citizens, and were not on American soil, they were not covered by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The primary instigators of the Chinese Exclusion Act, namely Denis Kearney and the Workingmen's Party of California, very much wanted to eject all of the Chinese people already living in the United States (hence the slogan "The Chinese Must Go!"). However, THAT would have been a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and so Congress was not willing to go that far.

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G.T. in Budapest, Hungary, asks: In response to J.P. in Horsham, you wrote: "In the case of [President Grover] Cleveland, he felt he'd been cheated out of a win in 1888, and wanted to right the wrong in 1892." In your opinion, was he really cheated out of a win? There were reports of organized vote-buying and that is certainly contrary to the spirit of free elections, but I'm not sure about contemporary laws forbidding it.

Also, and perhaps more importantly: Did a sizable portion of the electorate consider President Cleveland cheated out of a win and consider Benjamin Harrison an impostor, as is the case now with Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

(V) & (Z) answer: Cleveland was upset because he lost his home state of New York, and with it the presidency, by a small margin (about 1%), and he felt that he had been a victim of not only vote-buying, but also ratfu**ing, most obviously the devastating Murchison letter.

The situation does not parallel today. Cleveland accepted that he had lost; he just thought it was unjust. And his supporters felt the same way. Nobody believed Benjamin Harrison was illegitimate.

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F.S. in Cologne, Germany, asks: Why didn't Republicans abandon Herbert Hoover in 1932? It must have been clear to everybody that he was a bad president and that he would lose reelection. And why did Hoover still receive 39.7% of the votes although most people were far worse off than in 1928? Why did he even run for reelection although his record was absolutely abysmal?

(V) & (Z) answer: First of all, any candidate for either of the two major parties has a floor of about 35%-40%. There are 35%-40% of Americans who will vote for any (D) over any (R), and there are 35%-40% of Americans who will vote for any (R) over any (D).

As to Hoover, there was no polling back then, so the extent of his problems was not as clear as it would be today. Beyond that, he had firm control over the party machinery. And finally, he didn't really and truly become unelectable until the summer of 1932, as the Depression got worse and worse, and when he badly mishandled the march of the Bonus Expeditionary Army. The attack he ordered on those poor World War I veterans happened on July 28, 1932. In other words, by the time Hoover was truly a dead man walking, it was too late for the Republican Party to change candidates.

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G.C. in South Pasadena, CA, asks: Why is it that if someone calls a politician a communist, it's taken as a full-force evil truth, and the politician is subjected to scorn (by the right-wing folks), but when a politician is called a fascist, it seems to fall on deaf ears mostly.

Is this from my myopic point of view, or is something else going on here?

(V) & (Z) answer: First, because Americans have firsthand experience being worried about communist infiltrators, but not really with fascist infiltrators. Second, because conservatives have literally spent the last century turning "communist" into a bugaboo on par with "serial killer" and "child molester." It's been going on for so long that the first conservatives to do it were actually Democrats, like A. Mitchell Palmer, back when the Democrats were the more right-wing party.

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J.H. in Boston, MA, asks: You have recently had multiple mentions of Joe McCarthy and his anti-communist witch hunts and their lasting effects on American society. You wrote that his partisan allies let him get away with it in part because they thought he had the right of it. Which raises the question, to what extent, if any, DID he have the right of it? Obviously his lists included mostly innocent people with constitutionally protected beliefs.

But were there actually Soviet agents hiding throughout society, or American leftists with communist sympathies roped into betraying U.S. interests?

Obviously there were some. Espionage is a staple of modern statecraft I guess, and they did get nuclear secrets, right? But were there more Soviets embedded in the U.S. during the Cold War, than, say, Germans during World War I or World War II, or other countries with U.S. conflicts? Was there any basis in reality for McCarthy's actions?

(V) & (Z) answer: As you point out, espionage is part of modern statecraft. Every first- and second-tier nation spies on every other first- and second- tier nation. At this very moment, somewhere in the U.S. are spies and operatives from China, Russia, the U.K., Iran, Israel, Turkey, etc. And the U.S. has its own spies and operatives in those nations.

Knowing that fact is not a particularly keen insight, and it's all the insight that McCarthy had. He never identified any actual Soviet spies or infiltrators, even though there were plenty of them around. This being the case, he was as "correct" as we would be if we claimed that you, K.C. in St. Augustine (below) and G.C. in South Pasadena (above) are secretly Canadian double agents.

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K.C. in St. Augustine, DeSantisWorld*, asks: You responded to a question about Joe McCarthy: "The lack of resistance to McCarthy can be attributed, primarily, to three things... Second, there were plenty of Republicans who thought he was full of it, but who noticed that he was mostly attacking and ruining liberals, and who were willing to let that process continue. Dwight D. Eisenhower was, more or less, in this second group..."

Could you elaborate on Eisenhower's reasons for not denouncing McCarthy? Eisenhower displayed political courage in other areas, such as the 1957 Civil Rights Act and intervening in Little Rock after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. These actions, no doubt, alienated some Americans. If McCarthy had still been on his witch hunt in Ike's second term, would Ike have taken a stand knowing he wouldn't be up for reelection? Or did that play any part in his decision?

Also, could you please recommend a book on the JFK assassination? Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, by Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, was recommended to me as being factual, but was curious to get your thoughts.

Did you listen to Rob Reiner's podcast Who Killed JFK? I did and it seemed like they relied on a good deal of hearsay and cherry-picking of evidence, but thought parts of it were interesting.

* - Where second place is winning so big, we may not have to play anymore

(V) & (Z) answer: You have answered your own question about Eisenhower. If you examine his presidency, you will find that nearly all of his more shameful acts came before he was reelected in 1956, and nearly all of his more heroic acts came after he no longer had to worry about winning elections. He almost certainly would have denounced McCarthy, if McCarthy was still chugging along as of Jan. 20, 1957.

As to Kennedy assassination books, the standard works, for at least the last 25 years, are the Bugliosi book and Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, by Gerald Posner. (Z) prefers the Posner book, which was recommended to him by noted presidential historian Robert Dallek.

Neither of us listened to the Reiner series. It's very easy to create drama around the JFK assassination based on the evidence you pick (and the evidence you ignore), and the questions you ask. In the end, Rob Reiner knows a lot about making good movies. He knows very little about evaluating historical evidence.

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J.A. in Puerto Armuelles, Panama, asks: Could you give me your opinion of Malcolm X?

I think I can just about manage understanding Martin Luther King Jr. or Louis Farrakhan. And for sure, it's unreasonable to expect Black people to make themselves understood to white people in general or my paltry, pasty ass specifically.

Nonetheless I would like to understand, and understand better.

(V) & (Z) answer: We would say it's fundamentally pretty simple. Malcolm X was part of a tradition of Black thinkers who argued, not without evidence, that Black Americans would never be accepted as equals by white Americans, and that it was up to Black Americans to turn inward and effectively absent themselves from white society. Other folks who thought along these lines, and who you have probably heard of, include W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey. Note that X, DuBois and Garvey did not all think the exact same things, not by any means, but they did all tend to argue that it was up to Black people to fend for themselves.

Over time, Malcolm X realized that his ideas, taken to their logical conclusion—self-segregation, or departure from the United States—were not practical for most Black Americans. At around the same time, Martin Luther King Jr. realized that his generally cooperative/integrationist approach was not always going to pay dividends. So, toward the ends of their respective lives, X moved a bit in a King-ish direction, and King moved a bit in an X-ish direction. Maybe you've seen the famous photo of the day (Mar. 24, 1964) that they met and had a chat?

They planned to meet again, but it did not happen because of X's assassination on Feb. 21, 1965.

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P.W. in Springwater, NY, asks: I'm really curious and was wondering, as academics and students of politics, what's your take on the scholarship and writing of Heather Cox Richardson? I've been receiving her "Letters from an American" daily in my inbox and am intrigued by how she relates what's happening in our country with our country's history, especially the history of the Civil War and pre- and post-Civil War era. Apparently, that's her main area of interest/expertise, and since it's an area of interest/expertise for (Z), I thought you might be familiar with her work and have some thoughts on her as a historian as well as her reflections on today's politics. I had a terrible American History course in high school and didn't take any history courses in college, so I feel that in reading her posts, I'm learning a lot—but is it accurate and insightful? Ironically, because I've always been interested in the "why" of things, although my high school was highly regarded and most of the courses were good, the history courses were superficial at best—all dates and famous people, no background or context.

(V) & (Z) answer: (Z) is indeed familiar with Richardson, and has met her a few times at conferences. Her academic work, and her newsletter, are top notch. Unlike Rob Reiner (see above), she knows how to work with historical evidence.

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R.M. in Manhattan, NY, asks: I just finished reading Rachel Maddow's Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. It details the period of the late 1930s and early 1940s, as Hitler's Nazi party was able to co-opt leading conservatives, including some elected officials, to spread far right propaganda in the United States. Are there other books that tell the story of the U.S. fascist/authoritarian movement through the present day? Are there books that tell a similar story for the far-left (communist/socialist in the traditional sense), detailing potential foreign advancement of those ideals in the U.S., and how that movement got to where it is today?

(V) & (Z) answer: These sorts of broad, narrative works are largely not in favor today, either in the academy or with mass market publishers. Also, some of the works that do exist are political screeds, wherein the author will tell you that the spread of communism is reflected in the elections of Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. Nonsense.

That said, if you want to read about fascism, consider Fascism: A Warning by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, On Fascism: 12 Lessons from American History by Matthew C. MacWilliams, or Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace by former DHS staffer Elizabeth Neumann. The Albright book is the most rigorous; it covers the 20th and 21st centuries. The MacWilliams book is the most readable; it covers all of U.S. history (albeit without a lot of depth). The Neumann book covers the last few decades.

As to communism, socialism and the far left, there's Radicals in America: The U.S. Left Since the Second World War by Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation by Michael Kazin, and The Defiant: Protest Movements in Post-Liberal America by Dawson Barrett. The first book is the most rigorous, but also the driest. The latter book is the most readable, but is written by a True Believer, so tread delicately. The Kazin book is in between those two extremes.

Reader Question of the Week

Here is the question we put before readers last week:

G.S. in Basingstoke, England, UK, asks: Americans of all political stripes will have strong and justified opinions about your greatest ever president—Lincoln, Washington and FDR often occupying the top spots. However, 45 is a relatively small sample size, so I thought I'd ask a far broader question instead: Who is the greatest president you never had? Constitutional eligibility requirements do apply!

And here some of the answers we got in response:

G.Q. in Chicago, IL: Benjamin Franklin. He was one of the smartest Americans that has ever walked among us. He had a mind that was both idealistic and practical. He'd been instrumental in founding the country. We could never have gotten off the ground if he hadn't persuaded France to help us. And he understood better than anyone what a republic called for.

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D.M. in Medical Lake, WA: This one isn't by any considerations remotely close. Alexander Hamilton was the person who was, of all the early patriots, most responsible for success in the establishment of the U.S. Constitution. He was brilliant by all contemporary accounts including those of his enemies John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. He was more than any other person responsible for the creation of the Federalist Party, though he later fell out with John Adams. Our system of banking and government finance were largely his creation. Aaron Burr failed to become POTUS largely due to Hamilton's intervention and machinations, and Hamilton read Burr correctly as dishonorable and an enemy of the country. Hamilton even had a point in common with future presidents in that he "enjoyed" a sexual affair that became public scandal. Samuel Adams, John Marshall, Sam Houston, Adlai Stevenson and John Kerry are the other, but distant, contenders for the honor of being "The Best President We Never Had."

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D.B. in Deer Park, NY: I'll go with Henry Clay here. Since his attitude towards foreign policy progressed considerably after 1812, he almost certainly wouldn't have started a war against Mexico that was purely a land grab. This means that the Confederate states wouldn't have been eyeing all that potential new slave territory and might, just might, have been content with a deal that allowed slavery to remain where it already existed (with the unwritten provision that both sides understood very well, "until such time as it is no longer economically viable").

Recently you have pointed out how extremely difficult it would have been to keep the country intact without a war. But Clay did come closer than anyone else, and from the position of the presidency, he just might have succeeded. In any case, him sparing the country Andrew Jackson's second term and/or James K. Polk's term would have been an improvement.

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J.B. in Hutto, TX: My vote goes to Justin Morrill of Vermont, who served in the House from 1855 to 1867 and the Senate from 1867 to 1898. During his long tenure in the Congress, he successfully passed crucial legislation that transformed America, most famously the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, which created land grant colleges throughout the nation and brought higher education within reach of ordinary Americans for the first time. As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, he proved a mastermind of government fiscal policy. He was one of the men who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which should tell us that he would have worked to uphold the rights of the freedmen of the South after the Civil War. A man of vision combined with common sense, I think he would have been an infinitely better chief executive than most of the nonentities who occupied the White House in the latter part of the 19th Century.

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A.G. in Scranton, PA: Governor Huey Long would have brought leftist populism to the forefront, dragging along with it equality for peoples of color, equity for the poor and lower classes, massive public works, and teams of awesome strong men carrying Thompson submachine guns and shotguns. Seriously, he would have kept up the leftward momentum that we only really had one great chance at in American history, with a small chance again in 2008 that we squandered on a substandard, Republican created healthcare plan. Governor Long was corrupt and used power... poorly, especially as it ended up getting him killed by a man who had felt the wrath of Long's wielding of unchecked power.

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M.W. in Richmond, VA: My "Shoulda Been President" is Eleanor Roosevelt. Smart, compassionate, tough-minded, fearless, progressive, and racially sensitive. Among her accomplishments are: First Chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, First U.S. Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and First Chair of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. At a time when it was not popular to do so, she advocated for expanded roles for women in the workplace, the civil rights of Black and Asian Americans, and the rights of World War II refugees. She broke with tradition by inviting hundreds of Black guests to the White House. When the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) denied the Black singer Marian Anderson the use of Washington's Constitution Hall in 1939, Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest and helped arrange another concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She lobbied behind the scenes to make lynching a federal crime.

She held 348 press conferences during her husband's presidency and placed a ban on male reporters attending the press conferences, effectively forcing newspapers to keep female reporters on staff in order to cover them. Because the Gridiron Club banned women from its annual Gridiron Dinner for journalists, she hosted a competing event for female reporters at the White House, which she called "Gridiron Widows." She supported the Tuskegee Airmen in their successful effort to become the first Black combat pilots. She wrote about her humanitarian concerns in a syndicated newspaper column, titled "My Day," which appeared 6 days a week from 1936 to her death in 1962. Following Pearl Harbor, she spoke out against Japanese-American prejudice, warning against the great hysteria against minority groups. According to Gallup's "Most Admired Man and Woman" Poll, she was the most admired living woman every year between 1948 (the poll's inception) to 1961 (the last poll before her death) except 1951.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman ahead of her times who nevertheless made the most of her times.

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M.D.H. in Coralville, IA: Adlai Stevenson II.

For personal integrity he was comparable to Jimmy Carter. For political skill he was almost in Bill Clinton's class at a time when nobody from his party could plausibly have won. And for prose style, at his best he could come close to Winston Churchill. Had he been born in almost any other decade of the 20th century, he would probably have been a great President.

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S.G. in Newark, NJ: The greatest president we never had? Bobby Kennedy (the first one). It's impossible to imagine how different the world would be if he had not been assassinated and had been elected.

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B.R. in Eatontown, NJ: I think this can only been answered in context—in other words, when considering who was elected in place of this person. With that consideration, I think a very good case can be made for Hubert Humphrey. If he had been elected in 1968 instead of Richard Nixon, there would have two impacts on American life that have continued to affect us ever since (and I find it very hard to decide which is more significant).

The first impact of that election was that the War in Vietnam would have ended then, rather than continuing for another 4+ years. That resulted in over 21,000 additional deaths of Americans, and countless Vietnamese deaths that were completely pointless. And more profoundly, I have always believed that war created divisions in American society that continue to damage us even now. Not least of all, I've believed (being a boomer myself, but one who is deeply frustrated by the fact that the boomers won't let go) that refusal of the Boomer generation to let the mantle pass to the next is directly attributable to those divisions.

The second is that we would not have had Watergate—which I have believed created an atmosphere of cynicism about life in this country, and particularly in politics, that we've never gotten over.

I will note that Humphrey gets the nod over Hilary Clinton for two reasons. First, one of the primary reasons Nixon won was that he campaigned by saying that he had a way to bring an end to the Vietnam War, albeit one that had to be kept secret. Lots of people fell for that ____. Second, I've never been convinced that HRC could have won, regardless of who her opponent was. While in many cases the reasons would be offensive to many of us who read this site regularly, there were an awful lot of people who absolutely hated her.

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H.B. in State College, PA: My nominee for greatest president we never had is George McGovern. In my opinion, the most decent man who ever ran for President.

It was heartbreaking for me when he lost the 1972 election to Nixon, whom we knew even then to have been a scumbag... which the rest of the country apparently didn't realize until the summer of 1974.

There was a club of donors to McGovern's campaign called the Million Member Club. They sent me a membership card for my wallet, which I have carried to this day.

Several years after the election, I had a chance to meet McGovern in person when he spoke at LSU in Baton Rouge. I went up after his speech and asked him to sign my Million Member card, which he did. As he signed it, he joked "Well, if we'd really had a million members, I would have won the election!"

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D.D. in Denver, CO: If Operation Eagle Claw had succeeded, Carter would have been re-elected in a landslide in 1980, and Walter Mondale would have been much better positioned in 1984. So we should have had two terms of President Carter, followed by President Mondale—and maybe even President Ferraro after that?

We'd be living in a much saner country. The Reagan wing of the Republican Party would have been thoroughly discredited, as it deserved, and in turn the nastiness of the Gingrich era would have been confined to a few lunatics. No Reaganomics, no Rehnquist court, no impeachment over a blowjob, no Bush v. Gore, quite possibly no 9/11 and all its horrible sequelae, and most surely no President Trump.

Of course it wouldn't be a utopia, and we'd have plenty of problems to worry about. But America and the world would be immeasurably better off than they are now.

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C.J. in Lowell, MA: As someone who counts political history among their favorite subjects, I have long had a mental list of what I call the "Great Almosts"—those who tried at least a couple of times to become president and/or held many other high offices. Off the top of my head that list would include (and please note this absolutely does not necessarily mean I would support their presidential bids): Rufus King, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Stephen A. Douglas, James Blaine, William Jennings Bryan, Charles Evans Hughes, Bob Dole, Al Gore, John Kerry, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. I concede maybe a bit of recency bias since I included every unsuccessful nominee of the past generation.

My own pick, however, of someone I would have liked to see as president, but who for reasons defying understanding never tried, is New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Several years ago I read a biography of him (I believe the author was Robert McElvane) that really made me appreciate his background, methods, and policy positions. I respected that he governed differently than President Reagan, with whose term he largely overlapped. I also got excited when Bill Clinton mentioned that he would consider Cuomo for the Supreme Court, but unfortunately that never materialized either.

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T.B. in Leon County, FL: An Al Gore presidency (2001-?) would have put the U.S. and the world on a track toward countering the consequences of anthropogenic climate change that we are experiencing only 20 years later (e.g., 2023: warmest year ever). His administration would have responded to pre-9/11 intel differently (due to the stability of successive similarly-minded administrations) which may have prevented the airliner hijackings. He certainly wouldn't have invaded Iraq to avenge perceived wrongs. The consequent missing "dumbing down" of the White House under Bush Jr. may have derailed the future Trump candidacy.

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A.G. in Plano, TX: I would very much like to have seen Howard Dean as president, bringing genuine progressive policy to the nation. Maybe, just maybe, he would have succeeded and the "experiment" in trickle-down economics would have finally gone away forever.

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B.H. in Southborough, MA: In the modern era, Hillary Clinton. Yes, the bar was at ground level as an alternative to Trump, but she had already proved her value as an effective political leader. Apologies for plagiarizing Wikipedia, but as a Yale law graduate, she was consistently listed as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the U.S. She served as First Lady of Arkansas and the U.S., advocated for health care reform (before Obamacare) and advocated for children's health insurance and women's rights. She served as New York Senator from 2001-09. She lost the nomination to Barack Obama in the 2008 election cycle, but settled for Secretary of State from 2009-13, with several notable accomplishments in places like Libya and Iran.

She took the 2016 election cycle too much for granted; she should have visited Wisconsin and gone on Howard Stern, to name just two errors.

She is despised by the right. Benghazi and the email smokescreens were signs that she was a real threat to their power. She stood in for hours under intense congressional questioning, and at the end of the day they had nothing.

She is rumored to be curt and bitchy in person, which probably cost her the election and are traits that would never be attributed to a man, but she is the kind of person I'd want under fire any day of the week.

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J.A. in Monterey, CA: Gregg Popovich. He's intelligent, empathetic, and seemingly sensible on policies (such as on assault rifles). He has a good combination of being comical and calling out stupid behavior, as can be seen in some of his interviews and press conferences. He is humble, as he gave full credit for his Hall-of-Fame induction to his players rather than his abilities. He is adaptable, as after a devastating loss in the NBA Finals in 2013, he reinvented the team's offense to produce an incredibly effective (and beautifully choreographed) offensive system to win the 2014 title. He is the opposite of narcissistic, as when his team lost all of its talent and became talent-challenged in the last few years, he didn't abandon the team (as most Hall-of-Fame-level coaches would) to maintain his career winning percentage, but rather took it as an opportunity to help young players develop into better players. We could use a selfless person who cherishes serving others.

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T.G. in Lee's Summit, MO: D.E. in Lancaster, PA!

Here is the question for next week:

B.B. in Pasadena, CA, asks: I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the why evangelicals could ever support the orange messiah. What I'd like to know, and certainly this is the premiere site for such a question (well, for many, in my mind), is what other "leaders," "despots," "dictators" (and all other similar terms) have "taken in" (hoodwinked?) a religious sect in order to gain power?

Submit your answers to comments@electoral-vote.com with the subject line "False Prophet"!

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