Michael is an attorney in New York, and the creator of Syncopated Politics, a blog focusing on the intersection of history and politics (with occasional side-trips to Supreme Court rulings, economic conferences, films, and opera). He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University (Political Science) and Fordham University Law School. He is fortunate enough to have married brilliantly and has two endlessly fascinating children, about whom he talks far too much. Email: mlissnyc [at] gmail.com
by Michael Liss We are now on opposite sides of the moral universe. —Joseph Buckingham, journalist and Massachusetts State Senator, speaking of his once esteemed friend, Daniel Webster. What a wonderful quote. Thirty years of amicable relations destroyed in the course of a three-hour speech. March 7, 1850. Senator Daniel Webster taking his leave of…
by Michael Liss The principles of Jefferson are the definition and axioms of free society…. All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all…
by Michael Liss But they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid…. (Micah 4-4) Ah, those figs and vines. George Washington liked this sentiment so much that he used it or a variant at least 50 times in his correspondence. It meant…
by Michael Liss Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and…
by Michael Liss The optimistic yet somewhat dyspeptic-looking gentleman to your right (quite appropriately to your right) is Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft, a/k/a “Mr. Republican.” Senator Taft was the son of former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft, a devoted former member of Herbert Hoover’s staff, and an Isolationist who hinted that FDR…
by Michael Liss If you don’t like people, you hadn’t ought to be in politics at all, and Henry talked about the common people but I don’t think he liked them… —Harry S. Truman to Merle Miller, in Plain Speaking. Truman wasn’t the most diplomatic of men, particularly when he’d had a couple of bourbons,…
by Michael Liss Our Government is made up of the people. You are the Government. I am only your hired servant. I am the Chief Executive of the greatest nation in the world, the highest honor that can ever come to a man on earth. But I am the servant of the people of the…
by Michael Liss I have here in my hand a list of 205 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy. —Joseph McCarthy, February 9, 1950 Seventy-four years later, that phrase, from Senator…
by Michael Liss I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. —Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 Did we need to have a…
by Michael Liss January 1, 2024. Happy New Year! Just eleven months and five shopping days before Election 2024. Whether you find it comforting that 2024 also happens to contain an extra day might be the best marker of how Political Seasonal Affective Disorder has impacted you. Personally, I haven’t been sleeping particularly well. The…
by Michael Liss The broken-down jalopy that was Hubert Humphrey’s campaign wheezed its way out of Chicago and headed…anywhere but there. The Convention was an utter disaster. The only “bump” in the polls was a shove backwards, and Humphrey seemed to have nothing with which to shove back. He had no coherent message on the…
by Michael Liss My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. —Edward M. Kennedy, St.…
by Michael Liss There was a sense everywhere, in 1968, that things were giving. That man had not merely lost control of his history, but might never regain it. —Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man Last month, I wrote about Eugene McCarthy’s Vietnam-based primary challenge to Lyndon Baines Johnson’s reelection campaign,…
by Michael Liss Some Presidencies just come apart: The men occupying the office are objectively unable to manage the chaos around them. Herbert Hoover’s might be thought of as in this category. James Buchanan’s as well. Perhaps Jimmy Carter’s. Others, like Richard Nixon’s, die of self-harm, unmourned. Still others end in “fatigue”—their party, or the…
by Michael Liss Damp and clammy. Last week was the 49th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation. Go back to your half-forgotten copy of Woodward and Bernstein’s The Final Days, or John Dean’s Blind Ambition, or Teddy White’s Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon, turn pages, browse a bit, and see if you don’t…
by Michael Liss It has become a disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of the judiciary. …[W]e do not mistake this plainly heartfelt disagreement for disparagement. It is important that the public not be misled either. Any such misperception would be…
by Michael Liss On their part they have retired into the Judiciary as a stronghold. There the remains of Federalism are to be preserved and fed from the treasury, and from that battery all the works of Republicanism are to be beaten down and erased. —Thomas Jefferson to John Dickenson, December 19, 1801 So frustrating, so…
by Michael Liss November 1800. In the Presidential rematch between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson we have a clear loser, but not yet a winner. John Adams will be returning home. Thomas Jefferson, thanks to a bizarre tie in the Electoral College with his erstwhile running mate, Aaron Burr, will have to wait for the…
by Michael Liss Let us try before we die to make some sense of life. We’re neither pure nor wise nor good; we’ll do the best we know; we’ll build our house and chop our wood and make our garden grow. —From Candide, Music by Leonard Bernstein, Lyrics by Richard Wilbur On page 184 of…
by Michael Liss My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have…