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 It entered the bloodstream somewhere in Asia in the 1340s, killing ruthlessly and abundantly there—in India, Asia Minor, Persia, Syria, and Egypt. Trading routes, including the legendary Silk Road, were its primary arteries. In 1347, it penetrated Europe on 12 ships from the Black Sea, destination Messina in Sicily. The flotilla brought…
by Michael Liss We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists. —Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801 Inauguration Day, 1801. John Adams may have beat it out of town on the 4:00 a.m. stage to Baltimore, but the podium filled with dignitaries, none more impressive than the man taking the Oath of Office. Thomas Jefferson, Poet…
by Michael Liss Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions. There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest… –Alexander Hamilton,…
by Michael Liss My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me. —Benjamin Disraeli John Adams was not the kind of man who easily agreed, and it showed. Nor was he the kind of man who found others agreeable. Few have accomplished so much in life while gaining so little satisfaction from…
by Michael Liss There was a time when we had no political parties. It was brief, like the glow of a firefly on a warm late summer evening, but it occurred. There were no political parties at the time of the American Revolution, or when the newly freed colonies joined in the Articles of Confederation.…
by Michael Liss Let’s talk about voter suppression. Not about whether it’s good or bad or legal or moral (you can get more than enough of that virtually 24/7), but about what practical implications it might have. I have looked at the 35 Presidential Elections from 1880 to 2020 to see how tight they were,…
by Michael Liss The Machine has me in its tentacles. Some algorithm thinks I really want to buy classical sheet music, and it is not going to be discouraged. Another (or, perhaps it is the same) insists that now is the time to invest in toner cartridges, running shoes, dress shirts, and incredibly expensive real…
by Michael Liss Some may belittle politics, but we know, who are engaged in it, that it is where people stand tall. And although I know it has its many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. And if it is on occasions the place of low…
by Michael Liss Adlai Stevenson, in the concession speech he gave after being thoroughly routed by Ike in the 1952 Election, referenced a possibly apocryphal quote by Abraham Lincoln: “He felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt…
by Michael Liss November 6, 1860. Perhaps the worst day in James Buchanan’s political life. His fears, his sympathies and antipathies, the judgment of the public upon an entire career, all converge into a horrible realty. Abraham Lincoln, of the “Black Republican Party,” has been elected President of the United States. Into Buchanan’s hands falls…
by Michael Liss Put a small child in a room with a single marshmallow. Tell him that, if he can wait for five minutes, he gets a second one. Leave the room, and see what he does. Can he sit there, staring at that scrumptious-if-a-tad-rubbery mound of goo and powdered sugar and just fight off…
by Michael Liss There are times where we are simply unable to surpass our elders. “Corrupt” doesn’t capture it. Neither does any other epithet or adjective or modifier you care to couple with corrupt. When it came to ballot stuffing, voter suppression, intimidation, bribes, and just garden variety mendacity, the Election of 1876 had it…
by Michael Liss We are not dead yet. Battered a little, yes. Frustrated, anxious, wondering about our jobs, our neighborhoods, our schools, absolutely. Definitely not dead. It doesn’t mean we aren’t wounded. Last week, an open letter from the Partnership for New York City called on Mayor Bill de Blasio, in very diplomatic but clear terms,…
by Michael Liss It is March of 1944, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt is dying. His physicians, Lieutenant Commander Howard Bruen and Vice-Admiral Ross McIntire, know it, as do a handful of others McIntire brought in. FDR probably knows it as well, no matter how much his doctors may have sugar-coated their findings. He has cardiac…
by Michael Liss On November 11, 2019, I wrote a review of Willful: How We Choose What We Do (Yale University Press, November 2019), by Richard Robb, Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and CEO of the investment firm Christofferson, Robb & Company. He was kind enough to let…
by Michael Liss Had enough of the 2020 election? Take heart, there are just 134 days left until Vote-If-You-Can Tuesday. That’s less time than it took Napoleon to march his Grande Armée into Russia, win several lightning victories, stall out, and then retreat through the brutal winter, with astronomical casualties, all the while inspiring the…
by Michael Liss There is a statue of Daniel Webster in Central Park. It is tucked in at the intersection of West and Bethesda Drives, massive and unmoving, implacable and forbidding. Despite its size, it goes largely unnoticed, except as a meeting point. Just a few hundred feet to the west of Webster is The…
by Michael Liss That Fifties-looking gent to your right is John J. Sparkman (D-Alabama) who was Adlai Stevenson’s running mate in 1952. Sparkman served in Congress for more than 40 years, the last 32 of them in the Senate. While not a star, he was associated with several pieces of important legislation and became Chair…
by Michael Liss I am one of those people who cannot sit still. I wasn’t good at it as a child, and as the decades pass, every indication is that I will never be good at it. I suspect I inherited this from my father, who lacked a single iota of Sitzfleisch, and have passed…
by Michael Liss He is an enigma. He sits up there in his marble chair, set in a Greek temple, literally larger than life, and he defies us to understand him. Many have tried. More than 15,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, to say nothing of countless columns, essays, Masters and Doctoral theses.…