David Frum: “The culture war raged most hotly from the ’70s to the next century’s ’20s. It polarized American society, dividing men from women, rural from urban, religious from secular, Anglo-Americans from more recent immigrant groups. At length, but only after a titanic constitutional struggle, the rural and religious side of the culture imposed its will on the urban and secular side. A decisive victory had been won, or so it seemed.”

“The culture war I’m talking about is the culture war over alcohol prohibition. From the end of Reconstruction to the First World War, probably more state and local elections turned on that one issue than on any other. The long struggle seemingly culminated in 1919, with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment and enactment by Congress of the National Prohibition Act, or the Volstead Act (as it became known). The amendment and the act together outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States and all its subject territories. Many urban and secular Americans experienced those events with the same feeling of doom as pro-choice Americans may feel today after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.”

“Only, it turns out that the Volstead Act was not the end of the story. As Prohibition became a nationwide reality, Americans rapidly changed their mind about the idea. Support for Prohibition declined, then collapsed. Not only was the Volstead Act repealed, in 1933, but the Constitution was further amended so that nobody could ever try such a thing ever again.”

James Barron: “It was a 1968 October Surprise story that might have changed the course of history.”

“Imagine Hubert Humphrey taking office as President in January 1969, not Richard Nixon. We wouldn’t be at the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, to name just one consequence with wide-reaching effects for American democracy.”

From Roll Call and the Iowa Capital Dispatch on January 5, 2021: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told reporters that Vice President Mike Pence wouldn’t be available on January 6 to count the electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election.

Said Grassley: “Well, first of all, I will be — if the Vice President isn’t there and we don’t expect him to be there, I will be presiding over the Senate.”

There’s got to be a bigger story here.

A new Siena College poll finds that 141 presidential scholars rank Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson as the country’s top five presidents.

For the second time, scholars include Donald Trump along with Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce in the bottom five.

“Juneteenth is meant to acknowledge Black emancipation from enslavement, but there’s a risk it could turn into just another day off, defined more by road trips and sales on mattresses,” Axios reports.

“Juneteenth became a federal holiday just last year. This year is the first time it’s been a holiday that anyone has been able to plan for.”

“And it comes during a red-hot summer travel season, and against a backdrop of state-level efforts to state-level efforts to clamp down on teaching about slavery in schools.”

Washington Post: “Before the infamous break-in, there was another. A former DNC official ponders the wiretap that changed his life.”

Edward Luce: “The ironic outcome is nostalgia for the Watergate era. Watergate proved that the American republic could withstand assault by a popular and very effective sitting president. The system worked. January 6 shows that an unpopular former president can wield a veto over the fate of democracy. The irony stems from the fact that declining trust in government began during Watergate and is now at rock bottom. Apart from a couple of interludes during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s and Bill Clinton’s in the 1990s, trust in government to do the right thing some or all of the time has been on the slide since Watergate. It is now at a record low of 20 percent.”

“Part of the cure for today’s partisan mutual loathing would be a display of the admirable objectivity shown by the Watergate committee. But the America that was stunned into forcing Nixon’s resignation seems almost as lost in time as the royal tyranny that it expelled. The past is another country, as the saying goes. America’s present feels like two different nations that are barely on speaking terms.”

The Washington Post has “the untold story of how Martha Mitchell took revenge against her husband.”

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: “Donald Trump not only sought to destroy the electoral system through false claims of voter fraud and unprecedented public intimidation of state election officials, but he also then attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to his duly elected successor, for the first time in American history.”

John Hinckley, the would-be assassin who shot President Ronald Reagan two months after his inauguration in 1981, was deemed by a federal judge on Wednesday to no longer be a “danger to himself or others,” New York magazine reports.

As a result, he will be free of all remaining restrictions by June 15.

“Alfred Baldwin, a former FBI agent who served as the chief eavesdropper and lookout for the Watergate burglars, but then became a key government witness in the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon, died Jan. 15, 2020,” the Washington Post reports.

“Like Watergate conspirator James McCord, whose death in 2017 was not widely reported for two years, Mr. Baldwin did not want his death publicized.”

A must-listen: The “Slow Burn” podcast will return next month with the new season focused on the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Washington Post: Memories of pre-Roe America, from people who were there.

“Harvard University leaders, faculty and staff enslaved more than 70 individuals during the 17th and 18th centuries when slavery was legal in Massachusetts,” the Washington Post reports.

New York Times: “Harvard University is committing $100 million to study and redress its ties to slavery, the university’s president announced Tuesday, and with that money will create an endowed ‘Legacy of Slavery Fund,’ which will continue researching and memorializing that history, working with descendants of Black and Native American people enslaved at Harvard, as well as their broader communities.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “All unpopular presidents look to Harry Truman. President Joe Biden has more reason than most to do so.”

“Not just because Truman won a second term (actually, a first full term), despite being unpopular. Biden should look to Truman because Truman is also the president who symbolizes the difference between contemporary public opinion and historical reputation.”