“Lucianne Goldberg, a colorful, conservative literary agent who played a pivotal role in the scandal that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, died on Wednesday at her home in Weehawken, N.J.,” the New York Times reports.
“It was Ms. Goldberg who advised Linda Tripp, a Pentagon aide, to record her conversations with her young co-worker Monica Lewinsky, who as a White House intern had an affair with President Bill Clinton.”
“Ashton Carter, an academic physicist who later climbed the leadership ranks at the Pentagon, culminating in two years as secretary of defense under President Barack Obama, a position he used to further open the military to women and transgender service members, died on Monday in Boston,” the New York Times reports.
Washington Post: “Growing up in the 1930s, Daniel Smith would listen to stories from his father, as young boys often do. He was not supposed to hear these stories — they were meant for his older siblings, not for a child as young as 5 or 6 — but after dinner on Saturday evenings he would sneak out of bed and listen to accounts of the ‘whipping and crying post,’ of the lynching tree and the wagon wheel.”
“These were brutally vivid stories of bondage, for his father had been born into slavery in Virginia during the Civil War and had toiled as a child laborer before making his way north to Connecticut, where the Smiths were among the only African Americans in their town.”
“Mr. Smith, who was 90 when he died Oct. 19 at a hospital in Washington, was one of the last remaining children of enslaved Black Americans, and a rare direct link to slavery in the United States.”
“The country’s largest online source of JFK assassination records is suing President Joe Biden and the National Archives to force the federal government to release all remaining documents related to the most mysterious murder of a U.S. president nearly 60 years ago,” NBC News reports.
Edward Luce: “A key sign of a fading power is its currency losing value. Britain, like ancient Rome, could tell you a thing or two about that. By this yardstick America is close to an imperial peak. The euro is too fragmented, and China’s yuan too restricted, to threaten King Dollar’s primacy. Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme. Yet political science tells us that America is more divided than at any point since the eve of its civil war in the 1850s. Could it be defying the laws of historical gravity — a failing state that outshines its rivals?”
“The answer is yes, for the time being. A nation can be both rich and ungovernable for long periods. The last country anyone would compare to America is Belgium, which has been dubbed the richest “failed state” in the world. Yet US politics looks more like Belgium’s every day.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio (D), who spent 15 years in the U.S. House before he became his state’s governor in 1990, pushing through one of the strongest gun-control laws in the country but also an unprecedented tax hike that drove him from office after a single term, died on Sunday, the Washington Post reports.
Richard Haass: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. Those words are apocryphally attributed to the Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, referring to the rapid collapse of tsarist Russia just over 100 years ago. If he had actually said those words, Lenin might have added that there are also decades when centuries happen.”
“The world is in the midst of one such decade. As with other historical hinges, the danger today stems from a sharp decline in world order. But more than at any other recent moment, that decline threatens to become especially steep, owing to a confluence of old and new threats that have begun to intersect at a moment the United States is ill positioned to contend with them.”
“Americans are remembering 9/11 with moments of silence, readings of victims’ names, volunteer work and other tributes 21 years after the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil,” the AP reports.
“Victims’ relatives and dignitaries will convene Sunday at the places where hijacked jets crashed on Sept. 11, 2001 — the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.”
“Other communities around the country are marking the day with candlelight vigils, interfaith services and other commemorations. Some Americans are joining in volunteer projects on a day that is federally recognized as both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.”
Tevi Troy: “The controversy surrounding the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago is not going away anytime soon. As more details come out, we know one thing for sure: If we are going to have investigations of presidents after their time in office, we are going to see more controversy about prosecutorial tactics in the years ahead.”
“In thinking about how to engage in these investigations, history, as always, is a helpful guide, as investigating an administration even after the president has left office has actually happened many times.”
Axios: Former leaders have been jailed or charged all over the world.
“Europe’s worst drought in years has pushed the mighty river Danube to one of its lowest levels in almost a century, exposing the hulks of dozens of explosives-laden German warships sunk during World War Two near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo,” Reuters reports.
This looks interesting: A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik.
The author is quoted in the New York Times on the parallels to Donald Trump possibly seeking another term after defeat: “Unlike Donald Trump, Grover Cleveland largely stayed out of the public eye after losing re-election in 1888, rarely spoke in public, and was deeply hesitant about running for another term.”
“The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all. Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our union, and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history….This primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”
— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), in her concession speech.
“This is a wonderful result for America, and a complete rebuke of the Unselect Committee of political Hacks and Thugs. Liz Cheney should be ashamed of herself, the way she acted, and her spiteful, sanctimonious words and actions towards others. Now she can finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion where, I am sure, she will be much happier than she is right now.”
— Donald Trump, reacting to Cheney’s loss.
Leonard Steinhorn: “When Donald Trump poached Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign catchphrase ‘Let’s Make America Great Again,’ it was not just the slogan but the meaning behind it that bonded the two Republican campaigns. What it embodies is less an ideology or even a conservative worldview than a deep yearning and determination to restore an idealized version of 1950s America that many Republicans believe has been lost. For the last half-century, that idea has informed much of what the GOP has come to represent.”
“In reality, however, the 1950s were great only for some Americans. Restoring that America — as many Republicans are attempting to do in places where they wield political power — would hurt almost everyone else.”
In the 1830s, President Andrew Jackson — whom Donald Trump has repeatedly said he admires — threatened to hang his vice president, John C. Calhoun, the Washington Post reports.
Just published: Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches that Would Have Rewritten History by Jeff Nussbaum.
“From Richard Nixon’s refusal to resign the presidency to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 acceptance of it; from Dwight Eisenhower’s apology for the failure of the D-Day invasion, to Emperor Hirohito’s apology for his role in World War II.”
New Yorker writer Ken Auletta has a new biography about Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie executive and sexual predator, but he tells the New York Times the most evil person he ever met was Roy Cohn: “He was the worst human being I’ve ever met. No one even close.”
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter quietly celebrated their 76th wedding anniversary, “a milestone that is so rare that the U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t keep statistics on how many couples make it that far,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“Six decades after the historic trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief engineers of the Holocaust, a new Israeli documentary series has delivered a dramatic coda: the boastful confessions of the Nazi war criminal, in his own voice,” the New York Times reports.
“The hours of old tape recordings, which had been denied to Israeli prosecutors at the time of Eichmann’s trial.”
“Eichmann went to the gallows insisting that he was a mere functionary following orders, denying responsibility for the crimes of which he had been found guilty.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.