A shattered Democratic incumbent. A rambunctious Republican outsider. An election marred by economic turmoil and the usual destabilising violence in the Middle East. A campaign of contrasts, of relentlessly negative liberals, dismissing their rival as extremist, and conservatives pushing forward …
MeToo was no match for bunga bunga
Italy’s longest-serving post-war premier already had a vision, two decades ago, of how he wished to be memorialised. The cruise-ship-crooner-turned-property-and-media-mogul changed Italian planning law to permit the construction, in the grounds of his mansion, of a giant marble mausoleum. Decorated …
Will Biden be the next Carter?
On the face of it, Joseph Biden Jr and James Carter Jr ruled over two Americas, their terms separated by six administrations and more than four decades. Their futures, too, could not seem more divergent: today, as America’s 46th President …
How Bill Clinton created post-truth America
While Bill Clinton was campaigning to be President in 1992, the singer Gennifer Flowers gave several interviews in which she named him as her long-term lover. Clinton denied it, of course. It was one of the many lies that he …
The Left killed the pro-choice coalition
In 1992, while the ascendant evangelical Right was pushing to roll back abortion rights as part of its “family values” platform, the Democratic party stumbled on a pro-choice message that would not only win the presidency but also define the …