NYT Campaign Stops: Culture Warriors Don’t Win

OP-EDS & REVIEWS Culture Warriors Don’t Win By Gil Troy, NYT, 4-27-12 Associated Press Ronald Reagan campaigning for governor on Nov. 5, 1966 in Hawthorne, Calif. Mitt Romney’s apparent nomination proves that Republican voters are more pragmatic and centrist than their reputation suggests. The Republican candidates this year fought a classic political battle. Rick Santorum, [...]

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President Barack Obama, Becoming a bully-in-chief

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, The Montreal Gazette, 8-11-11 U.S. President Barack Obama is smart, eloquent and talented, but inexperienced as an executive. While he still needs more management experience, the presidency is not the right place for on-the-job training. Photograph by: Alex Wong, Getty Images The downgrading of America’s credit rating just days [...]

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Obama at 50 Should Have More Faith in America

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, 8-4-11 Barack Obama turns fifty today, August 4th.  Both he and his country appear battered these days, as Obama’s White House recuperates from the bruising debt ceiling showdown and the United States remains stuck combating two wars along with one long-lasting recession.  But the progress Obama and America have [...]

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Obama Should Own His Continuities with the Bush White House

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, 7-10-11 Mr. Troy is Professor of History at McGill University, and the author, most recently, of The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, (OUP) and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents. His other books include: Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady and Morning in America: [...]

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Mark Halpern’s Potty Mouth in Perspective: from the Bully Pulpit to the Public Toilet

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, 6-30-11 On December 23, 1796, right after George Washington published his Farewell Address to the nation, the caustic editor Benjamin Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, published his farewell to America’s first president.  “If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington,” [...]

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US President and Canadian Prime Ministers

US PRESIDENTS AND CANADIAN PRIME MINISTERS: GOOD VIBES, OR NOT By Gil Troy and L. Ian MacDonald Policy Options, March 2011

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Gil Troy: The Nine Lives of Ronald Reagan

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, 2-6-11 Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University. He is the author of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s As we mark the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, the tug of war over his legacy continues.  Reagan’s popular image—and popularity—have fluctuated as wildly as [...]

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It was good to see the last of 2010

By Gil Troy, The Montreal Gazette, 1-4-11 It was the year of leaks, both oil and Wiki, plus seeping support for Obama and unrest in Europe and the Mideast Workers remove oil booms from the beach after reaching the coast of South Pass, south of Venice, Louisiana, as oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead [...]

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Reagan and American Mood: SHAFR.org 30th Anniversary of the 1980 Election Roundtable

30th Anniversary of the 1980 Election Roundtable–An Introduction Society for Historians of Foreign Relations, November 29th, 2010 SHAFR.org is delighted to present its last roundtable of the year.  Thirty years ago this month the United States witnessed one of the most important elections in recent history when Ronald Reagan captured the presidency and ushered in a [...]

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Obama at Midterm – Grading on a Presidential Curve

By Gil Troy, Institute for Research on Public Policy’s Policy Options, Oct. 2010 The United States has traveled a long way from the euphoria of Election Night, 2008 to the crankiness of the 2010 midterm elections. Even President Barack Obama’s most ardent supporters agree that the turnaround in popular support he has experienced has been [...]

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