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      There’s rage at this Roe v Wade mess – and those on the left who didn’t see it coming | Emma Brockes

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      There’s rage at this Roe v Wade mess – and those on the left who didn’t see it comingEmma BrockesFrom anti-Hillary Democrats to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who clung on at Supreme Court, unlikely targets are being identified for blame After the initial shock, the blame. On Monday, when news broke of the leaked US supreme court draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, millions of horrified Americans sought emotional release. “I am angry,” said Elizabeth Warren, voice shaking, leading a pack of reporters straight over a flowerbed outside the supreme court. Her face ignited with rage as she reminded them that 69% of Americans are against overturning the abortion legislation. “The Republicans have been working towards this day for decades,” she said. In the background, a man shouted, “You want to dismember children in the womb!”For many of us, that man – the you-want-to-kill-babies guy – and his ilk were not the first target for righteous abuse. It’s hard, in moments of duress, to get much satisfaction from reiterating an existing and long-held revulsion, particularly when its subject is beyond reasonable reach. When considering the rightwing architects of this moment, there was no “what if” in attendance; all the what ifs belonged to the left. Political purists who in 2016 urged Democrats to avoid voting for Hillary Clinton (hi, Susan Sarandon) were the first in line, and social media echoed to the sound of, “We told you this would happen.”Biden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happenedRead moreSacrificing the good in pursuit of the better and winding up with the absolute worst – a dynamic as familiar to British as to American leftwing politics – was, in this moment of horror, a more enraging consideration than flat hatred of the right. From revived outrage at the Bernie bros, it was a quick descent into rage against various champions of the left. “You know who I blame for this?” said a friend. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” The late supreme court justice’s vanity in hanging on to her seat, her overconfidence that Clinton would win, her refusal to listen to warnings from the Obama White House that, should the unthinkable happen and the Republicans regain the presidency, the first casualty would be Roe v Wade – her fundamental enjoyment, one assumed, of being RBG when she could have ceded her seat to an Obama appointee – twisted us up into pretzels. I love Ginsburg, so all this had about it the extra and extremely female zing of self-harm.Oh, and Clinton wasn’t off the hook either. “If she’d bothered to campaign in Michigan,” said another friend sourly, “none of this would’ve happened.” All the terrible, bad-tempered fights of that election flew back up into the air, like a water column after a bomb. The only Republican who came in for similar ire was that idiot Susan Collins, senator from Maine, a supporter of abortion rights who had nonetheless voted in line with her party to confirm both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court. Both had assured her, she said at the time, that they wouldn’t go after Roe v Wade. Shocked! Shocked, she was, this week to discover these were not men of their word.Of course, all this fury was mere displacement for the fundamental truth that rightwing forces were smarter, more organised, disciplined and talented in prosecuting a digestible narrative – “don’t kill babies” – than the fractured and dissembling left. Progressives tried to rally towards concrete solutions. There were things to be done – in the first instance, register to vote. (After less than a year of citizenship, I hadn’t. This weekend, I will). There was the call for fundraising. Celebrities started throwing around $10,000 matching donations to anyone giving to local abortion funds.And both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, as well as senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, hyped the necessity of codifying Roe v Wade in Congress, a move backed by President Biden that would enshrine the right to abortion in federal law irrespective of actions taken by the supreme court. It sounds good, and has the advantage of generating political action. But it is also a long shot, a case of last-resort measures, and too little too late. Earlier this year, Democrats tried to codify Roe, and while it passed the House it failed in the Senate, overcome by a filibuster. (Then “we must end the filibuster”, tweeted Sanders. None of this can happen quickly, if at all.)The fact is that if, as Warren said, the Republicans had been planning this moment for decades, rigging composition of the supreme court with precisely this endgame in mind, there was, irrespective of the scale of public outrage, no immediate way to turn back. In this first week of shock, before anger might become effectively organised, there was only the tiny compensation of the blame spiral.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionElizabeth WarrenUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)WomencommentReuse this content More

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      Presidents eulogize Madeleine Albright at funeral: ‘Freedom had no greater champion’

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      Presidents eulogize Madeleine Albright at funeral: ‘Freedom had no greater champion’US leaders reflect on legacy of US secretary of state as family shared memories at Washington National Cathedral Presidents and dignitaries gathered in Washington on Wednesday to remember Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as US secretary of state, while drawing upon her life’s work to warn of the increasing precariousness of freedom and democracy.Family members and colleagues of Albright shared loving and affectionate memories of her during the funeral service at Washington National Cathedral, while US leaders reflected on her legacy.“Freedom endures against all odds in the face of every aggressor because there are always those who will fight for that freedom,” US president Joe Biden said in his eulogy of Albright, who died of cancer last month at the age of 84. “In the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion than Madeleine Korbel Albright.”Madeleine Albright obituaryRead moreRussia’s war in Ukraine hung heavily over the service, as those who eulogized Albright remembered her denunciation of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion during her final days.In her last opinion piece, for the New York Times, which was published just weeks before her death, Albright wrote: “Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its neighbors happen to be. In the modern era, great countries accept that, and so must Mr. Putin.”For Albright, the right of a country to determine its own destiny was personal. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, Albright’s family fled the country in the face of the Nazi occupation.After enduring the Blitz bombing in London, Albright’s family returned to Czechoslovakia once second world war ended, only to be driven out again amid the rise of communism. Her family then emigrated to the United States aboard a ship called the SS America.Former US president Bill Clinton, who nominated Albright first as US ambassador to the United Nations and then as secretary of state, noted on Wednesday at the funeral that her life was “sort of a microcosm of the late 20th century in Europe and the United States”.“Today we see in Ukraine all too tragically what Madeleine always knew – that the advance of freedom is neither inevitable or permanent. And that in politics, where the lure of power is strong and the temptation to abuse it is often irresistible, there are no permanent victories or defeats,” Clinton said.Albright’s funeral service came two months after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, and the war is now poised to enter a new, potentially more dangerous phase. A series of explosions in the neighboring country of Moldova has raised the threat of a larger regional conflict in eastern Europe.Multiple speakers at the Wednesday’s service, which was attended by more than 1,400 people, referenced Albright’s 2018 book on fascism as they addressed the devastation in Ukraine. In her book Fascism: A Warning, Albright sounded the alarm about the rise of autocratic leaders and the need to protect democratic governments.“She knew better than most – and she warned us in her book on fascism – that yes, it can happen here. And time and courage are of the essence,” said Hillary Clinton, who followed in Albright’s footsteps to become secretary of state, in the Obama administration.“If Madeleine were here with us today, she would also remind us this must be a season of action,” Clinton added.While the US and its allies work frantically to help Ukraine fend off Russian attacks, Biden took a moment to commend Albright’s commitment to the US-led Nato military alliance, saying she had played a key role in ensuring the partnership remained “strong and galvanized, as it is today”.The president said he learned of Albright’s death as he traveled to the Belgian capital Brussels last month to meet with European leaders and discuss their ongoing aid to Ukraine.When he delivered remarks in the Polish capital of Warsaw, days later, there was a “deafening cheer” at the mention of Albright’s name, Biden said.“Her name is still synonymous with America as a force for good in the world,” Biden said on Wednesday. “She always had a knack for explaining to the American people why it mattered to them that people everywhere in the world were struggling to breathe free.”As the world now braces for a potentially lengthy and even bloodier war in Ukraine, Biden is counting on that message of shared democratic values to resonate with the American people.Reflecting upon the loss of his former adviser and longtime friend, Bill Clinton lamented that Albright was not here to continue preaching the importance of freedom across the globe.Clinton said he last spoke to Albright two weeks before she died. Brushing aside questions about her failing health, Albright instead wanted to talk about building a better future for the next generation.“What kind of world are we going to leave to our grandchildren? That question’s kind of up in the air. But not because of Madeleine Albright,” Bill Clinton said, adding: “We love you, Madeleine. We miss you, but I pray to God we never stop hearing you. Just sit on our shoulder and nag us to death until we do the right thing.”TopicsWashington DCUS politicsJoe BidenHillary ClintonBill ClintonBarack ObamanewsReuse this content More

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      Hillary Clinton urges Democrats to ‘do a better job’ of telling voters of successes

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      Hillary Clinton urges Democrats to ‘do a better job’ of telling voters of successesFormer New York senator and secretary of state believes Democrats are holding themselves back by constant introspection Hillary Clinton has called on Democrats “to do a better job” of selling themselves to America’s voters to avoid humiliation in this year’s midterm elections where Republicans are widely expected to perform strongly and likely grab control of Congress.The former Democratic presidential candidate was speaking frankly on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, saying she thought last summer’s chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan was harmful to Joe Biden. The US president’s approval ratings have slumped in recent weeks to the lowest level since he took office.“I don’t think it helped, that is obviously the case,” Clinton, the former New York senator and secretary of state, told host Chuck Todd when asked if she thought Biden’s political troubles started with Afghanistan.“But there are a lot of good accomplishments to be putting up on the board. And the Democrats in office and out need to be doing a better job of making the case.”“The best politics is doing the best job that you can do. And there’s a lot that Democrats can talk about in these upcoming midterms. We’ve got a great story to tell. And we need to get out there and do a better job of telling it.”Clinton believes that Democrats are holding themselves back by constant introspection, which she said was “always the chorus in Democratic party politics.”“Hand wringing is part of the Democratic DNA. That seems to be in style whether we’re in or out of power. We’re in power and there still is hand wringing going on,” she said.“But from my perspective, President Biden is doing a very good job… his handling of Ukraine, passing the American rescue package, the huge infrastructure package.“I’m not quite sure what the disconnect is between the accomplishments of the administration, and this Congress, and the understanding of what’s been done, and the impact it will have on the American public, and some of the polling and the ongoing hand wringing.”Clinton also had criticism for Republicans, whom she said were experiencing “an even greater disconnect” than her own party.Democrats, she said, need to be “standing up to the other side with their craziness and their calls for impunity and nuttiness that we hear coming from them. I don’t think the average American, frankly, wants to be governed by people who live in a totally different reality.”Todd questioned Clinton about Russian president Vladimir Putin, who was hostile towards her when she was Barack Obama’s secretary of state, and whose support for her 2016 presidential opponent Donald Trump, some believe, was partly fueled by his hatred for her.“We are seeing very clearly the threat that he poses, not just to Ukraine, as we can watch every night on our news, but really, to Europe, to democracy, and the global stability that we thought we were building in the last 20 years,” she said.“I would not allow Russia back into the organizations it has been a part of. There is a G20 event later in the year. I would not permit Russia to attend, and if they insisted on literally showing up I would hope there would be a significant, if not total, boycott.”TopicsHillary ClintonUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Hillary Clinton and Democrats settle Steele dossier electoral case for $113,000

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      Hillary Clinton and Democrats settle Steele dossier electoral case for $113,000Federal Election Commission had investigated alleged misreporting of expenditure by campaign during 2016 election Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee have agreed to pay $113,000 to settle a Federal Election Commission investigation into whether they violated campaign finance law by misreporting spending on research that eventually became the infamous Steele dossier.That is according to documents sent on Tuesday to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which had filed an administrative complaint in 2018 accusing the Democrats of misreporting payments made to a law firm during the 2016 campaign to obscure the spending. Trump sues Hillary Clinton, alleging ‘plot’ to rig 2016 election against himRead moreThe Clinton campaign hired Perkins Coie, which then hired Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on Republican candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. But on FEC forms, the Clinton campaign classified the spending as legal services.“By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments” the campaign and DNC “were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the initial complaint had read.The Clinton campaign and DNC had argued that the payments had been described accurately, but agreed, according to the documents, to settle without conceding to avoid further legal costs.The Clinton campaign agreed to a civil penalty of $8,000 and the DNC $105,000, according to a pair of conciliatory agreements that were attached to the letter sent to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation.The documents have not yet been made public and an FEC spokeswoman, Judith Ingram, said the FEC had 30 days after parties are notified about enforcement matters to release them.The Steele dossier was a report compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by Democrats that included salacious allegations about Trump’s conduct in Russia and allegations about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.Documents have shown the FBI invested significant resources attempting to corroborate the dossier and relied substantially on it to obtain surveillance warrants targeting the former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.But since its publication, core aspects of the dossier have been exposed as unsupported and unproven rumors. A special counsel assigned to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation charged one of Steele’s sources with lying to the FBI and charged a cybersecurity lawyer who worked for Clinton’s campaign with lying to the FBI during a 2016 meeting in which he relayed concerns about the Russia-based Alfa Bank.Trump, who has railed against the dossier for years, released a statement celebrating the agreement and once again denouncing the dossier as “a Hoax funded by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign”.Graham Wilson, the lawyer representing the campaign and the DNC, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The letter was first reported by the Washington Examiner. TopicsHillary ClintonDemocratsUS elections 2016US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Madeleine Albright obituary

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      Madeleine Albright obituaryDiplomat and scholar of international relations who served as the first female US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who has died of cancer aged 84, was the first woman to hold the office of secretary of state of the United States. It fell to her to cope with the painful dilemmas presented for the US by the breakup of Yugoslavia and the rise of Islamic opposition in the Middle East.While she fulfilled the role in the administration of President Bill Clinton, she could not take the place that office usually confers as third in succession to the president because she was not a “natural born citizen” of the US. Like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, secretaries of state in the Nixon and Carter administrations, she had been a refugee from Europe. Like them also, Albright came to the job not via business or politics but through an academic background in the study of international relations.Like Brzezinski, her professor at Columbia University, she was the daughter of a diplomat. Her father, Josef Korbel, took refuge from the communist government of his native Czechoslovakia, becoming a professor at the University of Denver. She was brought up a Roman Catholic and became an Anglican after her marriage, but when Albright became secretary of state, she received letters telling her that her parents were Jewish, and a Washington Post journalist, Michael Dobbs, after painstaking research, convinced her that this might be true. This caused a good deal of comment, some of it critical of her having concealed her ancestry. The truth seems to be that she was genuinely ignorant of her Jewish heritage.She concluded that in the Czechoslovakia of the 1930s, where Jews were often seen by Czechs as part of the German minority, her parents, Josef and his wife, Anna (nee Spieglová), thought she would have a safer life if she were seen to be Czech. Three of her grandparents subsequently died in Nazi concentration camps.Eldest of three children, she was born Marie Jana Korbelová in Prague. Her family took refuge from the Nazis in Switzerland, where she was educated at the Préalpina Institut pour Jeunes Filles on Lake Geneva. Madeleine was a French version of her Czech name.During the second world war, her family moved to London, which became the headquarters of the Czech government in exile, and Madeleine was brought up first in Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill, then in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, and Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Later, the Korbels returned to Prague, but in 1948, when the communists took over there, they moved to the US.In 1957 she went to Wellesley College, near Boston, one of the elite women’s colleges. There she became an American citizen. When working a summer vacation shift at the Denver Post, she met a scion of one of the most powerful American newspaper dynasties of the time, Joseph Albright, descendant of the founder of the Chicago Tribune. They married in 1959.If Madeleine had been born with a silver spoon, Joe Albright’s spoons were of the rarest platinum. His family was at the heart of American business, political and social life. At different times his relatives owned the Tribune, the Washington Times-Herald, the New York Daily News and Long Island’s Newsday, and they traded properties with William Randolph Hearst. Madeleine Albright took a master’s degree, then a doctorate in international relations at Columbia University, New York, where Brzezinski was one of her teachers. From 1976 to 1978 she worked as a legislative assistant to Senator Ed Muskie, a Democrat, of Maine. In 1978 she was recruited by Brzezinski to do congressional liaison on the national security staff at the Carter White House. After Jimmy Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980, she went to the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, where she undertook a study of the new politics of eastern Europe.In 1981, when her husband left her, Albright threw herself into the academic, political, social and fundraising worlds in Washington. In 1982 she began to teach at Georgetown University, and she worked on the election campaign staffs of Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic candidate for vice-president in 1984, and of Michael Dukakis, presidential candidate in 1988.Albright, with her considerable expertise in both domestic and international politics, and her ability to speak several foreign languages, was a natural choice for Clinton, when he was elected president in 1992, to choose as US ambassador at the United Nations. There she soon demonstrated charm and competence, occasionally tarnished by a certain proneness to accident. She miscalculated badly when she advised that Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian nationalist leader, would cave in after brief bombing during the Kosovo crisis.More seriously for her reputation, when she was asked on NBC television by the journalist Lesley Stahl about the alleged death of half a million children as a result of sanctions imposed on Iraq, Albright responded that “we think the price is worth it”. The remark portrayed her as hardbitten, which was far from the case. The sanctions policy had been in place long before the Clinton administration, but the comment was not forgotten.By the time of the Clinton administration, a female secretary of state was, if not exactly an idea whose time had come, at least not unthinkable, if the woman were well known and well liked in the Washington Democratic establishment. It is said that Clinton asked Albright if she was happy as ambassador to the UN; she replied that she was, but that she would rather be secretary of state. Clinton appointed her in 1997, at the beginning of his second term.When George W Bush was elected president in 2000, Albright slipped back comfortably into her role as a popular member of the establishment, greatly in demand as a speaker at conferences. She founded the Albright Group, to give political advice to corporate giants such as Coca-Cola, Merck and the insurance behemoth Marsh and McLennan, as well as a private equity firm, Albright Capital Management. In 2003 she joined the board of the New York Stock Exchange, and twice in 2006 she was invited to the White House to advise Bush. In the 2008 election she was in the Democratic camp as an adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign for the presidency, and again in 2016 – she told the Guardian: “I think she would have been a remarkable president”.In 2012, when she published Prague Winter, partly an account of the politics of central Europe in the run-up to the second world war, partly an account of her discovery that she was Jewish, reviewers and readers seemed much more interested in how she could not have known that she was Jewish than in her political thought or career. She was awarded the presidential medal of freedom by Barack Obama later that year.She is survived by her three daughters, Anne, Alice and Katherine, and six grandchildren. Madeleine Albright, diplomat and political adviser, born 15 May 1937; died 23 March 2022 TopicsUS politicsUS foreign policyBill ClintonHillary ClintonobituariesReuse this content More

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      Top 10 books about US presidents | Claude A Clegg III

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      Top 10 books about US presidentsFrom the anguish of Lincoln to the showbiz of Reagan and Obama’s introspection, these books show the power and helplessness of America’s commanders-in-chief The US presidency was supposed to be something different, something novel, compared with the fossilised monarchical rule that it supplanted after the American revolution. Born of Enlightenment theory, settler colonialism and 18th-century warfare, the US constitution gave the chief executive primarily an enforcement role, with the authority to lead armed forces in the event of foreign encroachment or domestic unrest but stripped of the capacity to legislate or issue judicial decisions. The architects of the new republic meant for the president to preside over a citizenry well-endowed with rights, not to rule over cowed subjects.Chief executives from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan have been sorely tested by both the responsibilities and the limitations of the country’s highest, loneliest office. Through civil war, economic catastrophes, foreign misadventures, social upheavals and plagues, the presidency has endured, but it – and the 45 men who have occupied the job – has been moulded and often humbled by the promise and perils of the office.Is the US presidency – indeed, American democracy – equal to the dire challenges of the 21st century? One could certainly argue that it isn’t, based on the ongoing bungling of the Covid-19 response, the horrifying (and presidentially inspired) insurrection of 6 January 2021 and the glacially slow and fickle efforts to address everything from climate change to widening social inequality. If the founding fathers meant to circumscribe the power of the presidency out of a well-founded fear of kingly abuses, then they would surely comprehend the creeping threat that authoritarianism and political extremism present to the US system of government today. Nevertheless, they probably could not have guessed that the hard lessons that they had learned about the fragility of democracy would be so fiercely resisted or blithely ignored more than two centuries after they beseeched a patrician general from the Virginia countryside to preside over their fledgling experiment in government by the people.Of the many works that I have found useful in thinking about the history of the US presidency and for writing my newest book, The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama, these 10 have been among the most helpful. They are a mix of biographies, memoirs and reportage which, taken together, represent some of the best writings by and about the small group of powerful people who have occupied the White House.1. Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar (2017)Dunbar’s important book is less a biography of George Washington, Martha Washington, or Ona Judge, the runaway enslaved woman whom the first couple made such extraordinary efforts to recapture, than a look into the power and privilege of a slaveholding elite forcing its way through a new republic rhetorically committed to liberty. The relentless pursuit of Judge by the Washingtons after her bold flight from the new US capital in Philadelphia is expertly told by Dunbar.2. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed (2008)This history of overlapping, intertwined families vivifies the world around Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, while skilfully making more legible the travails and aspirations of the enslaved people on his storied estate at Monticello. The decades-long relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of the Black women he owned and who bore several of his children, occupies the core of the book, but Gordon-Reed manages to craft a complicated and often contradictory history that extends far beyond the tangle of race, gender, and status that marked the Jeffersons and the Hemingses’ commingled journey through US history.3. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)This book follows the intersecting biographical tributaries of the powerful, ambitious men whom Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president, was able to steer toward the rushing river of his own turbulent civil war presidency. Lincoln as political strategist and savvy tactician is the frame that Goodwin points up most dramatically. But the book also succeeds at conveying Lincoln as a beleaguered and empathic head of state whose mettle is tried time and again by those around him and news from the battlefield.4. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant (1885-1886)Rightly considered by many historians and literary critics as among the best of presidential autobiographies, this book was completed a generation after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox as Grant succumbed to a slow strangulation by throat cancer in the 1880s. The memoirs provide a vantage point on the nation’s bloodiest and most defining conflict that only a soldier elemental to the war and its aftermath could offer.5. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (2001)As the best biographical volume on America’s 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, Morris’s book draws bold-coloured portraits of outsized historical figures, with equally knowing shades of nuance and frailty. Morris has the contextual eye of the historian and sets scenes that are alive and convincing. He also conveys mood and meaning as well as any novelist.6. Franklin D Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 by William Leuchtenburg (1963)Dated, frayed, and surpassed by newer research and more eloquent storytellers, Leuchtenburg’s volume on the first two presidential terms of Franklin Roosevelt still stands the test of time as a scholarly, well-researched, and jargon-free narration of arguably the most consequential presidency of the 20th century. It is the tale of the rise of the liberal welfare state against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the gathering clouds of world war. Leuchtenburg tells the story well and sets the standard for future researchers.7. The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore White (1961)White’s fascinating chronicle of the 1960 presidential race is the starting point of quality, book-length journalistic coverage of modern American politics. Writing in the moment, White had an eye for discerning the essential character of men such as John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon who sought the country’s highest office, even as the media ecosystem of his day made such discernment more difficult to achieve.8. Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years by Haynes Johnson (1991)Johnson captures the zeitgeist of the 1980s by juxtaposing the countervailing forces of American optimism – or the desperate need of many Americans to again believe in their scandal-wracked government – against the greed, corruption, militarism and debt that threatened to unmask the soothing myths of American exceptionalism. At the centre of Johnson’s story is a self-made man, an actor by training and temperament who through force of will, theatrics – and a good dose of luck – led the country through domestic and external perils whose ramifications are still being felt today.Top 10 books about the Roman empire | Greg WoolfRead more9. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (1995)Of Obama’s autobiographical writings, this one provides the best understanding of his origins and burgeoning sense of self. His early and more frank ruminations on race are present here, and the book is not encumbered by the exigencies of political campaigning. At once a memoir, travelogue and deeply introspec­tive meditation, it is a fluent self-study of his efforts to reconcile himself with his eclectic lineage and to discover his place and pur­pose in the world.10. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (2010)The essential volume on the 2008 presidential primaries and general election. Heilemann and Halperin had generous access to many of the historical players – including Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin – and their staffs. It is a fast-paced, even breathless read, and anyone who paid even casual attention at the time to the historic events chronicled here will recognise its richly drawn characters, plotlines and twists of fate.
      The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama by Claude A Clegg III is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. To help the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from the Guardian bookshop. Delivery charges may apply.
      TopicsHistory booksTop 10sPolitics booksUS politicsAbraham LincolnFranklin D RooseveltJohn F KennedyRichard NixonfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Hillary Clinton’s victory speech – and others that were never heard

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      Hillary Clinton’s victory speech – and others that were never heard The defeated 2016 candidate has read aloud what she would have said in victory – joining a cast of thwarted speechmakers It was one of the most significant branching points in recent history – and at least one artefact of the way things might have been still exists.On Wednesday the Today show in the US released a video of Hillary Clinton reading the speech she would have given if she had beaten Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Clinton, who is giving a course in “the power of resilience” with the online education company Masterclass, teared up as she read aloud from her speech. She said reading it entailed “facing one of my most public defeats head-on”.To those who viewed the election of Trump as an epoch-defining catastrophe, the excerpt was an agonising glimpse of an alternative future. Clinton said: “Fundamentally, this election challenged us to decide what it means to be an American in the 21st century. And by reaching for unity, decency and what President Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’, we met that challenge.”She reflected on the significance of what her election as the first female US president would have meant. “I’ve met women who were born before women had the right to vote. They’ve been waiting a hundred years for tonight. I’ve met little boys and girls who didn’t understand why a woman has never been president before. Now they know, and the world knows, that in America every boy and every girl can grow up to be whatever they dream – even president of the United States.”Clinton grew emotional as she read a passage about her mother, who died in 2011. She said: “I dream of going up to her, and sitting down next to her, taking her into my arms and saying: ‘Look at me. Listen to me. You will survive. You will have a good family of your own. And three children. And as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up and become the president of the United States.”Clinton’s speech, which she said she had never previously read aloud, enters a canon of speeches never given – for reasons that were variously a relief, a disappointment or a matter of ongoing political dispute. Here are some other examples of the genre.‘Whatever terrors lie in wait for us all’: Queen Elizabeth II’s speech for the outbreak of nuclear war, 1983Written by civil servants during one of the most tense periods of the cold war, and released in 2013 under the 30-year rule.“The horrors of war could not have seemed more remote as my family and I shared our Christmas joy with the growing family of the Commonwealth. Now, this madness of war is once more spreading through the world and our brave country must again prepare itself to survive against great odds …“I have never forgotten the sorrow and the pride I felt as my sister and I huddled around the nursery wireless set listening to my father’s [George VI’s] inspiring words on that fateful day in 1939 [at the start of the second world war]. Not for a single moment did I imagine that this solemn and awful duty would one day fall to me.“But whatever terrors lie in wait for us all, the qualities that have helped to keep our freedom intact twice already during this sad century will once more be our strength … As we strive together to fight off this new evil, let us pray for our country and men of goodwill wherever they may be. God bless you all.”‘Epic men of flesh and blood’: Richard Nixon’s ‘in event of moon disaster’ speech, 1969Written by the speechwriter William Safire in case the crew of Apollo 11 were marooned on the surface of the moon, and unearthed in the Nixon archive in 1999. The document directs Nixon to telephone “the widows-to-be” before making the speech and suggests that a clergyman should “adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to ‘the deepest of the deep’”.“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice …“In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.“Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”‘A nation reborn’: Alex Salmond’s speech for a yes vote in the Scottish independence referendum, 2014Released by the former SNP leader to a university for research in 2015.“In the early hours of this morning, Scotland voted yes. We are a nation reborn. The community of this realm has spoken. Scotland shall be independent once again. To those who voted no, I extend an immediate hand of friendship …“To our friends and families across these isles waking to our new democracy, we say this: know that, in Scotland, you will always have your closest friend, greatest ally and most steadfast partner …“This morning, I want every person – yes voters, no voters, everyone in this proud and ancient nation – to pause, reflect upon and remember this greatest day in Scotland’s history.“We did this. We made it happen. We believed. We trusted ourselves and trusted each other. A country reborn. A democracy reclaimed. We reach towards the future.”‘We are not waiting to lose before we get our act together’: David Miliband’s speech for the Labour leadership election, 2010Obtained by the Guardian in 2011. Miliband is said to have recited the text to his wife in the back of the car on their drive home from party conference, where his brother Ed had prevailed.“My parents devoted themselves to building a family on unconditional love and support. It was a warm household in which we were encouraged to think for ourselves; to argue; to make up our own minds. Haven’t I learned that in the last few months? …“Only four Labour leaders have ever been elected prime minister. Out of 14. Reflect on that. Many good men … lots of hard work … but only four have led us to victory …“This leadership election, the new members, the new councillors, shows something is stirring. Something inspiring. We are not waiting to lose three times before we get our act together.”‘He’s no longer Alaska’s “first dude”’: Sarah Palin’s victory speech, 2008Written by the Republican vice-presidential candidate’s speechwriter Matthew Scully, and leaked in 2009. Palin also prepared a concession speech for the event of defeat but was stopped from delivering it by the presidential candidate John McCain’s team.“It’s been just 68 days since that afternoon in Dayton, Ohio, when Senator McCain introduced me as his running mate. He is truly the maverick. He took a chance on me. I will always be grateful for that.“It will be the honour of a lifetime to work him as vice-president of the United States. And I pledge to govern with integrity, and goodwill, and clear conviction, and a servant’s heart …“It’s been quite a journey these past 69 days. We were ready, in defeat, to return to a place and a life we love. And I said to my husband, Todd, that it’s not a step down when he’s no longer Alaska’s ‘first dude’. He will now be the first guy ever to become the ‘second dude’.”‘Our landings have failed’: Dwight Eisenhower’s D-day defeat speech, 1944Handwritten by the Supreme Allied Commander the night before the Normandy invasion and then put in his wallet. Now in the Eisenhower Library.“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops.“My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available.“The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.”TopicsHillary ClintonUS elections 2016US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      After a lifetime in the background, Huma Abedin steps forward | Podcast

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      As Hillary Clinton’s most trusted aide, it was her job to stay out of view. Even when her husband Anthony Weiner’s scandalous behaviour dragged her into the spotlight, she mostly stayed silent. In this interview, Huma Abedin explains why she is ready to tell her own story, in a new memoir that sheds remarkable light on what it cost her to become a public figure against her will

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      When Huma Abedin joined Hillary Clinton’s team in the White House as an intern in 1996, she could not have imagined she would still be working for the same boss, as her most trusted and intimate aide, a quarter of a century later. But that is far from the most surprising aspect of Abedin’s story. In this episode, she talks to Nosheen Iqbal about the extraordinary upbringing that took her from Kalamazoo in Michigan to Saudi Arabia, and what it meant to be the Muslim daughter of an Indian father and a Pakistani mother working in Washington. She reflects on the privileges and costs of working at the centre of political power at such a young age, always having to choose between family and friends, and the job that turned into a vocation. And she talks frankly about her marriage to Anthony Weiner, whose scandalous and ultimately criminal behaviour made her a household name against her will. “I never wanted to be the story, or be part of the story. I didn’t even want to be in the picture,” she says. “So to be elevated in this way … yes, shame is the word.” Throughout all of the crises that arose from Weiner’s behaviour – up to and including a huge and arguably terminal blow to Clinton’s campaign for the presidency – Abedin either stayed silent or spoke in brief, carefully constructed statements, even as she found herself hounded by the paparazzi or splashed across the front pages. Now she has written a memoir – and, she says, she has found huge strength in telling her story in her own words. “I know I have been judged; I know I will continue to be judged,” she says. “But it feels amazing, I have to say.” • Read an extract from the book “If Hillary Clinton loses this election, it will be because of you and me” here. • Huma Abedin’s memoir, Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds, is published by Simon & Schuster at £20. To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. Archive: NBC; CBS; Clinton Library; CNN; ABC; AP; VOA News; C-Span More