As Bill Clinton is resurrected by the Democrats, George W. Bush is being erased by the GOP ― as if an entire eight years of American history hadn’t happened.While Clinton stumps for President Obama, Mitt Romney has gone out of his way not to mention the name of the president who came after Clinton and before Obama.Former President Clinton will have a starring role at the Democratic National Convention. Former President George W. Bush won’t even be at the Republican one ― the first time a nationa

BERKELEY ― When the French politician and moral philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville published the first volume of his “Democracy in America” in 1835, he did so because he thought that France was in big trouble and could learn much from America. So one can only wonder what he would have made of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.For Tocqueville, the grab for centralized power by the absolutist Bourbon monarchs, followed by the French Revolution and Napoleon’s Empire, had destroyed

WASHINGTON ― There is no “big idea” easier to pay homage to in principle, or harder to make work in practice, than the peacekeeping role of the United Nations. This is painfully clear in a new memoir by Kofi Annan, its former secretary-general. The latest failure of the U.N. dream was Annan’s mediating mission to Syria. For months, he tried to cajole President Bashar al-Assad into stopping the killing and starting a political transition that would avert civil war. To which he received the standa

Like any sentient person, I was appalled by Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape.” I was shocked by the Limbaugh-ian proportions of his ignorance about the female reproductive system (“in cases of legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”) and remain flabbergasted that he hasn’t caved in to party pressure to quit his Senate campaign.But unlike the many people proclaiming their outrage on Facebook and Twitter, I’m actual

“The originals are not original,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in an essay in which he argues that the idea of originality is not only elusive but ultimately illusory. For there is a sense in which everything comes after something; that everything is always-already part of history and tradition; and that there is no pure beginning. Texts, thoughts, speeches ― even personal identities ― all seem to have precursors, antecedents, forerunners. That the concept of originality is a fairly recent inventi

PARIS ― Some economists believe that this summer could mark the moment when some of the eurozone’s peripheral members may begin to be forced out; others think that such a scenario is inconceivable. All agree that, at least in the short term, a eurozone breakup would be disastrous for jobs and growth.But, because the outcome is unknowable, and depends on politics as much as on economics, let us leave that frightening prospect to one side and look instead at what we know about the underlying perfo

PARIS ― Syria’s most prominent military defector says the key to political transition there is to provide a “safety net” that persuades Alawites they won’t be massacred if they break with President Bashar al-Assad. “My main work is to convince the Alawites that they do not have to commit suicide along with the regime,” said Manaf Tlass, a former general in the Syrian army who left the country in July. He spoke Tuesday at a location in France where he has taken refuge. It was his first in-depth i