Time Stands Still

Mad Men, SPOILERS.
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This week's episode, "The Grown-Ups," is the one that will be shown in history classes deep into the future when professors want their students to understand the pivotal nature of this particular week in U.S. history, when our fresh young President was assassinated and the man accused of the crime was himself erased just a few days later.

What Mad Men did so successfully with their extensive use of archival television broadcast footage, and the backdrop of the epic story built around Dick Whitman's exhausting quest to be the best Don Draper he can be, was to contextualize the footage so we viewers could both experience what first nationwide trauma shared over mass media felt like as well as understand why it was the turning point, the end of the 1950's, the moment with all its unanswered questions that continue to haunt our nation to this day.

Kennedy's assassination puts the world in a tailspin, with all of the characters glued to the TV to try and make sense of what has happened. Back then there was no such thing as channel surfing, mainly just sitting on one of the three network channels with whichever newscaster(s) you preferred. There was no mosaic reality of current media choices, no multitudes of cable channels or infinite Internet space, no amateur video footage of planes crashing into buildings showing up scant hours after the disaster -- even the Zapruder film is yet to be developed in a film lab. We relied on the trusted newscasters, many of which had earned our trust as part of Edward Murrow's crack WWII reporting troupe, to interpret for us in black and white, replete with vertical roll, nothing so tethered as today's digital reliability. A world a-jitter, hanging on by a thread.

This was certainly the moment Mad Men has been building towards since the pilot, per the mid-century anthropological theme that is the show's foundation. Presidential assassination is perhaps the most taboo of homicides, as it not only affects individuals and families like all other murders but, in cases like Kennedy and Lincoln, can change a nation's fate. While it's an axiom of drama that true character is revealed under pressure, Mad Men shows how this impossibly momentous trauma causes several characters to make long-simmering, life-changing decisions. Veils are lifted, scales fall from eyes. Authority is ignored -- after all, as Pete points out, if we can't protect the most wanted man in America from vigilante justice while under police protection, then there is no functioning system.

What's interesting is how those making these decisions do so by connecting with a partner, while other characters do not so much change as remain boxed in.

We see a new Betty, still processing the forced revelation of her husband's terminal duplicity, now seeing the world with an adult's skepticism rather than the childish moods of the past. She no longer cares what Don knows or finds out: "He's been lying to me for years." Film director Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune, Barfly) in his first Mad Men engagement delivers a Vertigo-like moment for Betty, a vision made more dreamy by the dissolve that leads into it, as she emerges from the powder room at the end of Roger's daughter's wedding and walks towards two men at once, Don and Henry with their backs to each other, and up until she takes her husband's arm we're not exactly sure who she'll choose to leave with. The real decision comes after Oswald's assassination by Jack Ruby, which jolts her out of her chair to cry, "What the hell is going on?!?" and drives her to Henry's promising arms, as much a reaction to Don's refrain, "It's all going to be okay."

These were the two repeated refrains from the episode, beginning with Don's spooky turn around a corner in the office, all the telephones suddenly ringing and the main room empty as employees gather around Harry's television. "What's going on?" he says but quickly gets the picture. And while he's the one taking on the expected daddy role by claiming everything with be fine throughout the show, it's Peggy who has the last repetition, referring to the time they have to redo the AquaNet ad before shooting, now too reminiscent of the assassination scene to be broadcast.

Pete is the other rebel, joining with Trudi in what now appears to be a smart and solid partnership where she agrees with him that the system is broken, both in the government and at Sterling Cooper. While Pete is odious in so many other ways, he's actually the most forward-looking executive at the company, but is dealing to a corporate loss to Ken Cosgrove, ironically referred to by Pete as "Ken and his haircut," just as JFK's detractors would say America elected the haircut, not the man.

Meanwhile Don is increasingly cut off from all humanity, whether powerless at work to hire a quality Art Director due to Lane's budgeting edicts, shorn of his soul-mate elementary school teacher, estranged from Betty due to his tangle of dishonesties, unable to connect with Roger at the wedding thanks to his previous resentments. Roger is also finding himself isolated, with his young wife acting childish and denying him a grown-up partner, reaching out instead to Joan who now lives on the show's narrative margins, she the most capable adult of all.

The episode begins with Pete asleep and ends with Don anesthetizing himself yet again, having come to the office with no other place to go on the sudden National Day of Mourning. Pete wakes up over the course of the episode but Don ends it hitting the bottle, sticking with his dream state. Don finds Peggy also at the office and the two of them are kindred spirits, both alone in their own ways, survivors who can take the events of the week in greater stride than others due to their own traumatic experiences, but Don is still unable to make a complete connection. He's too full of grief from Betty's declaration of no longer loving him, too isolated by the role he's built for himself in terminal pursuit of the American Dream. Peggy goes off to watch the funeral in Bert's office while Don returns to the shadows that are the dominant visual for him this week, once again trapped visually in a doorframe, reaching for the bottle. It's obvious by now that Don is an alcoholic, and that it's as much a trap as his adopted identity, company and marriage.

The rebels, the ones more alive now, are in cells of two, a foreshadowing of the 1960's political cells to come -- the ones committed, sometimes violently, to creating change. While the Beatles will be important culturally should the next season pick up in 1964, it's five more years until the next big hits, when both Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy fall from assassin bullets within two months of each other, by which time the more festering trauma of the Vietnam War will be tearing our nation apart.

The question for the season finale is whether we'll see Don Draper somehow rising to the occasion and pulling back together the threads of his life at home and at work, as he's done with varying degrees of success in each of the previous two seasons. Is the change creator Matthew Weiner has touted all season is a permanent trajectory or simply a more sophisticated form of standard television series machinations? Will Betty discover Henry to be a fraud and return home to Don? Will Joan return as Office Manager and Sal as Art Director? Will Pete someone get over on Ken and take the top account position? Will Peggy and Don unite to become a team again?

From the very beginning the big vision and big promise has been depicting the decade of greatest, most rapid change in modern American history, at least since the Civil War one hundred years earlier. If, as Weiner has said, Mad Men is a show about "not getting what you want," then the potential for real dramatic and potentially structural change must be met. Especially the week after so convincingly depicting the historical earthquake that began on November 22, 1963 at 12:30pm CST in Dallas, Texas.

We'll all be watching.

Anniversary

Nettertainment friend DeRosaWorld is promising thirty count 'em thirty JFK assassination facts in 30 days, one for each day in November. I'm guessing it won't take the whole thirty to make the case for conspiracy rather than lone gunman, but follow for yourself.

This is particularly timely as the final two episodes of this Mad Men season hurtle towards that fateful day of November 22, 1963.

Today's fact has to do with Lee Harvey Oswald's contract with the American embassy during his extended stay in Russia...

Final Words

I don't have much to add to these select eulogies for Teddy Kennedy. It'll be a long time before we see another funeral for a Senator with the kind of bipartisan, heartfelt, buoyant words that were spoken on Saturday.

I never expected to feel so warm towards Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT):

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And our President, who certainly owes a large part of his nomination and subsequent victory to the late Sen. Kennedy, delivers for Teddy:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More of 'em here. R.I.P., Teddy. You ultimately earned it.

Friday Night Stories

A beautiful story about Victoria Reggie Kennedy, new widow of Sen. Edward Kennedy, and the positive effect he had on the last eighteen years of his life.

The freakiest, hauntingest story of the year.

The heretofore untold story of enhanced interrogation techniques:


Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

Last Man Out

Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-MA) has died of brain cancer at age 77 and with him goes the last of the famed, ill-fated, targeted Kennedy brothers: Joe in WWII, John in Dallas, Bobby here in Los Angeles. Teddy hadn't grown up as the smartest and he certainly had his personal failings, but as one of only two Senators in U.S. history to be elected nine (9) times -- the other being Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) -- and arguably the most successful legislator in U.S. history, this loss feels unexpectedly as large as that of his brothers.

Whereas their Presidencies, if completed and won, might have better rode the changing world of their times than those who took their place and had a more powerful immediate impact than that of a Senator, Teddy's record for sponsored legislation has profoundly modernized and humanized this country.

I like this line from the NY Times piece:

As James Sterling Young, the director of a Kennedy Oral History Project at the University of Virginia, put it: “Most people grow up and go into politics. The Kennedys go into politics and then they grow up.”

Key legislation:

He led the fight for the 18-year-old vote, the abolition of the draft, deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, and the post-Watergate campaign finance legislation. He was deeply involved in renewals of the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing law of 1968. He helped establish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He built federal support for community health care centers, increased cancer research financing and helped create the Meals on Wheels program. He was a major proponent of a health and nutrition program for pregnant women and infants.

When Republicans took over the Senate in 1981, Mr. Kennedy requested the ranking minority position on the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, asserting that the issues before the labor and welfare panel would be more important during the Reagan years...

...His most notable focus was civil rights, “still the unfinished business of America,” he often said. In 1982, he led a successful fight to defeat the Reagan administration’s effort to weaken the Voting Rights Act.

In one of those bipartisan alliances that were hallmarks of his legislative successes, Mr. Kennedy worked with Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, to secure passage of the voting rights measure, and Mr. Dole got most of the credit.

Perhaps his greatest success on civil rights came in 1990 with passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which required employers and public facilities to make “reasonable accommodation” for the disabled. When the law was finally passed, Mr. Kennedy and others told how their views on the bill had been shaped by having relatives with disabilities. Mr. Kennedy cited his mentally disabled sister, Rosemary, and his son who had lost a leg to cancer.

Mr. Kennedy was one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s strongest allies in their failed 1994 effort to enact national health insurance, a measure the senator had been pushing, in one form or another, since 1969.

But he kept pushing incremental reforms, and in 1997, teaming with Senator Hatch, Mr. Kennedy helped enact a landmark health care program for children in low-income families, a program now known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-Chip.

He led efforts to increase aid for higher education and win passage of Mr. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. He pushed for increases in the federal minimum wage. He helped win enactment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, one of the largest expansions of government health aid ever.

Yep, he even worked with President George W. Bush. Dedicated to doing his job, even with political opponents, if he thought it was for the better of the American people. And Kennedy was known for his friendships across the aisle, most notably with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), with whom he shared what appears to be his final piece of legislation, should it become law.

A fitting epitaph, from Norm Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute conservative think tank:

“If his father, Joe, had surveyed, from an early age up to the time of his death, all of his children, his sons in particular, and asked to rank them on talents, effectiveness, likelihood to have an impact on the world, Ted would have been a very poor fourth. Joe, John, Bobby ... Ted.

“He was the survivor,” Mr. Ornstein continued. “He was not a shining star that burned brightly and faded away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey the impact of the Kennedys on American life and politics and policy, he will end up by far being the most significant.”

It's been 41 years since the last brother died. Tonight the final star went out.

Anchor

Back when I was growing up in the 1960's, when the Vietnam War raged, boys came home in boxes every week, college campuses were filled with protests, Watts burned and heroes were assassinated, there was one man nearly everybody in America turned to for a half-hour a night: CBS News Anchorman Walter Cronkite, the man for whom the title was invented covering the 1952 political conventions, who passed away today at age 92.



It's impossible to imagine today that one person on television was such a trusted authority and that our nation had the collective attention to turn to him like that. Maybe having only three broadcast networks pre-cable made it possible, but Cronkite was a unique guy. Smart, firm, well-read, aware, he seemed the most evenhanded man in America. Not cool, not hip, but not square. Not a source of much parody by the college kids of the time, save for his standard closing line, "And that's the way it is." Even in his terrific historical dramatization show, You Are There, but with the historical date appended.

He got his start on local radio in the 1930's but made his bones as a war correspondent in North Africa and Europe during World War II. He was recruited by legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow to join his pioneering television news team and went on to anchor the CBS Evening News for 19 years. Not only did Cronkite break the news to America of the President John F. Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King assassinations, but his courageous 1968 commentary on the Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive, where he told viewers that he has come to the conclusion that the U.S. could not win that war, was perhaps the major turning point in national public opinion.

Here's a man married to his wife for 65 years who kept faith with family and country. And enjoyed sailing -- I once saw him driving around Martha's Vineyard, where he was a longtime seasonal resident, during the summer I spent there in college. Couldn't wait to call the folks and tell them I had spotted a real legend, the goosebumps kind.

Take a look at this pivotal broadcast in television history, when Cronkite announced JFK's death, incidentally with Dan Rather on the scene making his name known for the very first time, later to succeed Cronkite as CBS News anchor. The confirmation of Kennedy's death begins around the 5:00 mark, with Cronkite uncharacteristically, albeit very briefly, cracking a little emotion:



Contrast to learning about Michael Jackson's death on Twitter.

And how much less coverage Cronkite's passing will receive in the media today.

Healthy Choice

This is the moment. America has a chance to reform its broken health care system, the one that drives ordinary people to bankruptcy while capitating doctors and enriching health care moguls beyond all sense of decency. The one run for profit, as if that would be the best way to run the fire department or the police department. While a single payer model might be the one most desired by progressives, it's unlikely to happen here, and instead the battle line is being drawn at a real public option, one that the health care companies fear more than anything...because it would not be run for profit:

Because Democratic Leaders (such as they are) too often tend to be idiots when it comes to developing narratives and memes (we're talking "marketing" here), they too often overlook or don't understand GOP "gifts" when they're given. Case in point: on May 17 Mitch McConnell admitted to Chris Wallace on the May 17 FNSunday:

"The private insurance people would not be able to compete with a government option."

It's funny, but I thought in America competition was supposed to make things cheaper and more efficient. So if that would put the hateful, coverage-denying private insurance companies out of business or, more likely, force them to actually compete without de facto collusion, why would that be a bad thing for average Americans?

Per Ezra Klein in the Washington Post, the public option is the exact opposite of what the insurance industry-fed Republican party characterizes it as. It provides choice:

The private insurance market is a mess. It's supposed to cover the sick and instead competes to insure the well. It employs platoons of adjusters whose sole job is to get out of paying for needed health care services that members thought were covered.

Moreover, public insurance is simply more efficient. Medicare holds costs down better than private health insurance. The substantially public systems employed by every other industrialized nation cost less and cover more than the American model. So the question became how to marry the policy need for public insurance with the political need to preserve the status quo.

Enter the public insurance option. It doesn't replace the insurance individuals already rely on. But it provides an alternative. It lets them make the decision.

Powerful health insurance industry interests are working hard to stop this. Kaiser News, for instance, covers the Republican letter to Obama decrying a public plan and threatening that it would not be "bipartisan" should it pass. Which seems like a smaller problem every day as their party shrinks to it's angry, entrenched 25% core. As in regional party. (So maybe the public plan can exclude the South?)

The bigger problem are conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats folding due to their own campaign contributions from health insurance companies:

The Blue Dog Coalition issued a statement that said it would only support the public health care option as a fallback measure that would be triggered sometime down the road if private insurers don't meet a particular set of goals.

The backsliding took advocates of reform by surprise because 20 members of the coalition had previously signed a pledge expressing their support for a public option without a trigger. The statement was written and organized by the reform coalition Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which strongly opposes a trigger and sees it as an industry plot to strangle a public option in the crib.

The only answer is for Obama to do what Bill Clinton did not back in 1993: put himself into the mix, whereas Clinton left it all for his unelected wife, Hillary. She became the meme -- "Hillarycare" -- and Bill never stuck his neck out. As for Obama, Robert Reich asks:

Without strong White House leadership, individual members of Congress are particularly susceptible to the threats and promises of powerful lobbies. A statement of White House goals that leaves the details to Congress will likely result in legislation that superficially meets those goals but whose details undermine them. That's the biggest danger now with the inchoate healthcare legislation.

Fortunately, the White House now intends to get more involved in the emerging healthcare bill. Following are the three biggest issues where powerful lobbies on the other side are working the details to their advantage. The question is how hard the Obama White House will push back.

There seems to be one other individual who can potentially carry the public option over the goal line, but he's an injured player:

“He is the only guy who can bring us together, temper the demands of liberal advocacy groups and steer people toward a pragmatic solution,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who is a member of both the health committee and the Finance Committee and is a longtime collaborator with Mr. Kennedy on health legislation.

If he can get his old friend from the other side of the aisle, Orrin Hatch, to come aboard and carry with him enough votes to take America out of the health insurance dark ages, then Senator Edward Kennedy would go out with the biggest success of his storied Senate career.

The stakes could not be higher.

First Night

I didn't catch everything at the Democratic National Convention tonight, but having now seen Michelle Obama's and Ted Kennedy's speeches, I think they've gotten it rolling. I'm hoping that Hillary Clinton, exceptionally forthright today in her support for Barack Obama and denouncement of McCain using her clips against him, will bring some hardcore critique of the presumptive Republican nominee tomorrow night.

Ominous news came with the good, and I hope we can thank the law enforcement personnel in Denver for stopping the only potential horror show in town.

Meanwhile, Zannel and the grassroots bloggers lifecasting on it from the floor of the DNC are providing a completely different view than the mainstream media, compelling, star-speckled, and real. And they've already been featured on CNN.

Take a look.

Teddy in Trouble

It's not the first time and no one can say he was a saint his whole life, but if anybody has ever redeemed himself through legislative service, it's Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy.

And now he has an inoperable brain tumor. Per Shannon at Frank:

The particular type of tumor affecting Sen. Kennedy is a malignant glioma, the most common among adults. Survival ranges from less than a year to five years, depending upon type and responsiveness to treatment.

Intense NY Times piece here, the Senator's website with Best Wishes form here. But embedded in the above post comes is rather staggering list:

Legislation and causes Sen. Kennedy has either introduced or supported includes:

-Civil Rights Act of 1964
-Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
-Establishment of the National Teachers Corps, 1965
-Created a national health center system, 1966
-Bilingual Education Act of 1968
-Older American Community ServiceEmployment, 1970
-Voting Rights Act extension, 1970
-Meals on Wheels, 1972
-Women, Infants and Children program, 1972
-Bipartisan campaign finance legislation, establishing public funding for presidential elecions, 1973
-Family Planning Initatives, 1975
-Individuals with Disablities Education Act, 1975
-Civil Rights Commission Act Amendments of 1978
-Deregulation of airlines, bringing down prices for consumers, 1978
-Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act, 1980
-Refugee Act of 1980
-Congressional support of Low-Income Energy Assistance Programs, 1981
-Job Training Partnership Act of 1982
-Reinstatement of the Summer Jobs Program, 1982
-Voting Rights Act Amendments, 1982
-Opposed Star Wars program, 1983
-Supported Nuclear Arms Control, 1983
-Legislation requiring polling places be handicap-accessible, 1984
-Employment Opportunities for Disabled Americans, 1986
-Handicapped Children's Protection Act, 1986
-Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments, 1986
-Minimum Wage Increase, 1987
-Welfare to Jobs incentives,1987
-Even Start program, 1987
-Fair Housing Act Amendments, 1988
-National Military Child Care Act,1989
-Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990
-Ryan White CARE Act, 1990
-Immigration Act of 1990
-Civil Rights Act of 1991
-Head Start Improvement Act,1992
-Summer Jobs for Youth Program improvements, 1992
-Mammography Quality Standards Act, 1992
-Budget Reconcilliation Act of 1993
-National and Community Service Trust Act, creating AmeriCorps, 1993
-Family Medical Leave Act, 1994
-School to Work Opportunities Act, 1994
-Human Services Reauthorization Act,1994
-Crime Act, 1994
-Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 1996
-Mental Health Parity bill, 1996
-State Children's Health Insurance Program, 1997
-Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Act, 1998
-Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act, 2000
-Public Health Threats and Emergencies Act, 2000
-Pediatric Graduate Medical Education Program, 2000
-No Child Left Behind, 2001
-Bioterrorism Preparedness Act, 2002
-Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform, 2002
-Project Bioshield Act, 2003
-Gulf Coast Recovery and Preparedness Act, 2005
-Family Opportunity Act, 2006

Maybe the most impressive record in United States Senate history. A case where term limits would have been a bad idea. And the Boston Herald says that losing him at this critical unity juncture is less than desirable:

Political analysts say Kennedy is among a small group of top Democrats who has the popularity and influence to mollify disenchanted activists who have fought tooth and nail for Clinton. Those activists are seen as critical to generating the money and organizational strength needed to defeat GOP contender John McCain.

“There is no Democrat who is better able to pick up the phone and get disparate groups of people in the room together,” said strategist Michael Goldman.

Kennedy was among the first national political figures to endorse Obama’s candidacy this year. He has been a mentor and adviser to the Illinois senator and was among officials who counseled him to challenge Clinton for the nomination.

So if the Clintons can get over Teddy's encouraging their defeat, he could be the unifier. Maybe by his appeal to older Democratic voters? Women, who's rights he's been defending for decades?

Maybe he lives long enough to bring everyone together. Maybe his being stricken gives the Clintons and their supporters a healthy sense of mortality, ergo fallibility.

Just the novelistic view, so incredibly apt this election season. Giant.

El Teddy

So what might be the most significant impact of Sen. Edward Kennedy's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for President?

Todd Beeton suggest the West is the best:

Interestingly, look where the campaign is sending him, per The AP:

Kennedy is expected to campaign actively for Obama beginning later this week, beginning in Arizona, New Mexico and California. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, will also make campaign appearances, officials said.

No accident that they would choose these three states for Kennedy to stump for Obama as they have more in common than that they all vote on February 5th, namely their significant hispanic populations. This voting bloc is one of Hillary Clinton strongest bases of support (her 64%-26% win over Obama among this group in Nevada is widely considered responsible for her win there) and eating into that is a must for Obama if he hopes to win any of these three states.

So, how is Ted Kennedy uniquely qualified to be able to swing this base to Obama? As Chuck Todd put it on MSNBC earlier today (I'm paraphrasing,) you go into the homes of Central Valley (CA) Latinos and you'll see two portraits on the wall: one of the Pope and the other of JFK.

One wonders...is Al thinking of making his voice heard or keeping his powder dry so he can work with any ultimate Presidential contest winner?

Giuliani's Man

The reason Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey isn't renouncing the unitary Executive or copping the U.S. to torture is because he's keeping all the doors open for his ex-colleague, Rudy Giuliani. Mukasey's son runs the white collar crime division of Giuliani's law firm (i.e. defending rich executive criminals). It's all here, nothing anybody doesn't know in D.C.

For a spell I thought that he's just dodging the torture question and going the wrong way on executive power because he's basically an honest guy but can't be seen as speaking out against his boss just before landing the job. I thought maybe the Dems were crazy to be drawing the line on this particular guy -- isn't the next nominee Bush/Cheney sends going to be worse?

Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-MA), surprisingly, lays down the law with clarity:

Waterboarding is torture. Torture is unacceptable. Period.

If Michael Mukasey won't stand up to President Bush and tell him that, then he doesn't deserve to be Attorney General.

You know what seals it for me? The rightwing in America won't stop selling waterboarding as no big deal, not us, not the way we do it, not if we do it:

Cafferty: And now Mr Mukasey can’t say whether waterboarding is torture cause if he does, liability suddenly accrues for a whole lot of folks and who knows what the consequences are. Meanwhile, Gonzalez is wondering around happy as a clam. he out to be in jail for what he did. He didn’t answer questions on Capitol hill, he didn’t cooperate with the subpoenas, he couldn’t remember anything when he was asked. And then he’s allowed to resign and walk into the sunshine…

Mardsen: Well I think we do have to define torture. One man’s torture is another man’s CIA’s sponsored swim lesson.

Let's go torture now, everybody's learning how

C'mon surf safari with me.

Fascinating

Maureen Dowd's review of Journals 1952-2000 by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. is history as speed-dating, whizzing through mid-to-late 20th Century Presidential politics.

Schlesinger made his name first with John Kennedy's administration, and if you ever wanted to know the difference between that President and the two we have now, try this:

Schlesinger writes that Kennedy resisted seeing the missile crisis as part of a holy war with the Soviets. “Too many people will think now that all we have to do in dealing with the Russians is to kick them in the balls,” he says, after the Soviets back down. “I think there is a law of equity in these disputes. When one party is clearly wrong, it will eventually give way.” Kennedy is too much of an irono-babe for cowboy diplomacy. He says a nation gets prestige from the strength of its currency, not its nuclear weapons.

More great comments on Nixon, Gore, Jackie, Kissinger, Carter, awesome namedropping. Maybe a great advertisement for the book; that, or the complete crib notes version.