Today, Hoover announces the launch of a new series featuring fellows reflecting on the legacy of American founders; Condoleezza Rice kicks off this series with an essay on Alexander Hamilton; and Victor Davis Hanson pushes back against criticisms of the Iran deal, arguing that the United States retains the upper hand against a weakened Iranian regime.
USA@250
This week, the Hoover Institution launches Founders & Fellows, a new collection of essays on Hoover’s Freedom Frequency Substack platform. In the new series, Hoover scholars explore the enduring relevance of the US founding era and examine how the principles that animated the nation’s creation continue to inform contemporary policy debates. As part of Hoover’s ongoing commemoration of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, Founders & Fellows brings Hoover scholars into direct conversation with the ideas, statesmen, and debates that shaped the American experiment. Director Condoleezza Rice opens the series today with an essay on Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first secretary of the Treasury and the principal architect of America’s financial system. Read more about this essay in the next column. Read more here.
Alexander Hamilton, an indispensable architect of American institutions, is immortalized in the very structure of today’s America, writes Hoover Institution Director Condoleezza Rice in the inaugural Founders & Fellows essay published at Freedom Frequency. Hamilton’s complexity, hard-headed wisdom, and sense of urgency were fuel for the new nation, she writes, even as the Founders argued over the structure and sinews of the government they were building—arguments that have never ended. “The balance between order and liberty has never been, and will never be, settled in American life,” she writes. “Every generation revisits it under new conditions. . . . [Hamilton] forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth that good intentions do not govern a country.” Read more here.
War with Iran
In an essay at his Blade of Perseus site, Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson analyzes the “wider strategic context” of the recent US-Iran memorandum of understanding. “A closer look at the current position of the US suggests it has done an enormous amount of fiscal, economic, and military damage to Iran,” Hanson writes. But he also notes that Iran is a major military power, more capable than former US adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. “To fully dictate terms to Iran as if it were an inert protectorate, the US would either have to bomb it to smithereens or send in thousands of ground troops, both politically unpalatable to the American people,” the military historian notes. He argues that Trump pursued a deal with Iran to “manage the next four months until the midterms without an energy- and media-driven recession in the US or abroad.” Hanson concludes that the deal is “merely the beginning” of a new chapter in the US-Iran story, and that the US retains the ability “to strike at will” Iran’s military or nuclear facilities. Read more here.
British Politics
Writing for The Free Press, Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson reflects on the political lessons upon the 10th anniversary of “Brexit,” or the United Kingdom’s referendum to leave the European Union. The “simple” explanation of that result, Ferguson says, is as “a populist backlash against an elite project that prioritized globalization, mass migration, and multiculturalism over the economic and cultural preferences of the white working-class.” But after a decade, “Brexit has fallen short of its twin promises to revitalize the British economy and curb immigration.” This has fomented Britain’s current political challenges, which Ferguson characterizes as “mass disillusionment with ‘broken Britain,’ manifested as a tendency to rotate through prime ministers as rapidly as Italy in the 1970s.” Ferguson concludes by wishing “the best of luck” to Andy Burnham, “the man all but certain to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister.” Read more here.
In a column for The Telegraph, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Andrew Roberts also examines the current tumult in British politics. But Roberts stresses an important constitutional point: incoming prime minister Andy Burnham may do a poor job, but he will not lack legitimacy. As he writes, “The British constitution is clear on this: prime ministers remain in the job while they retain the confidence of a majority of the House of Commons.” The historian and member of the House of Lords continues, “General elections produce MPs whose job it is to find a prime minister. . . . It really is as simple as that.” Zooming out to examine Britain’s political situation, Roberts argues, “Seven premiers in a decade is indeed unprecedented . . . and obviously bad for statesmanship.” As for the legacy of the outgoing Keir Starmer, Roberts writes, “He will only be remembered as that grey man in glasses who won a huge majority, and squandered it in under two years.” Read more here.
Related Commentary