Hoover Institution fellow James Mattis talks about his new book Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead. Mattis explores the life lessons he never forgot from his time in jail, why he chose to join the Marines, learning to delegate responsibility to lower ranking personal in the military, why he was not in agreement with the Obama Administration's decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and much more.

The former FBI directors tend to investigate Republicans far more zealously than Democrats.

As I studied Al Smith, I had to look him up and learn more about him. I found what we find in many great leaders — Abe Lincoln, FDR. It's a focus on making our country a little better when we hand it to the next generation, and having a nonpartisan approach to team-building.

The Hoover Institution hosted its fiftieth retreat, beginning on Sunday, October 21, 2012, and ending on Tuesday, October 23, 2012. On Sunday, the Honorable Bob McDonnell, governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia since January 2010 who also currently chairs the Republican Governors’ Association, the Southern Growth Policies Board, and the Southern Regional Education Board, gave the before-dinner remarks. His topics included job creation, economic development, our current debt crisis, and deficit spending. He also touched on two competing visions in the world; the first, which he calls an “entitlement society” with more guarantees, more taxes, more spending, and more regulation as a way to promote success; the second, an “opportunity society” which individuals can work hard, dream big, and use all their talents to be successful with limited government interference.

Despite endless debate about the issues, the presidential contest comes down to character. By James W. Ceaser.

James Sweeney explains the differences between crises present and past, and suggests ways California can better balance population and environmental concerns. 

Simple majorities were never meant to rule Americans’ lives. How the founders limited factions and fanatics. 

In Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, James Piereson asserts that, “as the 1960’s began, liberalism was … the single most creative and vital force in American politics” and that the Kennedy assassination caused a split within this movement between its more traditional supporters and cultural activists that still exists today. Peter Robinson explores with Piereson how and why this happened -- how “a confident, practical, forward-looking philosophy with a heritage of accomplishment was thus turned into a doctrine of pessimism and self-blame, with a decidedly dark view of American society.” (29:56) Video transcript