Chapter 3 explores the emotional rhetoric of elected public officials. We examine the presidential speeches of two Democratic presidents – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. We find that Obama’s speeches are more positive than Clinton’s and less negative as well. The use of anger depends on the target (i.e., issue). Consistent with our theoretical argument, Obama expressed significantly less anger about race relations compared to Bill Clinton. We look even further at the differences between Black and white politicians by examining floor speeches of members of the United States House of Representatives. Most Black Members of Congress are elected in majority (or plurality) minority districts. Therefore, we would not expect for them to be as constrained by anger, particularly about race, as Obama. We find that to be the case. Black Democratic members of Congress convey more anger about race relations than white Democratic members of Congress. These findings suggest that Black politicians limit their anger when whites are a substantial number of the voting population, but Black elected officials and candidates abandon this rule when the electorate has a substantial number of Black voters.

The biggest change in the party coalitions since the 1980s has been the movement of high-education whites into the Democratic Party and the defection of low-education whites to the GOP. Drawing on evidence from opinion surveys, election returns, and demographic data, Chapter 3 documents the parties’ changing voters and geographic constituencies. These trends continued in the 2020 election despite Democratic efforts to reverse the party’s declining popularity among noncollege whites, with some signs educational divides will spread to other racial and ethnic groups. Candidates, activists, political appointees and staffers, judges, party leaders, and campaign workers all demonstrate the same increasing divisions as rank-and-file voters. Democrats may suffer electorally because the Electoral College and apportionment of the Senate grants noncollege whites disproportionate voting power, but college-educated citizens punch above their weight in other forms of influence: as thought leaders, interest group activists, educators, media figures, scientific experts, candidates, political professionals, lawyers, and financial donors.

The closeness of the John Howard and George W Bush administrations is a commonplace of commentary on that era; one uncritical account even describes the relationship between the two countries and leaders as a ‘partnership’, although Howard only appeared three times in the former president’s memoirs, published in 2010. Prime Minister Howard’s invocation of the ANZUS (Australia New Zealand United States) Treaty in 2001, his determination to participate in the Iraq invasion and occupation, and his scepticism on anthropogenic climate change were all of a piece with the mood that prevailed in Washington. In February 2007, US Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Australia expressly to record Washington’s gratitude for Australia’s consistent role in the ‘global war on terror’. So close was Howard’s identification with Bush that his judgment of what bounds should be observed in commentary on domestic US politics was compromised. Thus in February 2007 he took the unprecedented step of criticising presidential candidate Barack Obama’s strategy on Iraq by claiming it served the interests of al Qaeda.

It has been widely assumed the Tea Party paved the way for Donald Trump’s electoral victory in 2016. Yet, little research has examined the transition from the Tea Party’s takeover of the Republican Party to Trump’s subsequent capture of the GOP. This chapter examines the Tea Party’s engagements with Donald Trump between 2009 and 2018. Tea Party activists initially admired Trump’s amplification of the birther conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that Barack Obama was not a natural born citizen. However, activists dismissed or ridiculed Trump’s political ambitions. By 2013, activists had warmed to Trump’s positions on Islam and immigration, but still did not view him as a viable political candidate. After Trump won the 2016 election, there was a sea shift in tone, as the remaining Tea Party activists enthusiastically embraced his America First agenda. These observations are corroborated by an analysis of the impact that Tea Party activism had on the 2016 Republican primaries for president and the general election. Our analyses shows that Tea Party activism had little impact on helping Trump become President, consistent with the insurgency’s larger ambivalence about Trump’s candidacy.

Describes the early career and political advent of Donald Trump through his election to the presidency in 2016. Explores the weaknesses in system of presidential nomination and election, and of his opponent Hillary Clinton, that made his victory possible. Explores the investigations integral to story of 2016 election: the Clinton email investigation and Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation into Russian election interference and possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russians.

Pentecostalism understands that spiritual and social power without political power is limited in its ability to coerce, and so it contests for power through spiritual warfare and active partisan politics. However, when a “Christian” president lost his re-election bid in 2015, it also pushed some Pentecostals to look beyond their country to the USA and the symbolism of a powerful president associating with Christianity. This chapter thus considers how the Pentecostal power identity takes its desires across the borders of nation-space. Titled, “What Islamic devils?!”: Power Struggles, Race, and Christian Transnationalism, this study provides the historical context to Nigerians’ support for US president Donald Trump by exploring the dynamics of political theology as it crosses the bounds of nationhood. Through an analysis of the nitty-gritty of the politics of the spirituality of Nigerian Pentecostals, the desire to defeat Islam (the other religion that contends power), the local politics of faith as it intermingles with ethnicity identity, this chapter shows how all these various dynamics sustains the power identity that manifests in the adoration of Trump.

Harry J. Elam, Jr. temporally locates his chapter in the “age of Obama,” the period following the election of Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States. After the 2008 election, he notes a shift in the way that critics and scholars talked about race, particularly Blackness. Quoting art curator Thelma Golden, Elam investigates, through four case studies, whether the “post-black” is “the new black.” He looks at the 2009 Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Neighbors, Eisa Davis’s Bulrusher, and Fred Ebb and John Kander’s musical The Scottsboro Boys to address race politics, the reemergence of blackface, and the topic of mixed-race identity within the contemporary theatre.

The works of George Saunders and J.D. Vance suggest two paths forward for white American writers in the twenty-first century. While both acknowledge whiteness as foundational to the organization of contemporary society, Vance ignores the privileges that Saunders seeks to interrogate. The elections of both Obama and Trump have profoundly shifted how we talk about race in the United States, and their presidencies have made clear that whiteness can no longer operate as an invisible, presumed position of authority. Amid our often frightening moment of political unrest, we have an opportunity to speak of whiteness as the historical force of domination and exclusion that led to centuries of injustice and which continues to define so much of contemporary American life. Though white writers have not led the way on progressive representations of race in U.S. fiction, they may at last complete the important task of making whiteness visible.

This chapter takes up the “forever war” theme by returning to Iraq just prior to Obama’s troop pullout and to Afghanistan where he inherited a failing war. Coming into the White House, Obama fulfilled his campaign pledge to end Bush’s “dumb war” in Iraq but left the country vulnerable. The violence in the Syrian civil war attracted al Qaeda militants from Iraq. They formed the nucleus of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the most fearsome terrorist network in the world. ISIS seized land in Syria, invaded Iraq, and announced a caliphate. Obama answered Iraq’s pleas for help. US and allied airpower, along with SOF, turned the tide of battle. The Pentagon again used local allies; this time mostly Kurds who formed the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces. The SDF fought ISSI and the Damascus regime to carve out an enclave in Syria. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, Obama endorsed the Pentagon’s surge of troops to nearly 100,000 so as to exit the war as in Iraq. He changed course and stopped U.S. participation in combat roles in 2014. He decreased troops to around 8,000 before leaving office. At first Trump upped the troops and gave his generals greater freedom to act. Then, he, too, scaled them down to 2,500 in Afghanistan and Iraq, while negotiating with the Taliban to leave totally by May 1, 2021.

More than a decade after the Persian Gulf War, the United States went to war against Iraq for the second time. This conflict grew out of fear and distrust of Saddam Hussein’s suspected chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. A highly inaccurate intelligence assessment contributed to the fear of Iraq’s phantom WMD. Except for Britain, the permanent members of the Security Council opposed the war. George W. Bush put together a coalition of the willing to invade Iraq in 2003. The opening, conventional phase of the intervention went well with Baghdad seized in three weeks. But soon the Pentagon faced a raging insurgency in much of the country, which was divided along sectarian lines of the Sunni and Shiite Islamic sects fighting each other while attacking the US and allied forces. The intractable insurgency proved complex and deeply rooted. By 2006, the Pentagon looked as it was headed toward defeat. Three factors contributed to a turnaround in its fortunes. Chief among these was the Awakening movement in which Sunni Arab tribal leaders crossed over to the American side because of their resentment of Salafi-jihadi militants. The Bush White House adopted a finely-tuned counterinsurgency strategy and surged 28,500 more troops into the fray. During the intense fighting, Bush pushed several elections and a constitution to entrench democracy. Gun battles and street bombings greatly subsided by the time Barack Obama withdrew all US combat troops in 2011.

The period since the 1990s has proved, in an ironic way, the strength of Israel–US relations. In 1991, American president, George H. W. Bush, clashed with Israel, and since 1996, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had strained Israel–US relations in an unprecedented manner. In both cases, the constants that determined the course of the Israel–US relationship, religion, shared values, and history, proved to be stronger than any individual, regardless of their position. The period covered in this chapter was characterized by a close friendship and strategic partnership between the two nations. During those years, the two countries signed several memoranda of understanding which solidified the American commitment to Israel’s security and ensured its qualitative military edge, as well as expanding the cooperation on economic and cultural matters. The military-industrial cooperation as well as security cooperation between the two countries deepened. The growing Israeli attachment to American culture and values was another manifestation of the deepening relations between the two countries. The Israeli economy changed from socialist to neoliberal under the influence of American economic thinking. Neoconservatism spread across Israel’s political and intellectual elites through institutions and people, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israelis adopted many of the characteristics of American culture and economy, bringing their country closer to the United States in form and content. The ties between Israel and the Christian Zionist Evangelicals deepened as well. With the Evangelicals returning to the forefront of American politics since the mid-1970s, they became a major force in the support of Israel, a tendency that was especially encouraged by the right wing in Israel. Evangelical support for Israel has only increased during the 1990s and 2000s.

What Bernard Brodie said about nuclear weapons in 1946 continues to be true: The most important thing about nuclear weapons is that they exist and are terribly powerful. This was true in both the Cold War and the subsequent era. Although the situation has changed a great deal, there are striking continuities, especially in American attitudes and policies. Most obviously, the United States has consistently opposed nuclear proliferation, with only a very few exceptions for its closest friends. Second, the debate within the United States about the role of nuclear weapons has been altered only slightly by the end of the Cold War. The fundamental division between those who see nuclear weapons as having a revolutionary impact on world politics and those who do not continues. Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review makes arguments that are remarkably similar to those made under the Raegan administration. In parallel, the arguments made against Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) systems today are quite similar to those advanced during the Cold War, despite the radically changed conditions. This indicates that ways of thinking about nuclear weapons have become deeply engrained.

This chapter analyses the policy and regulatory developments leading up to the enactment of the Cyber Security Law, including China’s Anti-Terrorism Law and how enforced source code ‘backdoor provisions’ were removed from the final draft of this law to protect China’s innovation policy goals. The discussion of China’s Network Sovereignty push is continued by explaining the significant debate about Network Sovereignty-related ideological thinking in China’s Anti-Terrorism Law. This law is yet another example of how problematic laws are delayed, as further consultation is sought. Comparisons are also made with a similar policy debate on ‘backdoor provisions’ in the United States, to show that the initial Chinese approach was not so different from universal debates, at that time, and ultimately reflects international practice. Similar approaches are now finding more widespread acceptance globally including in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Fierce partisan conflict in the United States is not new. Throughout American history, there have been polarizing struggles over fundamental questions relating to the meaning of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the relationship between the two. These struggles over ideals have become all encompassing when joined to battles over what it means to be an American – conflicts that have become more regular and dangerous with the rise of the administrative state. The idea of a “State” cuts more deeply than suggested by Max Weber’s definition of “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Beyond the powers of government, the State represents a centralizing ambition (at least for progressive reformers) to cultivate, or impose, a vision of citizenship. In Randolph Bourne’s words, the State is a “concept of power” that comes alive in defense of or in conflict with an ideal of how such foundational values of Americanism as “free and enlightened” are to be interpreted and enforced. The ideal is symbolized not by the Declaration and the Constitution but rather in rallying emblems such as the flag and Uncle Sam.

Pentecostalism understands that spiritual and social power without political power is limited in its ability to coerce, and so it contests for power through spiritual warfare and active partisan politics. However, when a “Christian” president lost his re-election bid in 2015, it also pushed some Pentecostals to look beyond their country to the USA and the symbolism of a powerful president associating with Christianity. This chapter thus considers how the Pentecostal power identity takes its desires across the borders of nation-space. Titled, “What Islamic devils?!”: Power Struggles, Race, and Christian Transnationalism, this study provides the historical context to Nigerians’ support for US president Donald Trump by exploring the dynamics of political theology as it crosses the bounds of nationhood. Through an analysis of the nitty-gritty of the politics of the spirituality of Nigerian Pentecostals, the desire to defeat Islam (the other religion that contends power), the local politics of faith as it intermingles with ethnicity identity, this chapter shows how all these various dynamics sustains the power identity that manifests in the adoration of Trump.

Barack Obama entered the presidency with a clear plan for engaging Iran. Rather than building on past rhetoric and emphasizing Iran’s "misbehavior," he opted for a new approach. In a speech marking Iran’s new year, he praised Iran’s rich history, then reached out directly to the country's new president, Hassan Rouhani. The approach did not show immediate results, but the two countries, along with European powers, Russia, and China, began to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program – a key issue for the relationship since the 1990s. The P5+1 talks (and secret US–Iran meetings) slowly began to turn the tide. The JCPOA finally came into being, representing a significant diplomatic achievement. Through it would prove to be short-lived, the Iran deal demonstrated that progress could be achieved. After forty years of near-constant enmity, the two countries appeared to be on the verge of détente. When Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the deal, these hopes were again dashed. But lessons from the negotiations remain for future policymakers hoping to resolve this most confounding of global issues.

Chapter 10 provides an overview of all our findings and offers additional avenues of research. We also discuss the many policy implications and political ramifications of group empathy, including what happens when it is lacking in specific contexts. In doing so, we consider the rise of ethnonationalist, far-right politics in the United States and many other parts of the world, and we discuss whether group empathy may counteract xenophobic, exclusionary appeals of populist leaders. The eight-year span of our data collection covers a stark transformation of the American policy landscape as the United States transitioned from Barack Obama’s presidency to Donald Trump’s. This allows us to contemplate how levels of group empathy might have shifted over time within and across racial/ethnic groups in the United States. We further consider how to cultivate group empathy at the societal level, in order to improve intergroup relations and social justice, and how to envision the role of educational experiences such as community engagement in these efforts.

This brief coda examines the curious case of Marilynne Robinson, one of the most decorated living American novelists who seems like she would easily be aligned with American conservatism, but is not, for reasons that are intertwined with the perceived anti-intellectualism of the political Right. In short, Robinson epitomizes the prevailing, though flawed, assumption within the literary field that the cultural capital associated with highbrow literature is inevitably aligned with progressive liberalism.