By Hunter Walker 12/28/12 7:28pm

Revisionist History

HBO Documentary Special Screening Of "41"

George H.W. Bush’s Break With the NRA Ignored in Gun Group’s Gift Shop

In 1995, President George H.W. Bush gave up his lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association via an angry open letter in which he expressed his outrage over a fundraising pitch made by current NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre that described federal agents as “jack-booted government thugs” wearing “Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms.” Though President Bush said he was “deeply” offended and asked the organization to “remove my name from your membership list,” seventeen years later, the NRA is still promoting his past association with the group in its online gift shop. Read More

By Steve Kornacki 3/20/09 6:07pm

Obama on Leno, Like Clinton on Donahue

John Kennedy's 1960 guest spot on Jack Parr's show is generally regarded as the first time a national politician tried to use an appearance on an entertainment television show to boost his appeal. (James Reston of The New York Times said during the 1960 presidential campaign that there were now two litmus tests for each Read More

By Steve Kornacki 1/12/09 3:18am

Two Bushes, No Regrets

Apparently, both President Bushes, George W. and George H. W., had never been interviewed together before Sunday—when they agreed to take a series of polite and decidedly non-penetrating questions from Fox News’ Brit Hume.

For nearly the entire second Bush presidency, a popular theory has held that the first President Bush is, at least in Read More

By Steve Kornacki 12/08/08 3:37am

After the Honeymoon, Lean Times for President Obama

The take-away line from Barack Obama’s Sunday appearance on “Meet the Press” was the president-elect’s declaration that “the economy is going to get worse before it gets better.”

Obviously, no one would argue with that, and it’s certainly smart politics for Obama to talk in such terms, as a way of tempering the public’s outsized Read More

By Steve Kornacki 12/02/08 5:19pm

Obama and the Bush Realists

Just over six years ago, as legend has it, George H. W. Bush weighed in on the invasion of Iraq that his son seemed hell-bent on pursuing, deputizing his old confidante Brent Scowcroft to deliver a very public warning to the president.

Mr. Scowcroft’s resulting op-ed, published in The Wall Street Read More