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have not yet seen Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway show Hamilton. I feel badly about this for three reasons. First, Miranda is a 2002 Wesleyan graduate, a loyal and generous alumnus who gave a great commencement speech in 2015 and remains solidly committed to the university. Second, the music and lyrics are, quite simply, amazing. Third, as an economic historian, it is heartening to see one of America’s economic heroes make it to Broadway.

The post Alexander Hamilton and the public debt appeared first on OUPblog.

have not yet seen Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway show Hamilton. I feel badly about this for three reasons. First, Miranda is a 2002 Wesleyan graduate, a loyal and generous alumnus who gave a great commencement speech in 2015 and remains solidly committed to the university. Second, the music and lyrics are, quite simply, amazing. Third, as an economic historian, it is heartening to see one of America’s economic heroes make it to Broadway.

The post Alexander Hamilton and the public debt appeared first on OUPblog.

In the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, during a test of wills between the Mercury Seven astronauts and the German scientists who designed the spacecraft, the actor playing astronaut Gordon Cooper asks: “Do you boys know what makes this bird fly?” Before the hapless engineer can reply with a long-winded scientific explanation, Cooper answers: “Funding!” If an economist were asked, “Do you know what makes this economy fly?” the answer, in one word, would be “trust.”

The post The wrong stuff: Why we don’t trust economic policy appeared first on OUPblog.

Rule #1 for being U.S. president in 2015: Do good cartoon impressions.

April 2015 will go down in history as the month that the 2016 race for the White House began in earnest. Hillary Clinton’s online declaration of her presidential candidacy was the critical moment. With it America’s two major political parties have locked horns with each other. The Democrats intend to continue their control of the presidency for another four years; Republicans hope to finally make good on a conservative bumper sticker that began appearing on automobiles as early as the summer of 2009 and that read, “Had Enough Yet? Next Time Vote Republican.”

The post Do America’s political parties matter in presidential elections? appeared first on OUPblog.

Franklin D. Roosevelt broke the two-term precedent set by George Washington by running for and winning a third and fourth term. Pressure for limiting terms followed FDR’s remarkable record. In 1951 the Twenty-Second constitutional amendment was ratified stating: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…” Accordingly, reelected Presidents must then govern knowing they cannot run again.

The post From Carter to Clinton: Selecting presidential nominees in the modern era appeared first on OUPblog.

Tea Party senator Ted Cruz has reportedly pulled a $1.5 million advance from HarperCollins for his memoir. This is more than the $1.25 million advance that Sarah Palin earned for her memoir Going Rogue: An American Life.

In the book, the Texas senator will share his story from how he got into politics to his involvement in the 2013 government shutdown and his fight against Obamacare.

Here is more about the deal from The Washington Examiner:

The deal was negotiated by Keith Urbahn and Matt Latimer of Washington-based literary and communications firm Javelin. They also cut recent deals for former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.