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“Evil empire” was President Ronald Reagan’s name for the USSR.

Reagan often portrayed the struggle between the US and the USSR as a moral war between good and evil. In some of his most famous speeches, he advocated a strong stance against the USSR, warning that the alternative was to abandon the struggle between right and wrong.

Reagan first referred to the USSR as the “evil empire” during a speech he delivered to the British House of Commons in 1982. The following year, he used the phrase again when he spoke to a convention of the National Association of Evangelicals.

In the 1983 speech, Reagan urged Evangelical leaders to do their part in what he described as a “spiritual” crisis, a “test of moral will and faith.” He insisted that the USSR needed to be totally eliminated in order to keep America free:

…in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride–the temptation of blithely..uh..declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for our efforts, this administration’s efforts, to keep America strong and free, while we negotiate–real and verifiable reductions in the world’s nuclear arsenals and one day, with God’s help, their total elimination. [Applause]

While America’s military strength is important, let me add here that I’ve always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

Reagan’s supporters have argued that his hard-line stance against the Soviet Union was crucial for bringing about the fall of the USSR and dismantling the Soviet bloc. Writing a quarter of a century after Reagan’s “evil empire” speeches, Newt Gingrich praised the “radicalism” behind those speeches. 

“By calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” Reagan sent a clear signal that America was going to challenge the Soviet Union morally, win the psychological information war, and de-legitimize it. If the government was evil, he argued, how could it have authority?” Gingrich reasoned.

Ironically, Reagan himself distanced himself from his “evil empire” rhetoric towards the end of his presidency. In 1988, the president visited Moscow, met with Mikhail Gorbachev, and toured the Kremlin and Red Square. A reporter asked him directly whether he still thought of the Soviet Empire as an evil empire, and he said that he did not. “You are talking about another time, another era,” Reagan explained.

During the same visit, Reagan spoke at the House of Writers in Moscow. There, he said that it was vital not to caricature any nation or group of people. He explained,

“Pretty soon,” he said, “at least for me, it becomes harder and harder to force any member of humanity into a straitjacket, into some rigid form in which you all expect to fit.”

“Every Man a King” is the title of a speech delivered in 1934 by Senator Huey Long of Louisiana. The speech, which Long delivered on national radio, is one of Long’s most famous speeches, along with his “Share the Wealth” speech.

Long, a populist politician, used the speeches to rail against the concentration of wealth in a few hands and to highlight the problems of the man poor people in his own state. The “every man a king” speech said, in part:

Now, we have organized a society, and we call it “Share Our Wealth Society,” a society with the motto “every man a king.”

Every man a king, so there would be no such thing as a man or woman who did not have the necessities of life, who would not be dependent upon the whims and caprices and ipsi dixit of the financial martyrs for a living. What do we propose by this society? We propose to limit the wealth of big men in the country. There is an average of $15,000 in wealth to every family in America. That is right here today.

We do not propose to divide it up equally. We do not propose a division of wealth, but we propose to limit poverty that we will allow to be inflicted upon any man’s family. We will not say we are going to try to guarantee any equality, or $15,000 to families. No; but we do say that one third of the average is low enough for any one family to hold, that there should be a guaranty of a family wealth of around $5,000; enough for a home, and automobile, a radio, and the ordinary conveniences, and the opportunity to educate their children; a fair share of the income of this land thereafter to that family so there will be no such thing as merely the select to have those things, and so there will be no such thing as a family living in poverty and distress.”

Long’s radio speeches also represented his break with President Franklin D Roosevelt. Long had introduced legislation into the U.S. Senate in an effort to limit incomes and redistribute wealth. However, his legislation never got off the ground; most of his fellow senators considered them to be too radical. 

Long had actually helped FDR win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1932, but broke with the administration in 1934, after he gave up hope that the New Deal would make a meaningful difference in the lives of most Americans. That’s when Long decided to appeal directly to the American people, with his “every man a king” and his “share the wealth” speeches.

Long had also used “every man a king” as a campaign slogan; he also made it the title of his autobiography, which was published in 1933. Long also used the phrase as the title of his campaign song. He co-wrote the song, “Every Man A King,” with Professor Castro Carazo, who was the head of the Louisiana State Band. 

The slogan may also be the origin of Long’s nickname, Kingfish.

The “Era of Good Feeling” refers to a period in U.S. history from about 1815 until about 1825, characterized by a sense of optimism and positivity. The era is closely associated with the presidency of James Monroe, who served two terms from 1817 to 1825.

Monroe easily won the presidential election of 1816, garnering 183 electoral votes while the opposing Federalist party won just 34. His victory signaled the effective end of the Federalist party and ushered in a period of total dominance by Monroe’s Democratic-Republican party.

After the election, Monroe went on a prolonged victory tour throughout New England. It was during this tour that one newspaper, the Columbian Centinel, published an article titled “The Era of Good Feeling.” The piece described a festive, upbeat mood which was shared by “eminent men of all political parties.”

The era was marked by America’s victory in the War of 1812. In Europe, the Napoleonic Wars were at an end, which also left Americans free to concentrate on their own affairs. The age is characterized by a growing isolationism.

Historians say that the era of good feeling was also shored up by economic prosperity. During Monroe’s first term, America put in place its first protective tariffs and established the Second National Bank. Congress, at Monroe’s request, also put an end to property taxes and other federal taxes. The federal government was able to pay off the nation’s extensive war debt using the money from tariffs.

At the same time, America continued to expand across the continent. In 1819, Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, which eventually led to a treaty with Spain that handed Florida over to the United States. During this period, America also stepped up its western expansion. In 1823, the president also articulated the Monroe Doctrine, which defined the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ sphere of influence and warned Europeans not to interfere in the region.

The era of good feeling was at an end by 1825. Even during Monroe’s second term, the sense of national goodwill was beginning to fade, and major conflicts over slavery and national expansion were making themselves felt. The period of one-party rule was also coming to an end. 

Since the Federalist party had collapsed, the presidential election of 1824 featured candidates who were all from the Democratic-Republican party. Four candidates vied for the presidency: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Treasury Secretary William Crawford, and House Speaker Henry Clay. None of the candidates was able to win a majority in the electoral college, so that decision went to the House of Representatives. The choice was between Adams and Jackson; neither Crawford nor clay had enough votes to compete.

The House handed the presidency to Adams, although Andrew Jackson had won the most popular votes and the most electoral votes. The election marked a split in the party, leading Americans to re-organize into two new parties: the Democrats, loyal to Jackson, and the Whigs, who were allied to Adams. In 1828, Andrew Jackson ran again and, this time, defeated Adams in his re-election bid.

The “eunuch rule” is a reference to the provisions in many state constitutions which prevented state governors from running for a second consecutive term in office. Those provisions have been amended in almost every state; as of 2020, Virginia is the only state which still prevents governors from holding two consecutive terms in office.

The rules on gubernatorial qualifications, succession, and term length are decided on a state-by-state basis. In most states, governors serve a four-year term and may serve back-to-back terms; however, they may be limited to a number of consecutive or lifetime terms.

The “eunuch rule” got its name because, in theory, it put the incumbent governor in a weak position (like that of a eunuch, with no real power). William Safire wrote:

In most states, particularly in the South, governors are rendered politically impotent – LAME DUCKS from the moment they enter the Statehouse – by the eunuch rule. This was designed to prevent four-year governors from building long-lasting machines…Whenever the eunuch rule applies, the governor starts thinking about (1) running for senator, (2) laying the groundwork for a career in private business, or (3) “modernizing the state constitution to permit reelection.

Historically, politicians have gone to great lengths to get around the “eunuch rule.” In 1966 George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, was nearing the end of his term. Alabama’s state laws prevented him from seeking a second term in office, and so Wallace decided to put his wife, Lurleen, on the ballot instead. 

Lurleen Wallace beat out 10 opponents in the Democratic primary and also defeated her Republican opponent, James Douglas Martin. She became the first female governor of Alabama. Lurleen’s working class roots helped to make her very popular in the state. Like her husband, Lurleen actively opposed desegregation efforts. She is also remembered, though, for her efforts to improve mental health care and for her work to expand state parks and recreational facilities. 

Today, Virginia is the only state which prevents governors from succeeding themselves. There is an ongoing effort to amend the state’s constitution so that governors can serve consecutive terms. That state tends to be popular among Democrats, who have won recent gubernatorial elections; many Republicans oppose the proposed amendments.

In 2019, Dawn Adams, a Democrat from Richmond, sponsored House Joint Resolution 608, which would amend the state constitution to let governors elected after 2021 serve for two terms in a row. Adams described the current system as a “detriment to the commonwealth.” “She told Delmarva Now, “Now is the time we should look to pass a constitutional amendment for consecutive but limited governor terms.” Adams also noted that the current system leads to “inefficiency, waste, duplication of services, low morale and low productivity.”

However, Republicans in Virginia said the term limit is a much-need check to the strong power of the executive; Virginia’s governor has the power to amend and veto bills, appoint officials and order a special legislative session. Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment, a Republican, said a big argument against the proposed change was also that he wouldn’t have wanted recent governors to stay in power for more than four years.

Said Norment: “I would very succinctly and ecumenically say two words: Gilmore and McAuliffe.”

A list of political opponents kept by the Nixon administration. The phrase “enemies list” is now used as shorthand to refer to suspected abuses of power in any administration.

In 1973, former White House aide John Dean III told the Senate that President Nixon kept a list of his political opponents. The so-called “opponents list” had been compiled for Nixon’s trusted aide, Charles Colson. It featured the names of public figures who were thought to pose a threat to the Nixon administration. The list included notes about any known weaknesses of the “enemies,” and also suggested finding a way to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

Dean revealed the list’s existence during a hearing of the Watergate Committee. On the same day, the CBS journalist Daniel Schorr managed to get a copy of the list, which he began reading, out loud and on air, to his audience. (A second, longer version of the list appeared later that year.) 

“I got to No. 17, and I said, ‘No. 17, Daniel Schorr, a real media enemy,’ ” Schorr told The Hill, decades later.

“I almost collapsed on the air. I had never read it before, never seen it before, never expected it. But I continued and said, ‘No. 18, Paul Newman. No. 19, Mary McGrory [the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post].’ It was such a distinguished list,” he said, joking that the notoriety of the list made him more popular. “My lecture fees went up.”

Schorr wasn’t the only one who was proud to be on Nixon’s list. The Village Voice ran a tongue in cheek piece that year titled “The Shame of Being Left Off Nixon’s Enemies List.” The article speculated about what might happen to leftist commentators, activists, and others who prided themselves on being “anti-establishment,” if those people turned out not to be on Nixon’s all-important list:

“What newspaper is going to shell out hard cash for a columnist whose opinions are so tame that even the White House doesn’t consider him dangerous? Poor Nick Von Hoffman. Darling of the New Left, intimate of numerous Democrats, defender of the Chicago Seven, how does he face his readers, knowing that Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean all considered Max Lerner a greater threat to their empire? And Jimmy Breslin. For years he and Pete Hamill have fought tooth and nail to see which one could say the most outrageous things about the Nixon regime. How can Breslin even manage to drag his poor broken body out of bed in the morning now that Hamill has administered the tour de force?”

A few decades later, some journalists and pundits began making comparisons between Nixon’s enemies list and the Trump administration. In 2018, the Trump White House announced that it had stripped the security clearance from former CIA director John Brennan and that it was considering doing the same to others. Mike Mullen, a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Fox News that this meant the president was “creating a list of political enemies.”

“Eight millionaires and a plumber” is a dismissive reference to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first cabinet.

Eisenhower’s critics complained that the president’s top advisers were all wealthy and therefore, by implication, out of touch with ordinary people. The only exception – the “plumber” in the phrase – was Marty Durkin, the new labor secretary. Durkin had previously headed up the Plumbers’ Union.

Many of Eisenhower’s cabinet members came from the private sector and lacked experience in government. The secretary of the treasury, George Humphrey, had a background in law and eventually became the president and chairman of the board of the steelworks M. A. Hanna and Company. 

Eisenhower’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Charles Wilson, was an engineer who had risen to become the vice president of General Motors. Wilson was very open about his strong ties to the private sector; he considered them an asset, not a problem. He once famously told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”

Martin Durkin, the “plumber” in the cabinet, came from a much humbler background than his colleagues. Durkin grew up in Illinois and attended evening school, leaving at the age of 17 to become a steamfitter’s apprentice. From there, he joined the plumbers’ and pipe fitters’ union, eventually rising through the ranks to become president of the union. In 1933, he became the Director of Labor for the State of Illinois. Durkin was also the only Democrat in the cabinet. A former Union man, Durkin pushed hard to revise the Taft-Hartley Act. He was unable to get the changes he wanted, and stepped down from his cabinet post after just eight months in office.

Decades later, pundits compared President Donald Trump’s cabinet to President Eisenhower’s. Screaming headlines criticized the president for appointing a team of wealthy individuals with little government experience. A piece in Politico was titled “Trump’s Team of Gazillionaires;” the article pointed out that the president’s cabinet picks seemed out of step with his campaign message, which had promised to fight for the forgotten working class. The Washington Post claimed that Trump had assembled “the richest administration in modern American history.” 

However, an op-ed in the Washington Post also pointed out that most of America’s presidents and cabinet members have been wealthy. JFK, FDR, and the trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt all had personal fortunes which allowed them to pursue independent policies. (In his own time, FDR was labeled a “traitor to his own class” for his tax policies, among other things.) The Post op-ed closed by defending Eisenhower’s “eight millionaires and a plumber” cabinet:

Although Republican President Dwight Eisenhower was from a more modest background, his Cabinet picks were roundly mocked as “eight millionaires and a plumber.” Yet they managed to serve their country well and selflessly, acting against their own economic interests by maintaining a top marginal income tax rate of 91 percent throughout Eisenhower’s eight years in office. The revenue helped build our interstate highways and create NASA, among other achievements.

To “electioneer” is to actively take part in an election by working for the election of a candidate or a party.

The word is almost always used in a pejorative sense. Most of the time “electioneering” is used to suggest something tawdry, or underhanded; the word implies discomfort with the way that campaigns are carried out.

Electioneering has had a bad rap since the time of the Founding Fathers. In 1796, James Madison wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson, grumbling that a statement from the French foreign minister (Pierre Auguste Adet) was being dismissed as mere electioneering. Madison wrote:

Adêts Note which you will have seen, is working all the evil with which it is pregnant. Those who rejoice at its indiscretions and are taking advantage of them, have the impudence to pretend that it is an electioneering manoeuvre, and that the French Govt. have been led to it by the opponents of the British Treaty.

A few years later, John Adams wrote at length about the problem with electioneering. Adams was also writing to Thomas Jefferson. His 1814 letter complains that electioneering is taking over just about everything – and he expects it to get worse. Adams wrote:

I dare not look beyond my Nose, into futurity. Our Money, our Commerce, our Religion, our National and State Constitutions, even our Arts and Sciences, are So many Seed Plotts of Division, Faction, Sedition and Rebellion. Every thing is transmuted into an Instrument of Electioneering. Election is the grand Brama, the immortal Lama, I had almost Said, the Jaggernaught, for Wives are almost ready to burn upon the Pile and Children to be thrown under the Wheel.

In 1801, Thomas Jefferson issued an executive order barring all federal workers from doing anything which would “influence the votes of others, nor take part in the business of electioneering.” Jefferson’s executive order is often seen as the forerunner of the Hatch Act, which puts strict limits on the political activities of government employees at all levels.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 differentiated between electioneering and what it called “issue-related speech,” arguing that electioneering was not entitled to First Amendment protections because it involved an individual candidate or party, rather than an idea. That distinction has not been universally accepted, but it explains why legally, ads defined as “electioneering” can be restricted.

In 2012, for example, a US District Judge found that a series of ads produced by the Hispanic Leadership Fund should be classified as “electioneering communication.” The judge found that the ads in question seemed to implicitly endorse President Obama and could, therefore, be restricted during the 60 days before the election. 

The judge also rejected the claim made by the Hispanic Leadership Fund that the electioneering communication disclosure provisions violated constitutional rights to political speech and to due process. In his decision, the judge wrote in part,

“Both the Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit have made clear that [the Federal Election Campaign Act’s] disclosure requirements for electioneering communications are constitutional because they are justified by the public’s interest in knowing who is speaking about a candidate during the election period.”

“Effete snobs” was a phrase used by Vice President Spiro Agnew to denounce anti-war protesters, and young intellectuals in general, during the Vietnam era. The phrase quickly caught on and was adopted as a slogan by the anti-war movement.

Agnew had a reputation as a no-nonsense, law and order politician and a dramatic orator. His law and order reputation was badly dented later when he was forced to resign as vice president amid charges of tax evasion and bribery. But in 1969, Agnew was at the height of his power.

His famous “effete snobs” speech called out not only leftist protesters, but a whole group of pseudo-intellectuals who Agnew believed were brainwashing young students:

Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated. The student now goes to college to proclaim, rather than to learn. The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated, and a contemporary antagonism known as “The Generation Gap.” A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

Agnew was responding to the so-called Peace Moratorium, a national day of protest in which an estimated two million people across the United States took part in demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. A quarter of a million people gathered in Washington DC, singing songs and holding a late-night vigil. The police clashed with activists outside the White House and elsewhere in the country. In DC, the child development expert Dr Benjamin Spock told the crowd that the war was a “total abomination” that was crippling America and must be stopped.

Agnew delivered his “effete snobs” remarks about a week after the demonstration, at a fundraiser in New Orleans. The vice president asserted that “hardcore dissidents and professional anarchists” were inciting the protests, and that the demonstrators didn’t reflect the true views of most Americans. Nixon had already pledged that he would not be moved in any way by the protests.

Agnew made a series of speeches over the years, criticizing leftist student protesters; in 1970, the New York Times put together a collection of some of his most memorable quotes. The vice president said, for example:

Most of these young people who depend upon the ideology of ‘the movement’ for moral and mental sustenance will in time . . . return to the enduring values, just as every generation before them has done. But unfortunately, there is a much smaller group of students who are committed to radical change through violent means. . . . This is the criminal left that belongs not in a dormitory but in a penitentiary…

One of Agnew’s more memorable descriptions was of the media, when he called them “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Agnew’s “effete snobs” speech, though, quickly became notorious and was co-opted by the left for their own purposes. Political buttons soon appeared, reading, for example, “snob for peace” or “I’m an effete snob for peace.” 

The Baltimore Sun has pointed out that ever since Agnew’s speech, politicians have tried to make political capital by attacking out of touch “snobs” and “elitists” at America’s colleges. Ironically, the Sun notes, these anti-elitist politicians are all highly educated themselves.