On January 17, 1960 Dwight Eisenhower famously called out the “military-industrial complex” in his last presidential speech to the nation. Though it apparently provoked little serious comment at the time, this 15-minute broadcast has steadily grown in stature over the past half-century, with its clear warning that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist” with the emergence of a permanent war economy.

Some commentators, like latter-day spin doctors, downplay this aspect of the speech, viewing it simply as a restatement of typical Cold War fare. While Eisenhower did invoke the struggle with the Soviet Union (“the conflict engulfing the world” that “unhappily promises to be of indefinite duration”), this was not the point of his address. We now know that he thought about this speech for two years and worked on several drafts, concentrating on the danger of the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” whose “influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.”

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As we go into the final days of a dismal presidential campaign where too many issues have been fudged or eluded — and the media only want to talk about is who’s up and who’s down — the biggest issue on which the candidates have given us the clearest choice is whether the rich should pay more in taxes. 

President Obama says emphatically yes. He proposes ending the Bush tax cut for people earning more than $250,000 a year, and requiring those with high incomes to pay in taxes at least 30 percent of any income over $1 million (the so-called “Buffett Rule”).

Mitt Romney says emphatically no. He proposes cutting tax rates by 20 percent, which would reduce taxes on the rich far more than anyone else. He also wants to extend the Bush tax cut for the wealthy, and reduce or eliminate taxes on dividends and capital gains. 

Romney says he’ll close loopholes and eliminate deductions used by the rich so that their ...

Liberals strain to understand why so many blue-collar whites have made their home in the Republican Party. Yes, the GOP better connects with this group on social and lifestyle levels. Still, with working people under so much economic strain these days, it seems odd that they'd let a culture war centered on emotion trump their bread-and-butter concerns.

When did this all begin? A good answer is 60 years ago, when a Republican congressman named Richard Nixon gave the "Checkers speech."

The address "foreshadowed the emergence of a new conservative populism in America, emphasizing appeals to social and cultural 'identity' rather than economic interest," Lee Huebner, a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, writes. Later publisher of The International Herald Tribune, Huebner explains the power and historic significance of the Checkers speech in an article scheduled to appear on theAtlantic.com this weekend.