When we remember presidents who didn't fulfill their promises - for instance George H. W. Bush saying no … - Evan Osnos

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If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable, rather than its literal narrative.

Evan Osnos

When we remember presidents who didn't fulfill their promises - for instance George H. W. Bush saying no new taxes or Barack Obama saying he would close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay - we remember those because they're the exceptions, not the rule.

Bay, Guantanamo, Instance, President, Promise, Saying No

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Orville Schell and John Delury have delivered a brilliantly original and essential book: the road map to China’s quest for national salvation. . . Vivid, literate, and brimming with insights, Wealth and Power deserves to become a classic.

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If you go back and you look at the presidency over the course of history, presidents tend to do what they campaigned on. In the 20th century, presidents between Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter accomplished 73 percent of the things that they said they would do as candidates. Part of that is because once they get into office, their credibility, their ability to do anything depends on doing the things that they said they would.

20Th, Candidates, Looks, Office, President, Said

Actually the idea of having Mexico pay for the wall on the southern border is a nonstarter. That seems to be generally pretty much recognized on both sides of the border. What you find, though, is that logistically it's not impossible.

Ideas, Impossible, Mexico, Pretty, Southern, Wall

Donald Trump has the ability to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal as he says, but if he were to do so, this would be regarded in Tehran as an abrogation of the deal. This would allow the Iranian side of the deal to in effect withdraw because they could say that the United States has not held up its end of the bargain, and therefore we're going to restart our nuclear program.

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Often Americans have heard Donald Trump be very hard on China. But that's not how it's heard over there. In China, his message is being interpreted as the sound of an exhausted America, an America that is seeking to withdraw from its commitments to NATO, to holding up, for instance, human rights around the world.

America, Commitment, Exhausted, Rights, Withdraw