With President Trump at the helm, the United States has been a controversial and divisive leader whose actions have been detrimental for the international order. Indeed, Trump’s presidency has entailed more than the United States retreating from its role as the international leader as it has also become an active force of disruption. Polls currently suggest that Trump will not secure a second term in the US general election on November 3, and so the time has come to ask: if Trump loses to the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, will the United States retake the leadership of the international order?

The No-So-Last Brahmin: The Legacy of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Today by Luke A. Nichter

September 25, 2020

I do not know when I first heard the name “Henry Cabot Lodge”—either in high school or college. However, I remember my reaction. He was a person with a famous-sounding name, yet I could not place him. Was he the one who was Woodrow Wilson’s nemesis? If so, how old could he have been when he ran with Richard Nixon in 1960? (He did look older, more like the grandfatherly Eisenhower than the youthful Nixon.) For this kid who grew up in the Midwest, Lodge had one of those names that you knew was important but you did not know why. For many, the misunderstanding is compounded by the fact that Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was named not for his father, who died when “Cabot” was young, but his grandfather. In addition, there are so many Cabots and Lodges, especially in the northeast, and family traditions are such that certain first names, like Henry, repeat throughout multiple generations of the family tree.