Newsweek 09/14/2018

2000 It was November 20, and Newsweek still didn’t know who would be the nation’s 43rd president—thus the cover image merging the faces of Vice President Al Gore and George W. Bush. The “strange legal-political-moral battle” that determined the eventual winner ended in a Supreme Court ruling that, says David A. Kaplan, the author of this issue’s “The Supreme Question” (Page 20), demonstrated the dangerous overreach of America’s highest court. Thanks to that decision, Bush would ultimately win the presidency; Gore would win an Academy Award. 1974 “Wall Street’s bears are growling, evoking grim memories of the 1929 crash,” Newsweek warned on September 9, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average had recently fallen 119 points. The recession—or “stagflation”—continued into 1975, and unemployment remained high well into Jimmy Carter’s presidency. 2008 Senator John McCain was close…

1936 — 2018 Cindy McCain touches her cheek to the casket of her husband, Senator John McCain, during his memorial service at the Arizona State Capitol on August 29. McCain died August 25 at 81 after a long battle with brain cancer. The former Vietnam prisoner of war was a hero to many, both as a soldier and as a politician who, said former President Barack Obama, was faithful “to something higher—the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed.” The senator, who ran for president in 2000 and 2008, was honored at the memorial by Joe Biden, his friend and former political opponent. “Character is destiny,” he said. “John had character.” ROSS D. FRANKLIN/GETTY; ERIC THAYER/GETTY…

“Where voices are stifled, money talks.” » ROBERT HIRSCHHORN KNEW EXACTLY WHAT type of jurors he wanted in the months ahead of George Zimmerman’s 2013 trial. His client, the shooter of Trayvon Martin, was, at the time, “the most hated man in America,” says Hirschhorn. “I particularly wanted women in that jury. I had concluded that if a woman was getting her head pounded into the cement, and she had a gun on her, she would be more inclined to reach for that gun than a man.” An all-female jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder for the killing of Martin. He claimed he shot the 17-year-old in self-defense, but critics said the shooting was racially motivated and that the teen was killed because he was black. For Hirschhorn, a decades-long trial consultant, the…

“Now, the Syrian people know who our real enemy is. It is Assad, Iran and Russia. Not Israel.” HANI’S MOTHER WARNED HIM as a boy in Syria that if he didn’t finish his dinner, Zionists would come and drink his blood. Yet when his own government shot him as he fled with his wife and children, he asked field medics to take him to Israel. With half of Hani’s face missing, Israeli soldiers searched him for weapons before bringing him to the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. Two years later, he is still undergoing extensive reconstructive surgery. “I heard from other Syrians who had been here that Israel takes good care of us, unlike Arab countries,” he says. Syria has never recognized the creation of the state of Israel, forbids anyone with an…

CHINA WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE the political strength and economic heft to win a trade war with the U.S. But President Donald Trump’s challenge to this conventional wisdom reveals a surprising vulnerability in China’s economics and politics. China’s economic ascent has depended on a willingness among world leaders to look past—and, when necessary, explain away—its unsavory aspects, primarily intellectual property theft, state subsidies of business and barriers to foreign competitors. Trump has shown no such willingness. He has made tariffs to combat Chinese trade abuses a centerpiece of his political pitch to middle-class voters, betting that China’s political leaders and economy are more vulnerable to pressure than the experts predicted. And the evidence is mounting that he was right. China’s key advantage in a trade war was never going to be economic,…

HERE’S A GAME I PLAY when I give a talk about the Supreme Court: “If you think Roe v. Wade was a persuasive ruling, raise your hand.” In most venues, a majority of hands in the audience go up. “Keep your hand up if you believe Bush v. Gore was also persuasive.” Virtually all the hands go down. I tell them, “You’re hypocrites. The cases are about the same thing.” I’d like to see an amended version of this mischief at the confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the high court. I want senators to ask Kavanaugh about Bush v. Gore, the 2000 ruling that stopped the electoral recount in Florida and awarded the presidency to George W. Bush. The question would be difficult to evade—and it might…