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Why Buy the Cow?

Most of us will never meet a president. But your House Rep or Senator? They're supposed to speak for you.

Words: Laicie Heeley
Pictures: Marc Johns / Cast from Clay
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  • Since the beginning of the American experiment, presidents have tussled with Congress over how to handle foreign threats. That creative conflict is supposed to be the democratic ideal. But there were also moments when lawmakers realized it was easier to just… not do the job. In the best of times, Congress oversaw the president and[...]
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Since the beginning of the American experiment, presidents have tussled with Congress over how to handle foreign threats. That creative conflict is supposed to be the democratic ideal. But there were also moments when lawmakers realized it was easier to just… not do the job. In the best of times, Congress oversaw the president and pushed back on missteps — or prevented those missteps in the first place. In the worst of times, it checked out. Then, the dawn of the nuclear age blew up that precarious balance.

Listen and subscribe now on Apple PodcastsStitcherSpotifyPocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcasts to receive a new episode every two weeks.

Guests: Kevin Butterfield, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon; Kori Schake, American Enterprise Institute; Laura Ellyn Smith, University of Oxford; Jeremi Suri, University of Texas at Austin.

Additional Reading:

The Presidency Is Too Big to Succeed, Jeremi Suri, The Atlantic.

The Runaway Presidency, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Atlantic.

Adults in a Room IV, Inkstick Media.

Laicie Heeley

Editor in Chief

Laicie Heeley is the founding CEO of Inkstick Media, where she serves as Editor in Chief of the foreign policy magazine Inkstick and Executive Producer and Host of the PRX- and Inkstick-produced podcast, Things That Go Boom. Heeley’s reporting has appeared on public radio stations across America and the BBC, where she’s explored global security issues including domestic terrorism, disinformation, nuclear weapons, and climate change. Prior to launching Inkstick, Heeley was a Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program and Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Her publications include work on sanctions, diplomacy, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, along with the first full accounting of US counterterrorism spending after 9/11.

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  • Mexico's gotten a lot of praise for its feminist foreign policy — despite raging problems with femicide in the country. Mexican women though, are doing more than just pointing out the hypocrisy. They're using these new foreign policy tools to fight back at home in the war against their own bodies. On this episode, we[...]
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