Tumultuous year in politics – readers and editors pick favorite stories

The year 2024 was dominated by the headlines about a presidential campaign that justified the frequent use of the word “unprecedented” to describe it. It was a year of war in Ukraine and the Middle East; a year filled with earthshaking Supreme Court rulings; a year in which campuses, state legislatures and Congress erupted with bitter arguments ranging from free speech and abortion to LGBTQ rights.

If there was an idea that united The Conversation’s politics coverage, it was that we gave you what was behind the news headlines, not the headlines themselves. You knew what happened; we told you why and how it happened.

Among readers’ favorites in 2024 was a story examining populism, the political ideology that pits “the people” against the elite, and which was at work in many countries − including the U.S. − whose voters threw out ruling parties and their leaders.

Two professors of military ethics examined whether a president could use the military against American citizens – a story sparked by then-candidate Donald Trump’s statements about “people from within” who were “very bad people,” who could very easily be handled, “if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”

And readers dug into a story charting the history of the “Iron Wall” ideology behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position that “a strong Jewish state … refuses any compromises, always identifying the mortal threat to the Jewish people and countering it with an overwhelming show of force.”

One of politics editor Amy Lieberman’s favorite stories was a lighter one by presidential scholar Shannon Bow O’Brien about the often-entertaining history of Democratic conventions in the U.S., including one where Yippies tried to nominate a pig for president. Lieberman loves “O’Brien’s easy recall of historical examples that help us make sense of our world today.”

Politics editor Jeff Inglis selected historian Kathleen DuVal’s story as one of his favorites. DuVal writes about how Native American communities “were elaborate consensus democracies, many of which had survived for generations because of careful attention to checking and balancing power.” Inglis says that the story “opened my eyes to a range of options for self-governance.”

And finally, my favorite story was written in the aftermath of the presidential election. That’s when many were asking how Donald Trump could get elected when he was so burdened with liabilities that would, in another era, have tanked a presidential candidate. Among the loudest voices asking that question were journalists, more than a few of whom asked, “Why am I doing this?” In “What should journalists do when the facts don’t matter?” media historian Michael Socolow reminds all of us that the role of journalism isn’t to advocate, but to inform: “Journalists need to understand how distributing true and useful information out into the world can be its own rewarding service – no matter what happens next.”

Amen to that.

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