Presidential historian H. W. Brands’s new biography of Ronald Reagan and his conclusion that modern American politics is best seen as “The Age of Reagan” has aroused liberals to circulate once again the hoariest myths about the man and his presidency, including the malicious charge that Reagan was deliberately indifferent to the lot of African Americans and other minorities.

Can Xi do it? This is the biggest political question in the world today. “Yes, Xi can,” some tell me in Beijing. “No, he can’t,” say others. The wise know that nobody knows.

In 1972, US president Richard Nixon, with the advice of Kissinger, undertook a masterstroke in 20th-century diplomacy by opening up to China to counterbalance the threat of the Soviet Union. A quarter of a century later, the US-China rapprochement propelled China to become the world's second-largest economy, but the US now considers China a rival, creating cold war version 2.0, with a strange mix of competitors and allies.

David Brady is a Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values in the Stanford Graduate School of Business; and a professor of political science at Stanford.  Douglas Rivers is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University.  An expert on survey research, he is also chief scientist for YouGov PLC, an international, Internet-based polling firm.  Brady and Rivers discuss polling and how to measure change over time.