What It Means to Be American

America’s founding is rooted in the power of the people to select their own leader. Efforts to sway the vote—via gritty campaigns driven by emotion, piles of cash, and brutal, drag-out battles—are equally American.
Years, decades and even centuries later, the essence of these fights can often be glimpsed through their ephemera—the signs, slogans, and campaign buttons that both bolster true believers and aim to coax …

It is a common complaint that the drive for traffic at news sites in the digital age has debased our political dialogue, turning a responsible press into a media scramble for salacious sound bites. But partisanship and scandal-mongering go way back in the American political tradition. And there was no internet to blame in 1793, the year an especially vicious and salacious newsman arrived on …

 
This is an Inquiry produced for What It Means to Be American, a partnership of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and Zócalo Public Square.

As Asia continues its rapid advance in the global economy, the resources of Hawaii—as well as its strategic geography—uniquely position it as a portal into the future of relations between the U.S., Asia, and the world.
Or as Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, put it: “Location, location, location.”
At a Smithsonian/Zócalo “What It Means to Be American” event supported by the …

I still remember them at the dining table after dinner each night in our Honolulu home. Three elegant sisters, styled out of Vogue magazine, their jet black hair in neat chignons and pixie haircuts, each savoring a cigarette and lingering over a glass of bourbon. Their laughter rang, but did not always conceal the dark ironies and black humor of memories they laced together of …

Long before Hawaii was a U.S. state, it was a Pacific nation.
Though the U.S. has only recently embraced a shift from emphasizing its relationships across the Atlantic to those across its western shores—see the rise of China, the Pivot to Asia, the idea of a “Pacific Century”—it’s worth remembering that America’s 50th state has had close connections in the Asia-Pacific region for centuries. This …

Last year, when my driver’s license was set to expire, I went online to apply for a renewal but was thwarted by error messages. Exasperated at the time I had to spend entering my information and getting nowhere, I called the help hotline only to be informed, after a 20-minute holding time, that because I had gotten eyeglasses since my last license was issued, I …

Soon after I founded the Pacific Pinball Museum, an ex-police officer contacted me, offering to sell a rare artifact that was once confiscated by the Oakland Police force.
The object in question was a Bally Bumper pinball machine from 1936. For many, this machine is …

Americans have many icons. But those dealing with the exploration and expansion of the United States seem especially beloved: stagecoaches, steamboats, trains—and the railroad caboose. From the mid-19th century through the last decade of the 20th century, the “little red caboose behind the train” has had iconic qualities similar to the little red schoolhouse, being the subject of songs, books, and toys that remain popular …

Saturday, August 31, 1991. It was Labor Day weekend, the very definition of a sleepy, late-summer day in that simple, pre-digital world. H.W. Bush was president, the Gulf War was five months gone. The biggest news was that Kyrgyzstan had declared its independence from the Soviet Union. Precisely nothing was happening.
Well, not quite nothing.
In the gently swelling cornfields of southeastern Iowa bordering the Norman Rockwell-brushed …