Bismarck's

(It's been running fine since Otto von Bismarck's day.)

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Deficit Pipe Dreams: Social Security Cuts Would Increase Inequity and Keep Deficits, Er, High RJ 2010

In Bismarck's 19th century mix of monarchism, nationalism and paternalism, the first two led to his historical label as a conservative.

Bismarck's Welfare State Legacy 2011

Bismarck's acquaintance with key conservatives got him through the gate; thereafter, he unleashed his genius on the king, one contemporary noting that "Bismarck offers himself almost as a minister, a very active and intelligent adjutant."

The Shrewdest of the Shrewd Geoffrey Wawro 2011

"Politics is not the art of the possible," economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote 50 years ago in a letter to John F. Kennedy, contradicting Bismarck's aphorism.

Greek Scenarios Don't Overlap David Wessel 2011

There was a rough justice in Bismarck's fall; he was dismissed at the age of 75 by Wilhelm II, a monarch who was, in the words of Bismarck's son, "cold as a block of ice, convinced that people only exist to be used."

The Shrewdest of the Shrewd Geoffrey Wawro 2011

Mr. Steinberg notes that Bismarck's tactical use of democracy drew much from his controversial friendship, in the early 1860s, with the dashing socialist Ferdinand Lassalle.

The Shrewdest of the Shrewd Geoffrey Wawro 2011

In 1863 one of Otto von Bismarck's colleagues described the 47-year-old Prussian minister-president's appearance and aura: full red-blond mustache, ­thinning hair, a "tall broad-shouldered figure, mighty and impressive," but with "a certain casualness in stance, movement and speech that had something provocative about it."

The Shrewdest of the Shrewd Geoffrey Wawro 2011

It was a military monarchy that, in Bismarck's most famous phrase, had secured itself not by "speeches and ­majorities" but by "blood and iron."

The Shrewdest of the Shrewd Geoffrey Wawro 2011

Bismarck's greatest strength—his ­cynicism, which was the seed of his ­realpolitik—was also his great weakness and most disastrous legacy to Germany.

The Shrewdest of the Shrewd Geoffrey Wawro 2011

None of Bismarck's conservative contemporaries could make sense of this relationship, but Bismarck learned from Lassalle clever ways to ­discredit liberalism and what the ­Germans called Manchestertum—the mania for British-style capitalism ­wedded to parliamentary government.

The Shrewdest of the Shrewd Geoffrey Wawro 2011