Lincoln Chafee

Lincoln Chafee

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Lincoln Davenport Chafee was born and raised in Rhode Island. He earned a degree in Classics from Brown University in 1975. While there, he was captain of the wrestling team and received the Francis M. Driscoll Award for leadership, scholarship and athletics.

After graduation, Senator Chafee attended horseshoeing school in Bozeman, Montana. For the next seven years, he worked as a blacksmith at harness racetracks in the United States and Canada. One of the horses he shod, Overburden, set the track record at Northlands Park in Edmonton, Alberta.

Upon returning to Rhode Island, Senator Chafee served two terms on the Warwick City Council and was elected Mayor of the City four times. As Mayor, Lincoln Chafee had a strong record of fiscal management, environmental protection, open space acquisition, intergovernmental cooperation, economic development, good labor relations, and significant increases in funding for schools.

In November, 1999, Chafee was appointed by the Governor of Rhode Island to fill the unexpired term of his father, the late Senator John H. Chafee. On November 7, 2000, Chafee was elected to a six year term in the United States Senate. During his time in the Senate, he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

In 2006, Senator Chafee prevailed in a September primary but lost the November election in a nationally watched race. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Watson Institute at Brown University in Providence. He is the author of Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President.

Blog Entries by Lincoln Chafee

On Morality of War, Art Imitates Life

Posted July 28, 2008 | 01:41 PM (EST)


The last scene of Sydney Pollack's 1975 film, Three Days of the Condor, has eerie relevance to current events.

"Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?" Robert Redford's Joseph Turner asks Cliff Robertson's J. Higgins. A heated exchange ensues and Turner demands that the American people...

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Booze and the Economy

23 Comments | Posted July 23, 2008 | 01:18 PM (EST)


The media is buzzing this week over footage of President Bush explaining our economic woes at a Houston political fundraiser by saying "Wall Street got drunk."

"There's no question about it," Bush told his audience, "Wall Street got drunk -- that's one of the reasons I asked you to...

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Roger Williams, the First Amendment and the Presidential Campaign

20 Comments | Posted July 21, 2008 | 05:35 PM (EST)


Throughout the Bush era, I have witnessed a blurring of the line that separates church from state. So I am not surprised by the news that our presidential candidates plan to attend a California megachurch forum together in August. This marks the first time the candidates have agreed to a...

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Beware of Growling Bears

29 Comments | Posted July 16, 2008 | 05:36 PM (EST)


On September 11th, 2001, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to give a talk on a missile defense shield at Johns Hopkins University. Her speech would not have mentioned al Qaeda or Islamic extremism. One might argue that the Bush administration's obsession during that period with long-range missiles diverted...

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Obama's Next Op-ed

41 Comments | Posted July 14, 2008 | 03:56 PM (EST)


Senator Barack Obama boldly put his plan for Iraq in print on the op-ed page of the New York Times today. In it, he says he will "pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq's stability..." I read that literally -- a diplomatic...

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Rolling Back the Clock

3 Comments | Posted July 9, 2008 | 02:13 PM (EST)


President Bush is attending his last G-8 Summit today in Japan. Let's consider the world he inherited when he attended his first, back in 2001. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reminisced about that event when he addressed a joint session of Congress in March of 2006. I was there in...

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Identity Crisis

39 Comments | Posted July 7, 2008 | 02:59 PM (EST)


As the Republican Party moves to engineer itself for a post-Bush era, many Americans are reconsidering the definition of conservatism. The sad death of my former colleague Jesse Helms and today's New York Times editorials on Nelson Rockefeller and Dwight Eisenhower offer an opportunity to consider the current state of...

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Pakistan: The Real Teetering Domino of the Middle East

27 Comments | Posted June 30, 2008 | 05:32 PM (EST)


We're used to seeing Iraq and Afghanistan in the news, but recently, reports from the greater Middle East's teetering domino, Pakistan, have appeared on the front pages of newspapers across America.

Today's New York Times features a three-page article by Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde detailing the strength of...

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Iran Policy: Foolhardy and Dangerous

Posted May 28, 2008 | 12:46 PM (EST)


"Are we going to attack Iran?"

The question comes up frequently whenever I appear before a group these days, to talk about current events, or my book, Against The Tide. Concern about the Bush/Cheney people launching a third war in the Greater Middle East can only be heightened now that...

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