the essence of the 'Reagan mystique,' the aura of power that has carried the nation along with the man who is arguably the most effective president since Franklin D. Roosevelt." In 1991, he won the H.L. Mencken Prize for excellence in writing and commentary. Under Pruden's editorship, every Saturday The Washington Times ran a full page of stories on the American Civil War, the only daily newspaper in the United States to do so. Pruden called it "probably our single most popular feature", and noted that "There are more books published on the Civil War than on any other American topic." Pruden said that "the Civil War page has just as many stories about glorifying the Union as it does the Confederacy." Soon after Pruden retired as editor-in-chief, the Times announced that the Civil War page would be expanded to include coverage of all America's wars and would be renamed "America at War." Controversies Pruden's retirement from his position as Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Times in 2008 was widely seen as involuntary. The Columbia Journalism Review describes him as having been "pushed out amid allegations that he allowed racism to fester in the newsroom." On November 17, 2009, Pruden published an opinion piece in The Washington Times titled "Obama bows, the nation cringes," where he set forth his thoughts on what he considered President Obama's breaches of etiquette committed on his tour of Asia, such as bowing to Emperor Akihito of Japan. In the article, he expressed the opinion that since President Obama was "sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii," he "has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what [America] is about." A number of commentators criticized the column as racist. In 2013, Pruden returned to The Washington Times as part of "a wide-ranging shakeup" following the death of Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the newspaper's founder. Having him as an editor again was viewed by many as damaging to The Washington Times'''s reputation. The Columbia Journalism Review quoted an unnamed senior Washington Times official as saying that Pruden's return was "a huge blow to the influence and credibility of the paper." References External links The Washington Times'': Pruden on Politics 1935 births 2019 deaths American newspaper editors American male journalists The Washington Times people Writers from Little Rock, Arkansas Writers from Memphis, Tennessee