Norman Ornstein

Norman Ornstein Speaker Biography

Journalist Norman Ornstein is a Washington fixture, known for covering Congress and politics in his reporting and analysis. As a member of USA Today's board of contributors, a CBS News election analyst, and a regular columnist for Roll Call, he delivers highly respected commentary on the political process and the Washington political scene.
Columbia Journalism Review called him "the nation's hottest pundit." And National Journal spotlighted him as an "icon of the press," one of the "select few (who) get quoted alone: the authorities, society's sages, those called on to deliver the final word."
Ornstein serves as a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the nation's largest and most respected think tanks, and is a regular contributor to The New York Times and The Washington Post. He also led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the law, known as McCain-Feingold, which reformed the campaign financing system, and in 2004, he was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Addtionally, he has written and co-authored numerous books on Washington politics, including The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track, and Vital Statistics on Congress, among many others.

He began his career on Capitol Hill in 1969, and today is considered amongst the upper echelon of political pundits, making regular appearances on programs such as Nightline, Face the Nation, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. An experienced journalist in the heart of the nation's capital, Ornstein is a revered commentator and an in-demand political speaker.