For decades, the AEI Election Watch series has offered serious historical commentary and the latest election insights from the people who know politics best. With so much to discuss and even more at stake, these are two events you cannot afford to miss.
Speaker Biographies
Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner and a resident fellow at AEI. He is a contributor to Fox News Channel, author of “Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics” (Crown Forum, October 2013), and coauthor of “The Almanac of American Politics.” Over the years, he has written for many publications in the United States and several other countries, including The Economist, the Times Literary Supplement, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times of London. Barone received the Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2010, the Barbara Olsen Award from The American Spectator in 2006, and the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association in 1992. Barone lives in Washington, DC. He has traveled to all 50 states and all 435 congressional districts. He has also traveled to 54 foreign countries and has reported on recent elections in Great Britain, Italy, Russia, and Mexico.
Karlyn Bowman compiles and analyzes American public opinion using available polling data on a variety of subjects, including the economy, taxes, the state of workers in America, environment and global warming, attitudes about homosexuality and gay marriage, the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement and free trade, the war in Iraq, and women’s attitudes. In addition, she has studied and spoken about the evolution of American politics because of key demographic and geographic changes. She has often lectured on the role of think tanks in the United States.
John Fortier joined the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) in April 2011. He is a political scientist who focuses on governmental and electoral institutions. Before coming to BPC, he was a research fellow at AEI, where he served as the principal contributor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission, and project manager of the Transition to Governing Project. He also served as director of the Center for the Study of American Democracy at Kenyon College. Fortier is the author of “Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises and Perils” (AEI Press, 2006), author and editor of “After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College” (AEI Press), and author and coeditor, with Norman Ornstein, of “Second Term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed” (Brookings Press, 2007). He is also the author of numerous academic articles in political science and law journals. Fortier has been a regular columnist for The Hill and Politico, is a frequent commentator on elections and government institutions, and has appeared on ABC’s “Nightline,” CNN, Fox News, PBS’s “News Hour,” CBS News, NBC’s “Today Show,” C-SPAN, NPR, Bloomberg, and BBC. He has also taught at Kenyon College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Delaware, Harvard University, and Boston College.
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how to address, consistent with conservative principles, the electoral challenges facing modern American conservatism. This work will culminate in a book titled “New Century, New Deal: How Conservatives Can Win Hearts, Minds, and Elections.” Olsen has worked in senior executive positions at many center-right think tanks. He most recently served from 2006 to 2013 as vice president and director of the National Research Initiative at AEI. He previously worked as vice president of programs at the Manhattan Institute and president of the Commonwealth Foundation. His work has been featured in many prominent publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Review, and The Weekly Standard.
Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at AEI, is a long-time observer and scholar of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for National Journal and The Atlantic called “Washington Inside Out.” For 30 years, he was an election-eve analyst for CBS News; in 2012, he was a principal on-air election-eve analyst for BBC News. He served as codirector of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and participates in AEI’s Election Watch event series. He helped create the Continuity of Government Commission, for which he is senior counselor. Ornstein led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the McCain-Feingold law, which reformed the campaign financing system. Ornstein played a major role in Senate committee reform, in the creation of the Congressional Office of Compliance, and in the creation of the House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and currently directs the Academy Project on Stewarding America. His many books include “The Permanent Campaign and Its Future” (AEI Press, 2000), “The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track” (with Thomas Mann, Oxford University Press, 2006), and, most recently, the New York Times bestseller “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism” (with Thomas Mann, Basic Books, May 2012), which was updated in paperback version in September 2013, named Book of the Year by Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog, named one of the 10 best books on politics in 2012 by The New Yorker, and named one of the best books of 2012 by The Washington Post.
