Norman J. Ornstein

Norman J. Ornstein is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He is one of the most visible and most trusted commentators on the American political system. Ornstein also serves as an election analyst for CBS News. In addition, he pens the weekly column Congress Inside Out for Roll Call newspaper. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other major publications, and regularly appears on such television programs as The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose.

Through a combination of scholarship, hard journalism, and practical down-to-earth understanding of human nature, he shares his insights on the Washington political scene, the 2008 election, and such hot issues as campaign finance reform, economic policy, and healthcare.

Ornstein also dabbles in comedy. He began working with Al Franken in 1992 when he served as Comedy Central's pollster and commentator covering the party conventions and the election for "Indecision '92." He has also done comedy with satirist Mark Russell.

Ornstein serves as Senior Counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission, working to ensure that our institutions of government can be maintained in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington; his efforts in this area are recounted in a profile of him in the June 2003 Atlantic Monthly. His campaign finance working group of scholars and practitioners helped shape the major law known as McCain/Feingold, which reformed the campaign financing system. Legal Times referred to him as "a principal drafter of the law" and his role in its design and enactment was profiled in the February 2004 issue of Washington Lawyer.

He co-directed a multi-year effort called the Transition to Governing Project to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign, and is currently co-directing a project on election reform. A member of the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the Campaign Legal Center, and of the Board of Trustees of the US Capitol Historical Society, Ornstein was also elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.

His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future; Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy, and Debt and Taxes: How America Got Into Its Budget Mess and What to Do About It. The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track, co-authored by Thomas E. Mann, was named one of the best books of 2006 by The Washington Post.