Speaker biographies

Thomas S. Foley represented Washington’s Fifth Congressional District for thirty years.
Throughout his long and distinguished career, Mr. Foley served as Caucus Chairman, Majority Whip, Majority Leader, and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Mr. Foley was appointed Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Spokane County and served as a professor at Gonzaga University Law School. In 1960, he was named an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Washington. He began his career in the United States Congress in January of 1965 and served 15 terms. Mr. Foley was appointed by President Clinton as the 25th Ambassador to Japan and served from 1997-2001. Currently, Mr. Foley advises on public law and policy matters for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP in Washington, D.C.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a senior fellow at AEI and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Speaker Gingrich is a member of the Terrorism Task Force for the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Commission on National Security, an advisory board member of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and a member of the Defense Policy Board. Gingrich also served as co-chair, along with former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, of the Task Force on U.N. Reform created by Congress in December 2004. The Task Force delivered its report entitled American Interests and U.N. Reform to Congress last June. Mr. Gingrich is also an editorial board member of the Johns Hopkins University Journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism and a news and political analyst for the Fox News Channel. He is a regular contributor to the Church Report, writes a weekly e-letter for Human Events, and has a daily national radio commentary called Winning the Future with Newt Gingrich. He is the author of nine books and novels, including the New York Times bestseller Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, and most recently, Never Call Retreat. Lee and Grant: The Final Victory, the third and final novel in his trilogy about the Civil War.

Thomas Mann is one of the country's leading authorities on contemporary American politics. Dr. Mann is currently the W. Averell Harriman Senior Fellow in American Governance at the Brookings Institution. From 1987 to 1999, he served as the director of the Governmental Studies Program at Brookings. He previously served as the executive director of the American Political Science Association. A frequent lecturer both in the United States and abroad, he is currently working on projects addressing redistricting and campaign finance reform, and is co-director of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, a joint effort to improve federal election administration regarding the Help America Vote Act. His many books include The Broken Branch, co-authored with Norman J. Ornstein, which is published by Oxford University Press.  He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI. In addition to serving as an election analyst for CBS News, Ornstein writes a weekly column called “Congress Inside Out” for Roll Call newspaper. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other major publications. He appears regularly on television programs including The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose. He serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission, working to ensure that government institutions can be maintained in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington. His efforts in this area are recounted in a personal profile in the June 2003 Atlantic Monthly. Ornstein is co-director of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, a collaborative effort to improve federal election administration with regard to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). In addition to his work on election administration reform, 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 multiyear 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. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Campaign Legal Center and of the Board of Trustees of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America, co-authored by Thomas E. Mann, which is published by Oxford University Press.

John C. Fortier is a research fellow at the America Enterprise Institute.  He is senior counselor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.  He is executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission and was project manager of the Transition to Governing Project.  He is a political scientist who has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware, Boston College, and Harvard University.  He is the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles and was the editor of the third edition of After the People Vote:  A Guide to the Electoral College (AEI 2004).  He coauthored “Presidential Succession and Presidential Leaders,” Catholic University Law Review (Fall 2004); and “President Bush: Legislative Strategist,” in The Bush Presidency (Johns Hopkins University Press 2003).  He is a frequent radio and television commentator on the presidency, Congress, and elections.  He holds a B.A. from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. from Boston College.

View Event Details