Speaker biographies

Alvin S. Felzenberg is an adjunct faculty member at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He was previously a visiting professor of politics at Princeton University. In 2005, he was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mr. Felzenberg was the principal spokesman for the 9/11 Commission and an adviser to the Departments of Defense and State, and he served in several senior staff positions at the U.S. House of Representatives and as an assistant secretary of state in New Jersey. His recent books include The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t) (Basic Books, 2008) and Governor Tom Kean: From the New Jersey Statehouse to the 9-11 Commission (Rutgers University Press, 2006).

John C. Fortier is a research fellow at AEI. He studies American politics, the presidency, continuity of government, elections, the Electoral College, election reform, and presidential succession and disability. He is the senior counselor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission, and a fortnightly columnist for Politico. Mr. Fortier’s books include Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils (AEI Press, 2006), After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College (third edition, AEI Press, 2004), and Second-Term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed (Brookings Institution Press, 2007). He is also a frequent radio and television commentator on the presidency, Congress, and elections.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI. He also serves as an election analyst for CBS News and writes a weekly column called “Congress Inside Out” for Roll Call. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other major publications, and he regularly appears on television programs such as Nightline, Charlie Rose, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where he was recently recognized as the most frequent guest over the program’s thirty years. Mr. Ornstein’s campaign finance working group of scholars and practitioners helped shape the major law, known as McCain-Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. He serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission and as codirector of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project. Mr. Ornstein is a member of the boards of the Public Broadcasting Service, the Campaign Legal Center, and 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 Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI Press, 2000), and The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford University Press, 2006), both with Thomas E. Mann; Debt and Taxes: How America Got Into Its Budget Mess and What to Do About It (AEI Press, 1994), with John H. Makin; and, most recently, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), with Michael Malbin and Thomas Mann.