October 21, 2004

Speaker Biographies

Carla Anne Robbins is Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Since 1999, Robbins has been the lead writer on diplomatic and national security issues and has coordinated and edited diplomatic and defense coverage for the Journal. She also edits the national security coverage for the Journal's Washington Bureau. Ms. Robbins won the 2003 Edward Weintal Prize for diplomatic coverage. She has also shared in two Pulitzer prizes at the Journal and the Peter R. Weitz Senior Prize, and is a winner of an Overseas Press Club Award and an honorable mention from the OPC. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. 

Alexis Simendinger has been a White House reporter for National Journal since 1997. Before joining the magazine, she covered the White House for BNA (the Bureau of National Affairs Inc.), a private news and information publisher in Washington, where she also covered Congress, executive departments and the Supreme Court. She was part of a team of BNA reporters that won a National Press Club reporting award in 1996. She has covered the George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Prior to working in Washington, Ms. Simendinger reported for The Tampa Tribune in Tampa, Fla., from 1983-1986. She is a frequent guest on television, including CNN and PBS’ Washington Week, and on radio, discussing national politics, the presidency and the White House.
 
Thomas E. Mann is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution and former director of Governmental Studies at Brookings.  Before that, Mann was executive director of the American Political Science Association.  Dr. Mann is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Public Administration. His published works include Vital Statistics on Congress; A Question of Balance: The President, the Congress and Foreign Policy; The Permanent Campaign and Its Future; and The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook.  He is currently working on projects dealing with campaign finance reform (in the U.S. and in other democracies), redistricting, and the continuity of Congress. 

John C. Fortier is a research fellow at the America Enterprise Institute.  He is executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission and was project manager of the Transition to Governing Project.  He 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).  Most recently, 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.

View event details