Morton Kondracke

About Morton Kondracke

Morton Kondracke has been a journalist for nearly 50 years, 45 of them in Washington, and has covered nearly every phase of American politics and foreign policy. He’s done so in newspapers, magazines and on radio and TV.

In 2006, he won The Washington Post’s Crystal Ball Tournament of Champions Award for correctly predicting the Democratic takeover of Congress, outpacing 10 other previous Crystal Ball winners. He previously won that award in 1994 and was runner-up in 1996.

In April, 2011 Kondracke retired after 20 years as executive editor and columnist for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and remains with the publication today as contributing editor. He now holds the Jack Kemp Chair in Political Economy in the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress where he is researching and writing about the late Jack Kemp’s congressional career, his leadership role during the Reagan era, his presidential campaign and his influence on the Republican Party and the nation. Kondracke also pens a monthly column “Pennsylvania Avenue” on national politics, domestic and foreign policy that is syndicated nationally.

He was a regular commentator for the Fox News Channel from 1996 to 2013. He was a co-host of the weekly political show, The Beltway Boys and was a panelist on Special Report with Bret Baier.

Kondracke is the author of Saving Milly: Love, Politics and Parkinson’s Disease (2001), a New York Times and Washington Post best seller. Saving Milly was also the subject of a CBS Sunday Night movie (March 2005).

Kondracke was a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group from the inception of the highly rated NBC/PBS talk show in 1982 until Fox News began The Beltway Boys in 1998.

He was executive editor (1977 to 1985) and senior editor (1986 to 1991) for The New Republic; Kondracke wrote its “White House Watch” column (1981 to 1985). Kondracke was the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek (February 1985 to September 1986). Kondracke served as a panelist for This Week with David Brinkley on ABC-TV (monthly, December 1984 to March 1988), as a columnist for Wall Street Journal (monthly, 1980 to 1985) and the United Features Syndicate (twice weekly, 1983 to 1985), and as a panelist for the 1984 Reagan-Mondale Presidential Debate on Foreign Policy.

He was also a correspondent for The Chicago Sun-Times (1963 to 1977), writing from the Washington Bureau (1968 to 1977), as a White House Correspondent (1974 to 1977), and as a reporter for the Springfield Bureau Chief (1963 to 1968).

On the air, Kondracke was the host of National Desk, the PBS documentary series, from 1993 to 1999. He also served as host ofAmerican Interest, another PBS series. He was a commentator for National Public Radio (1972 to 1982) and was a talk show host on WRC-AM in Washington (1981 to 1983).

Kondracke was an occasional panelist on various shows, including Meet the Press, Crossfire, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer andVoice of America. He’s had articles published in The New York Times, The Economist, Reader’s Digest, The Washingtonian and The Weekly Standard. He can be seen in the movies Dave and Independence Day.

Kondracke is on the board of trustees at Dartmouth College and the Parkinson’s Action Network. He is on the Founders Council of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College (A.B. 1960) and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.