Author Biography | Full-Length Samples
Donna Brazile
A household name inside and outside the Beltway, Donna Brazile delivers her Washington insight and political savvy in a weekly column available to newspapers nationwide through Newspaper Enterprise Association. Brazile provides a valued and informed opinion on current events, drawing on her vast experience as a political strategist, journalist, and educator.
Brazile is a weekly contributor and political commentator on CNN. She also appears regularly on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" and is a frequent contributor to National Public Radio's "Political Corner." She chairs the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, contributes to Roll Call newspaper and Ms. Magazine, and serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland.
Brazile became the first (and remains the only) African American to lead a major presidential campaign, when she chaired Al Gore's 2000 campaign against George W. Bush. Prior to that, she worked on Democratic presidential campaigns each election cycle dating back to Jimmy Carter's successful run in 1976. In the 1990s, Brazile served as chief of staff and press secretary to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia, and also found time to advise the Clinton-Gore team to its 1992 election and 1996 re-election.
Brazile has received numerous awards and honors, including being named one of Washingtonian Magazine's 100 Most Powerful Women and one of Essence Magazine's 50 Most Powerful Women. Most recently, the New Orleans native was appointed by Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to serve on the state's long term recovery authority in the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Brazile is the author of Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics, which is a memoir of her life in the political arena.
Current Samples
September 2nd, 2010
For immediate release
DONNA BRAZILE
Glenn beckons return to what nearly destroyed us
By Donna Brazile
They came in the tens of thousands to the "Restoring Honor" rally, believing every word conservative Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck told them about the rally being nonpolitical.
A colleague overheard a man ask a family of nine -- grandparents, children and grandchildren -- if they were "in Washington for the tea party rally." The man replied, "We're not tea party, this is about honoring our troops." Honoring our troops is something, perhaps the only thing, President Obama and Glenn Beck agree on completely. No recent president, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, has tried to do more than President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama to honor our brave fighting men and women. All Americans are on the same page about this one.
There were present, of course, the "Mad Hatters," those tea partiers who can't resist the impulse to wear tri-cornered colonial hats wi ...
August 26th, 2010
For immediate release
DONNA BRAZILE
Five years after Hurricane Katrina, let's remember our common humanity
By Donna Brazile
It's been five years since Hurricane Katrina turned the streets of my beloved hometown of New Orleans into an array of devastating rivers. I was there a week after the hurricane killed hundreds, destroyed homes and historic buildings and eroded everyone's confidence in government.
It's as if life has been divided into two parts: pre-Katrina and after-Katrina (PK and AK) because nothing has been the same since. Hurricane Katrina was an equal-opportunity destroyer. She didn't care if you were white or black, lived in a lakefront mansion or in public housing in the lower ninth ward. She cared only if you were in her way.
Since I was a little girl, I've worried about my family being scattered and unreachable, and, even worse than that, of disappearing altogether.
Within hours of Katrina reaching landfall, my worst childhood fear came true. I d ...
August 19th, 2010
For immediate release
DONNA BRAZILE
Ground Zero and the tea party
By Donna Brazile
Just days after 9/11, President George W. Bush visited a Washington, D.C., mosque and said: "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace."
In today's hyper-partisan political climate, most (but not all) Republicans in Washington and a few Democrats have ignored those words, spoken less than a week after the worst terror attack on our nation's soil. At that moment, it would have been easy and expedient to demonize some Americans because of their faith. Today, what President Bush then eschewed has become the latest political fashion. It's what everyone seems to wear to the tea party.
Since there's so much talk about the U.S. Constitution these days, let's talk about what our forefathers confronted when trying to get it approved. Back in 1787, it was read but not universally approved. The anti-Federalists ranged from those with ...
August 12th, 2010
For immediate release
DONNA BRAZILE
Colorado a welcome breeze for Democrats
By Donna Brazile
It's been a tough summer for Democrats. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are worried about their prospects for the fall, even as the White House political shop continues to struggle to find its voice. But with Tuesday's primary results out of Colorado, Democrats may have a glimpse at the roadmap they need to use to cut their losses in November.
August is long and humid in Washington, D.C., which often means frustration and hot heads among politicians. Usually the squabbles are between the opposing sides of the aisle, but it takes a special kind of climate to spark a quarrel within a party. Yet we got to see precisely this on display recently when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs attacked what he termed the "professional left" for claiming that Obama is too similar to the last president. "I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug-tested," Gibbs ...
August 5th, 2010
For immediate release
DONNA BRAZILE
Lessons from the oil spill
By Donna Brazile
The massive "Gusher in the Gulf" -- considered by many to be one of the worst environmental disasters in our nation's history -- gave us three months of teachable moments. Here are seven that I hope we never forget:
1. Unregulated or loosely regulated international mega-corporations threaten our democracy. Imagine if a terrorist caused the BP/Transocean/Halliburton oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico? Would the federal response have been different? The fact that it resulted from apparent corporate negligence and greed rather than malicious intent makes no difference in terms of damage suffered, but we ought to consider as a country whether it made a difference in terms of our reaction. BP initially lied about the harm, avoided taking full responsibility for the mess, and only buckled after intense pressure from the government.
Corporatists are not necessarily capitalists. Corporati ...
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