Michael Barone

Michael Barone is Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He grew up in Detroit and Birmingham, Michigan. He graduated from Harvard College (1966) and Yale Law School (1969), and was an editor of the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Law Journal.

Mr. Barone served as Law Clerk to Judge Wade H. McCree, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 1969 to 1971. From 1974 to 1981 he was a Vice President of the polling firm of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. From 1981 to 1988 he was a member of the editorial page staff of the Washington Post. From 1989 to 1996 and again from 1998 to 2009, he was a Senior Writer with U.S. News & World Report. From 1996 to 1998 he was a Senior Staff Editor at Reader’s Digest.

Mr. Barone has been co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, the first edition of which edition appeared in 1971; the 25th edition was published in June 2017. He is also the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (Free Press, 1990), The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again (Regnery, 2001), Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation’s Future (Crown Forum, 2004), Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers (Crown Forum, 2007) and Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics (Crown Forum, October 2013).

Over the years he has written for many other publications in the United States and several other countries, including the Economist, the Times Literary Supplement and the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times of London. His weekly column is syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Mr. Barone received the Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2010, the Barbara Olsen Award from The American Spectator in 2006 and the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association in 1992.

Mr. Barone lives in Washington, D.C. He has traveled to all 50 states and all 435 congressional districts, and also to 54 foreign countries.

HARD AMERICA/SOFT AMERICA: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for Our Nation's Future (Crown, 2004)

HOW AMERICA'S POLITICAL PARTIES CHANGE (AND HOW THEY DON'T) (Encounter Books, 2019)

MENTAL MAPS OF THE FOUNDERS: How Geographic Imagination Guided America’s Revolutionary Leadership (Encounter Books, 2023)

OUR FIRST REVOLUTION: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers (Crown, 2007)

SHAPING OUR NATION: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics (Crown, 2013)