Hendrik Hertzberg
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Hendrik Hertzberg (b. 1943) is an American journalist, best known as the principal (and left-leaning) political commentator for The New Yorker magazine. He has also been a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and editor of The New Republic, and is the author of Politics: Observations & Arguments.
The son of Sidney Hertzberg, a journalist and political activist, and Hazel Whitman Hertzberg, a Protestant professor of history and education at Columbia University, Hendrik Hertzberg was born in New York City and educated in the public schools of Rockland County, New York, and Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1965. As a San Francisco correspondent for Newsweek in 1966, he covered the rise of the hippies, the emergence of rock groups such as the Grateful Dead, Ronald Reagan's successful campaign for governor of California, and The Beatles' last concert.
Hertzberg served as an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1966 to 1969. Upon his discharge he was hired by William Shawn, then the editor of The New Yorker, as a reporter for "The Talk of the Town" department. In 1977 he joined the White House speechwriting staff and was Carter's chief speechwriter for the final two years of his term.
Hertzberg was twice editor of The New Republic, from 1981 to 1985 and then from 1989 to 1992, alternating with Michael Kinsley in that job. In between stints as editor he wrote for that and other magazines and was a fellow at two institutes at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the Institute of Politics and the Shorenstein Institute for the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. Under his editorship The New Republic twice won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the magazine world’s highest honor.
In 1992, when Tina Brown became editor of The New Yorker, she recruited Hertzberg as her executive editor, and he helped her redesign and revitalize the magazine. Under Brown's successor, David Remnick, Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer and is the main contributor to "Comment," the weekly essay on politics and society in "The Talk of the Town." In 2006, his articles won The New Yorker a National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary.
Hertzberg is the author of the book, Politics: Observations and Arguments, 1966-2004 ISBN 1-59420-018-1, a collection of essays and reports providing a guide through four decades of American political debates, campaigns, and ideological clashes; culture, counter-culture, and pop culture; presidents from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush; and excursions into neoconservatives, the religious right, and wars from Vietnam to the war on terror. As a liberal author, he also extrapolates on the necessity of humanism and secularism in democratic societies and critiques the Conservative Revolution. Hertzberg believes that America’s system of winner-take-all elections, federalism, and separation of powers is out of date and damaging to political responsibility and democratic accountability. He is a supporter of such reforms as instant runoff voting, proportional representation, and election of the president by national popular vote.
Hertzberg was interviewed August 7, 2005, on cable television CSPAN2's BookTV with reference to his recent book.
