Alan Ehrenhalt

Alan Ehrenhalt served for 19 years as executive editor of Governing Magazine, and is currently one of its contributing editors. He has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and op-ed page, the Washington Post Book World, New Republic and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of four books: The United States of Ambition, The Lost City, Democracy in the Mirror, and The Great Inversion. He was also the creator and editor of the first four editions of Politics in America, a biennial reference book profiling all 535 members of Congress. Alan Ehrenhalt is a 1968 graduate of Brandeis University and holds an MS in journalism from Columbia. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard from 1977-1978; a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987-1988; a Regents’ Lecturer at UCLA in 2006; an adjunct faculty member at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, at the University of Richmond, from 2004 through 2008; and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland Graduate School of Public Policy in 2009. In 2000 he received the American Political Science Association’s McWilliams award for distinguished contributions to the field of political science by a journalist. He is married, has two daughters, and lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Recent Articles

  • Last Call for Taverns
  • Aug 1, 2005
  • Chicago's mayor is encouraging citizens to exercise control over seedy bars in their neighborhoods.

  • Fixing a Sagging Wage Floor
  • Jul 1, 2005
  • A surprising number of Republicans are joining with liberals to enact new state minimum wage laws.

  • One-Track Mind
  • Jun 28, 2005
  • Maybe it's my Jetson-era upbringing, but I've always had a weakness for the Seattle monorail project. Some of it was just my own contrarianism, I ...
  • 3 Comments

  • Hula Dance
  • Jun 14, 2005
  •    Going after NACO for convening in Hawaii may be a bit of a cheap shot, but it's one that local TV news will ...

  • Curbing Parking
  • Jun 1, 2005
  • Local zoning laws mandate parking spaces as if empty lots were a virtue.

  • Sacredness in the City
  • May 1, 2005
  • There are three basic elements to a superior urban experience, declares Author Joel Kotkin: economic power, personal security and sacredness.

  • Clockwork Blues
  • Apr 1, 2005
  • It can be a nuisance changing every clock in your house twice a year. But Daylight Savings Time is not a subject of public controversy-- except in Indiana.

  • States' Not-So-Dire Straits
  • Mar 1, 2005
  • This is a season of lamentation for believers in the American federal system, or at least for those who believe state governments ought to occupy a position of honor and respect within it. States and their advocates complain that they are being bullied and pushed around by every branch of government in Washington: preempted, mandated, zeroed out, lectured to and generally dissed.

  • Loyalty Everlasting
  • Feb 1, 2005
  • Decades ago, on a long car ride home from college, a friend of mine and I were talking about whether the liberal arts education we were getting had any practical use. He said he thought his might. He was majoring in medieval history, and in the event of a new Dark Age-- post-nuclear chaos or the aftermath of a huge natural catastrophe--he would know exactly what to do.

  • The Magic Word: Affordable
  • Dec 1, 2004
  • "My fellow citizens, I rise today to speak in opposition to affordable housing, quality day care and the Baptist Church." I briefly considered saying those words a few weeks ago as I spent a long Saturday afternoon at a County Board meeting in Arlington, Virginia, waiting for the five minutes allotted to me as a citizen speaker on a public issue.

  • Ballpark Dreaming
  • Nov 1, 2004
  • Economists have a reputation for being cool and dispassionate, but a few phrases or concepts have the capacity to turn even the meekest of them into hectoring ideologues, exasperated with the inability of others to exercise simple common sense.

  • In Search of the Ideal Legislature
  • Nov 1, 2004
  • You and I might not agree on the best American governors of recent years, but we would probably agree on what makes a governor effective. Mostly, it's a matter of having a coherent program and finding ways to get it enacted.

  • The Mayor-Manager Conundrum
  • Oct 1, 2004
  • El Paso has always been a little bit eccentric. When the state university campus was built there, in the 1920s, the local leaders chose Bhutanese architecture, based on an obscure style used in the Himalayas in medieval times.

  • Tinkering With History Books
  • Jul 1, 2004
  • The Minnesota House and Senate went home for the summer a few weeks ago, having concluded a legislative session that left just about everyone disappointed.


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