Senators Jon Kyl and Amy Klobuchar join a panel moderated by Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann from Brookings to flesh out a picture of how the next four years would look different under either a John McCain or a Barack Obama presidency.
Bio
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes joined The New York Times as a national correspondent in August 2008. Previously she had been chief political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.
During her 18 years at The Wall Street Journal, Calmes covered the White House and Congress, focusing mostly on budget and tax legislation, and also reported on congressional and presidential election campaigns as well as issues confronting state and local governments.
From mid-1997 to mid-1999, she was one of the Journal's two White House correspondents, and in 1999-2000, she covered national politics and the Bush campaign. After the 2000 presidential recount, she covered election reform and politics, and in June 2001, she became a news editor for the Journal's "Politics and Policy" page, and took over as writer and a reporter of the well-known "Washington Wire" column in Friday's Journal. She returned to full-time reporting in late 2002, and through 2004 was again a White House correspondent.
In May 2005, Ms. Calmes was awarded the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency.
Senator Amy Klobuchar
Amy Jean Klobuchar is the junior United States Senator from Minnesota. She is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, an affiliate of the Democratic Party.
Klobuchar is the first elected female senator from Minnesota and is one of two female senators in the 110th United States Congress freshman class. Formerly county attorney of Hennepin County, she was the chief prosecutor for the most populous county in Minnesota.
Klobuchar was a legal adviser to former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale and partner in two prominent law firms. She was also cited by the New York Times to be among the seventeen most likely women to become the first female President of the United States of America.
Senator Jon Kyl
Jon Kyl was elected to the U.S. Senate from Arizona in 1994 and re-elected in 2000 and 2006, after having served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. As the Republican Whip, he is the second-ranking member of the Senate Republican Leadership and responsible for building support on key issues.
He serves on the Senate's Finance Committee, where he is the ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight, and on the Judiciary Committee, where he is the ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.
Thomas E. Mann
Thomas E. Mann is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution.
The author of numerous books on American government, and a contributor to major magazines and newspapers like Washington Post and New York Times, Mann is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mann has served as co-director (with Ornstein) of the Transition to Governing Project and senior counselor (with Ornstein) to the Continuity of Government Commission.
Norman J. Ornstein
Norman J. Ornstein is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. An election analyst for CBS News, he writes a weekly column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call.
His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, and he appears regularly on television programs like The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose.
He serves on the board of the Public Broadcasting Service and several other nonprofit groups. Like Mann, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Lynn Sweet
Lynn Sweet is the Washington Bureau Chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. She writes a column and a blog for the paper. At present, Sweet is been focusing on the 2008 presidential campaign, with an emphasis on Sen. Barack Obama. Sweet is a regular guest on MSNBC programs and other national political shows.
Sweet traveled with Obama to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England in July. In 2006, Sweet flew to Africa with Obama, on a trip that included a visit to his father's native Kenya. As the violence between Israelis and Palestinians was deepening, in 2002 she was sent to the region to cover the conflict.
In 1995, Sweet broke the story on the perks the Clinton White House offered major donors. In 1990, Sweet was one of the first journalists in the U.S. to analyze political ads for accuracy. Before moving to Washington in September 1993, Sweet was the political writer for the paper.
Sweet was a Spring 2004 fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government. She is a former president of the Washington Press Club Foundation and is a member of the Gridiron Club.
She has a master's from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She also attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She is a native of Chicago.
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