- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Bruce Reed
Bruce Reed
Former White House Adviser to Presidents Clinton & Obama & Vice President Biden
Biography
A domestic policy expert, Bruce Reed served for more than a decade as a top White House policy adviser in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.
As President Clinton’s chief domestic policy advisor, he oversaw a host of domestic and social policies, including education, crime, welfare reform, youth smoking, and gun violence. In the Obama White House, he served as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to Vice President Joe Biden, working on economic, fiscal, and tax policy, education, and gun violence. He previously served as executive director of the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission and lead author of its report, The Moment of Truth. After leaving the Obama administration, Reed spent two years as the first president of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, where he led nationwide efforts to strengthen public education in urban areas.
Reed is now CEO of Civic, a bipartisan policy ideas company he co-founded. He also serves as Senior Policy Advisor at Emerson Collective; Co-chair of the Future of Work Initiative at the Aspen Institute; and a Senior Fellow at Results for America.
The son of a former Idaho state senator, Bruce Reed has a long record of public service. He began his career as chief speechwriter for then-Sen. Al Gore, policy director for then-Gov. Bill Clinton at the Democratic Leadership Council, and deputy campaign manager for policy of the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign. He has been a longtime contributor to Slate and the New Republic and co-authored The Plan: Big Ideas for Change in America with Rahm Emanuel. He has a bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University and earned a Master of Philosophy degree in English studies as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.
Seminars
“Hacks & Wonks: The Politics of Ideas”
This seminar will examine the role of ideas in American politics by taking a close look at how campaigns and presidents think. The seminar will enlist Hacks and Wonks - the political yin and policy yang of democracy - to explore the quest for good policy and good politics. In addition, each week’s seminar will probe the latest developments in the 2016 presidential race.
Of the many divides in American politics, perhaps the biggest revolves around a basic question: Do ideas matter? Throughout the modern era, American political life has been a constant struggle between two warring tribes whose differences run deeper than the two parties. One tribe, the Hacks, consists of consultants, pundits, and professionals who believe campaigns are won and lost on tactics and strategy - image, polling, advertising, turnout, the electoral map. Another tribe, the Wonks, consists of policy experts, columnists, and academics who believe voters actually care what a candidate stands for and will do in office. The war between these two tribes can color nearly every consequential decision in campaigns and government.
At this opening seminar we’ll review wonky and hack-ish moments from the first presidential debate in Dayton the night before. Students will have a chance to practice their own debate prep skills by breaking into two teams to anticipate the questions most likely to be asked in the next debate and suggest how the two candidates should respond.
Hacks and Wonks speak different languages, but one person must be fluent in both: the speechwriter. In the world’s oldest democracy, speeches are the oldest democratic ritual - and remain the way candidates and presidents make their ideas known. Why are we still listening to speeches after all these years? What makes a speech succeed or bomb? For speechwriters, what’s it like to put words in other people’s mouths and thoughts in their heads? Students will talk with Jeff Shesol, a celebrated author (Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court and Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade) who never intended to be a speechwriter but became one of the most successful of our time.
Special Guest: Jeff Shesol, Author, Historian, Cartoonist, former Speechwriter to President Bill Clinton & Founding Partner of West Wing Writers
A presidential campaign, as David Axelrod has said, is “an MRI for the soul.” With a month to go, we’ll ask Ron Brownstein, one of the nation’s leading political commentators, what the campaign has revealed so far about the nominees and their parties. Brownstein chronicled the history of political polarization in The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America in 2008, which now may seem a time of political tranquility by comparison. What issues, ideas, and anxieties are driving this election? How will the divisions within and between the two parties affect the next president’s ability to govern?
Special Guest: Ron Brownstein, Author, Columnist, Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Television Commentator & Editorial Director for Strategic Partnerships for Atlantic Media
Sometimes campaigns are inspiring contests of ideas with lasting national import. At other times, they seem more like a cage match to determine the lesser of two evils. Who is to blame for the campaigns we have? The candidates and campaign professionals? The press? Voters themselves?
We’ll look back at the 1988 campaign, among the shallowest contests of the last half century. Matt Bai, a leading political journalist, will talk about his recent book, All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, which describes the collapse of Gary Hart - one of the smartest wonks ever to run for president - and the emergence of the modern political media. On the eve of the final presidential debate, we’ll also preview the final Clinton-Trump matchup.
Special Guest: Matt Bai, Author, Screenwriter, former Political Correspondent for The New York Times Magazine & National Political Columnist for Yahoo News
A running mate is a presidential nominee’s first major decision about how to govern, as well as a revealing (and sometimes entertaining) subplot in the fall campaign. In the White House, the VP is the only person the president can’t fire, and as a potential successor, has a great deal at stake in the success of an administration’s policies. The vice presidency has been steadily gaining power and influence for the past 40 years. Yet as Julia Louis-Dreyfus demonstrates in “Veep,” the job remains a punch line away from the presidency.
Sarah Bianchi, a veteran of three presidential campaigns and two vice presidencies, will help us examine the competing political and policy roles of the job. Students will have the opportunity to critique running mates’ performance in the current campaign and debate the different strategies - attack dog, lap dog, defender-in-chief - vice-presidential candidates employ. Together, we’ll try to answer the question on every vice president’s mind, best captured by Admiral James Stockdale’s opening words in the 1992 vice-presidential debate: “Who am I, and why am I here?”
Special Guest: Sarah Bianchi, former Debate and Policy Adviser to Al Gore, John Kerry and Joe Biden & Head of Global Policy Development and Federal Affairs at Airbnb
With the debates, we’ll look at how well the campaign is addressing the real issues the country needs to tackle over the next four years. Together, we’ll discuss what role ideas have played - or failed to play - in the 2016 campaign, and what issues we wish the candidates were debating. We’ll divide into two teams - one red, one blue - to take turns answering the questions the other team wants answered.
For weary voters, this is the day their long national nightmare is over. For candidates, it marks the culmination of two years on the trail and a lifetime of dreams. For the next president, the hard part has just begun. What’s going on inside each campaign today? What will the winner and loser say to the nation tonight? How is the president-elect preparing to govern?
John Bridgeland, director of the Domestic Policy Council under President George W. Bush, will talk about the current state of ideas in American politics and what to do about it. We’ll also watch highlights of past election nights, and brainstorm themes for the victory and concession speeches for both candidates.
Special Guest: John Bridgeland, former Domestic Policy Adviser to President George W. Bush & Author of Heart of the Nation: Volunteering and America’s Civic Spirit
As the late Mario Cuomo used to say, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” Yet the decisions a president-elect must make in the transition are anything but prosaic. From the White House to the Cabinet, what kind of team will it take to succeed? What can the new president do to make Washington work again? What happens when Hack meets Wonk, and campaign promises collide with reality?
As a group, we’ll come up with a plan for the new president’s first 100 days.