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The Parties Versus the People

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Tired of the Left/Right divide in American politics? Think our political system is inherently dysfunctional? Join Mickey Edwards as he offers up some solutions to the systemic causes of political gridlock and describes the specific reforms that will revive our democracy.

Edwards is Vice President of the Aspen Institute and serves as Director of the Aspen Institute’s Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. Mr. Edwards was a Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma from 1977 to 1992, serving as a member of the House Republican Leadership and as a member of the Appropriations and Budget Committees.

After leaving the Congress, he taught for 11 years at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was the John Quincy Adams Lecturer in Legislative Practice, and for five years as a lecturer at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Maryland Law School and at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute and a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School.

Early in his career he was a newspaper reporter and editor, worked in advertising and public relations, and served as a magazine editor. Mr. Edwards co-chaired task forces on judicial independence and the war power, and served on the American Bar Association Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the American Society of International Law Task Force on the International Criminal Court. He and former White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler co-chaired Citizens for Independent Courts, a task force dedicated to preserving judicial independence, and he and Federal Judge Abner Mikva co-chaired a task force on the constitutional amendment process.

Mr. Edwards is the author or co-author of four books, including Reclaiming Conservatism, published in 2008 by Oxford University Press. His latest book, The Parties Versus the People, was published by Yale University Press. He has been a regular political commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and a weekly political columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, as well as other major newspapers. His articles have appeared in magazines ranging from The Atlantic to The Public Interest. Mr. Edwards is a frequent public speaker and has been a guest on many of the nation’s leading radio and television news and opinion broadcasts. He received a B.A. in journalism from the University of Oklahoma and a J.D. from Oklahoma City University School of Law.