Jeffrey Birnbaum Speaker Biography

Award-Winning Author, Television Commentator, and Political Analyst

Jeff Birnbaum leads a team in Washington that gives strategic advice to coalitions, companies and governments about issue campaigns, earned and paid media, data-driven audience identification, and crisis communications. An award-winning journalist, Jeff has worked for several premier news outlets in the United States.

Campaigns

Jeff has helped run issue campaigns, design digital communications, manage coalitions, and protect and improve clients’ reputations. On behalf of a wide range of clients, he has worked with international, national and regional media.

Political Correspondent and Columnist

His prior experience includes serving as a White House, congressional and tax reporter for the Wall Street Journal, a senior political correspondent for Time Magazine, Washington bureau chief for Fortune Magazine and a columnist for the Washington Post.

Books

He is also the author of five books about Washington including the award-winning Showdown at Gucci Gulch, which he wrote with Alan S. Murray, and Fifty Years of Business Roundtable: The Voice of America’s Leading CEOs in Washington, for which he led a writing team. In 1994, he won the Aldo Beckman Memorial Award for his coverage of the White House. Showdown at Gucci Gulch won the American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award in 1988. In 1992, Jeff’s second book, The Lobbyists, was a Washington Post bestseller. Madhouse, Jeff’s third book, about President Clinton’s White House, was published in 1996. His fourth book, The Money Men, examines campaign fundraising and was published in 2000. For his fifth book, Jeff was hired by Business Roundtable in 2022 to write the prestigious organization’s definitive history.

Affiliations

Jeff was chairman of the Bryce Harlow Foundation, Washington’s leading organization of government affairs professionals, and was a longtime member of the board of the National Press Foundation.

A native of Scranton, Pa., Jeff is married with three children. He graduated with honors as an English major from the University of Pennsylvania where he was a member of the class of 1978.

Jeffrey Birnbaum Speaking Topics

Political Outlook and the Next Election

Jeffrey Birnbaum is a political commentator, analyst, columnist, and author who has spent his career concentrating on what is happening in Washington. Birnbaum analyzes both sides of the political playing field through every possible mode of media. His observations and intuitions are highly regarded among his peers and help contribute to some of the most astute political scrutiny in the press. Audiences get a firsthand account of Birnbaum’s expertise and candor during each presentation. With the expertise that only decades of experience can bring, he addresses the current political outlook, how hot topics affect the current crop of presidential hopefuls, and the state of America on the world stage.

The Intersection of Business and Government

Birnbaum offers an insider’s look at the intersection of business and government. From how corporations affect policy to the public versus private sector debates, he offers his viewpoint as someone who has studied lobbyists and politicians for decades.

Taxes

As a former tax reporter and the author of Showdown at Gucci Gulch, which chronicles the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and won the American Political Science Association’s coveted Carey McWilliams Award, Birnbaum can speak authoritatively to tax issues, proposed tax plans, and the best (and worst) potential changes to the tax code.

Lobbying in Washington

n his own words, Jeffrey Birnbaum “set up the Washington lobbying beat.” From his decades of experience at The Washington Post, The Washington Times, TIME, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal covering Congress, the presidency, and politics, Birnbaum knows the ins and outs of lobbying in Washington. In 1992, his second book, The Lobbyists, was a Washington Post best-seller and a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest, The Money Men, also examines campaign fund-raising. Birnbaum addresses what it takes to get legislation passed in our modern political system and the status of lobbying on the Hill.