Carl Cannon

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington Bureau Chief of RealClearPolitics and the Executive Editor of RealClear Media Group. The former executive editor of PoliticsDaily, he has covered every presidential campaign and major political convention since 1984, and has received the two most-prestigious awards for White House coverage: the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting of the Presidency, and the Aldo Beckman award for “excellence in presidential news coverage.” Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, Cannon addresses politics and elections.

Journalistic History and Academia. Previously, Cannon was the DC bureau chief for Reader’s Digest, and he covered the White House for National Journal and the Baltimore Sun for a decade before that. Before coming to Washington during the Reagan presidency, Cannon worked for six newspapers over a 20-year span, covering police, courts, politics, education, and race relations at newspapers in Virginia, Georgia, and his home state of California. His first job in the news business was as a paperboy delivering the San Francisco Chronicle. He is also a past president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

In 2007, Cannon was a fellow-in-residence at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he taught a study group on the press and the presidency. He has also lectured at on journalism and politics at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, George Washington University, and the Aspen Institute and participated in presidency conferences at Princeton and the University of London. Cannon is a three-time fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Political Author. Cannon is the author of the 2017 book, On This Date: From the Pilgrims to Today, Discovering America One Day at a Time. He is also the author of The Pursuit of Happiness in Times of War, which explores how American presidents and leaders have employed the language of the Declaration of Independence in times of national crisis. He co-authored the book, Boy Genius, a biography of White House aide Karl Rove, and he and his father, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, wrote 2008’s Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy. He also co-wrote – with California writer Patrick Dillon – Circle of Greed: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Lawyer Who Brought Corporate America to Its Knees and – with Tom Bevan – The RealClearPolitics Political Download: Election 2012: The Battle Begins and The RealClearPolitics Download: Election 2012: A Time for Choosing.

Cannon was also a contributor to National Public Radio and wrote a presidency column for George magazine. Additionally, he has written for Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, California Journal, Forbes, Brill’s Content, Mother Jones, National Review, and Washingtonian and was a contributing editor on the Bush presidency for AmericanPresident.org, the teaching website operated by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.

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