E. J. Dionne

Eugene Joseph Dionne Jr. is an American journalist, political commentator, and was a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at the McCourt School of Public Policy of Georgetown University, and an NPR, MSNBC, and PBS commentator.

Early life and education Dionne was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Fall River, Massachusetts. He is the son of the late Lucienne (née Galipeau), a librarian and teacher, and Eugène J. Dionne, a dentist. He is of French-Canadian descent. He attended Portsmouth Abbey School (then known as Portsmouth Priory), a Benedictine college preparatory school in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

Dionne graduated in 1973 with a B.A., summa cum laude, in social studies from Harvard University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was affiliated with Adams House. He also earned a D.Phil. in sociology in 1982 from Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Career

Dionne's published works include the influential 1991 bestseller Why Americans Hate Politics, which argued that several decades of political polarization was alienating a silent centrist majority. It was characterized as radical centrist by Time. Later books include They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (1996), Stand up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and Politics of Revenge (2004), Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (2008), Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent (2012), and One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet Deported (2017), coauthored with Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann. His most recent book is Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country (2020).

Dionne is a columnist for Commonweal, a liberal Catholic publication, and is a Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times. Before becoming a columnist for the Post in 1993, he worked as a reporter for that paper as well as The New York Times. He has joined the left-liberal The National Memo news-politics website.

Personal life Dionne lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Mary Boyle; they have three children.

Writings Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. . They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. . Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (editor). Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998 . Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. . Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. . Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012. . Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016. . One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported. With Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2017. . Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2020. .