Ron Elving
Ron Elving is Senior Editor and Correspondent on the Washington Desk for NPR News, where he is frequently heard as a news analyst and writes regularly for NPR.org.
He is also a professorial lecturer and Executive in Residence in the School of Public Affairs at American University, where he has also taught in the School of Communication. In 2016, he was honored with the University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in an Adjunct Appointment. He has also taught at George Mason and Georgetown.
He was previously the political editor for USA Today and for Congressional Quarterly. He has been published by the Brookings Institution and the American Political Science Association. He has contributed chapters on Obama and the media and on the media role in Congress to the academic studies Obama in Office 2011, and Rivals for Power, 2013. Ron's earlier book, Conflict and Compromise: How Congress Makes the Law, was published by Simon & Schuster and is also a Touchstone paperback.
During his tenure as manager of NPR's Washington desk from 1999 to 2014, the desk's reporters were awarded every major recognition available in radio journalism, including the Dirksen Award for Congressional Reporting and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In 2008, the American Political Science Association awarded NPR the Carey McWilliams Award "in recognition of a major contribution to the understanding of political science."
Ron came to Washington in 1984 as a Congressional Fellow with the American Political Science Association and worked for two years as a staff member in the House and Senate. Previously, he had been state capital bureau chief for The Milwaukee Journal.
He received his bachelor's degree from Stanford University and master's degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of California – Berkeley.
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Both parties in Virginia and New Jersey were left to contemplate how Republicans ran well without Trump on the ballot or in office, while Democrats found it hard to hold recent gains in the suburbs. -
As the first statewide tests of a new political reality, Virginia and New Jersey send a signal early in a presidential term — much as Iowa and New Hampshire do in a presidential campaign. -
The former president threatens that GOP leaders must match their priorities to his or face a mass defection by the party's most reliable voters. It's without precedent, but there is a parallel. -
At their historic high tides, Democrats were not really more united than they are now. They may have been less so. The difference was they had enough votes to abide their disunity and still prevail. -
The pandemic, migration crisis, and Congressional gridlock continue to create stumbling blocks for the Biden administration.
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Presidents' reactions have consistently combined outrage with promises of revenge. The language is remarkably similar. But there has been far less consistency in the delivery of actual retaliation. -
The last four U.S. presidents have found themselves mired in Afghanistan. The last two saw the war as an unwanted inheritance and an albatross, and they were determined to end the American role. -
As Democrats try to pass their massive multi-trillion-dollar spending bill with a simple majority vote, lots of things might be included but other things might not. And it all goes back to one man. -
Seemingly arcane exercises in the days and weeks ahead will in fact represent – and may even resolve — real conflicts over national issues of enormous importance. -
The hopeful message of the moment is that in various ways we are finding our way — maybe even approaching the normal that we never imagined we could miss so much.
