Eleanor Clift is a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine. She reports on the White House, presidential politics, and a variety of national issues. She is currently assigned to cover the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill and the emerging contenders for the ’08 presidential nomination. Her column, “Capitol Letter,” is posted each week on Newsweek.com and MSNBC.com.
Clift is a regular panelist on the nationally syndicated show, The McLaughlin Group. Playing herself as a member of The McLaughlin Group, she has appeared in several films, including “Independence Day,” “Murder at 1600 Pennsylvania,” and “Dave,” as well as the CBS series, “Murphy Brown.”
Eleanor Clift’s latest book, "Two Weeks of Life," tells the parallel stories of her husband's death at home with hospice alongside the national debate over the right to die of a young brain-damaged woman named Terri Schiavo(Basic Books 2008. Clift is also the author of “Founding Sisters and the 19th Amendment” (Wiley 2003) which tells the story of the long struggle for women to gain the right to vote. The book accompanied the HBO movie, “Iron Jawed Angels,” starring Hillary Swank and Anjelica Houston.
Clift and her late husband, Tom Brazaitis, who was Washington columnist for the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, co-authored two books. “Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling” (Scribner 2000) tracks the rise of women in politics and looks ahead to the day when there will be a woman president. “Madam President” is available in paperback from Rutledge Press. Publishers Weekly calls it “a sharp, insider’s view of the quest to elect a female U.S. president…melding the immediacy of a breaking news story with savvy investigative journalism.” Their earlier book, “War Without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics,” was published in 1996 by Scribner and is available in paperback from Touchstone Books. CNN news analyst Jeff Greenfield said in The New York Times Book Review, “War Without Bloodshed unquestionably works as a road map through the byways of the Washington they don’t teach in civics classes.”
Formerly a deputy bureau chief and Newsweek’s White House correspondent, Ms. Clift continues to write about the White House, Congress and the political scene. She is covering the OBama campaign for Newsweek’s special election project, which is a behind-the-scenes account of the presidential race that is published immediately after the November 2008 election and expanded into a book. Hillary Clinton's strong showing in the primaries as well as her future career on Capitol Hill are also part of Clift's reporting duties. Clift covered the Gore and Kerry campaigns and was also a member of the magazine’s 2000 and 1992 election teams. She followed Bill Clinton’s campaign from the start.
In June 1992, Clift was named Deputy Washington Bureau Chief. According to Brill’s Content, a journalism review, Eleanor Clift is one of the most accurate predictors among the pundits on the political talk shows.
