Karl Zinsmeister

Karl Zinsmeister (born 1959) is an executive, researcher, and writer. From 2006 to 2009 he served in the White House as President George W. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser, and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Biography

Zinsmeister is a graduate of Yale University and also studied history as a special student at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He won college rowing championships in both the U.S. and Ireland. His first job in Washington was as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat. He was later named Dewitt Wallace Fellow, and eventually appointed to the J. B. Fuqua endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent Washington DC think tank, where he researched a range of topics extending from social welfare and demographics to economics and cultural trends.^[1]

He has been an adviser to many research and policy groups, and has testified before Congress and Presidential commissions numerous times on topics like family policy, daycare, farm subsidies, and the Iraq war. He has made many appearances on television and radio.^[2]

For a dozen years before becoming the White House Domestic Policy Adviser (1994 to 2006), Zinsmeister was Editor in Chief of The American Enterprise, a national magazine covering politics, business, and culture.^[3] He wrote hundreds of articles for that publication, and reported stories from around the U.S. and the globe, on topics like religion and politics, the European economy, new oil drilling techniques in Alaska, suburban neighborhood design, and Wall Street financial innovations. His writing was also published in periodicals ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to Reader's Digest and the Wall Street Journal.

Zinsmeister was an embedded journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and then served three subsequent months-long embeddings with combat units during the insurgency stage of the war. He shot a documentary film about soldiers in Iraq, called "WARRIORS", which was nationally broadcast by PBS.

He wrote three books of Iraq reporting: Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq, Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq, and Combat Zone: True Tales of G.I.s in Iraq (a non-fiction graphic novel from Marvel Comics). He edited a book on world population trends, and edited and contributed to a collection of non-fiction short stories.^[3][4][5]

During his years in the West Wing, Zinsmeister was active in policymaking on topics like the 2008 mortgage and student-loan credit crises, immigration reform, housing, biotechnology and stem cell policies, airport congestion, education reform, transportation issues, health policy, faith-based schooling, an 8,000-job layoff in Ohio, poverty, crime, family policy, civil rights, and veterans’ affairs.^{[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]}

His appointment to the White House was the source of some controversy. In 2004, Zinsmeister posted to the American Enterprise Institute website an article from the Syracuse New Times about himself. In the process, he altered a statement attributed to him that read "people in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings." He subsequently admitted that it was "foolish" to correct the mistakes of a young journalist without noting that on the record.^[5] This resulted in a heated exchange between White House press secretary Tony Snow and longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas.^[15]

After leaving the White House, Zinsmeister returned to the rural county in upstate New York where he has family roots, and became an executive with an historic manufacturing firm. He is married and has three children.^[16]

References

External links

• Web site
• Biographical info from White House years
• Biographical and professional information from Harvard conference
• Archived material at Real Clear Politics
• Stash of magazine articles
• PBS film produced by subject
• Iraq speech to Seattle World Affairs Council
• Book by subject
• Book by subject
• Author’s graphic novel for Marvel Comics
• Opening presentation to White House education summit
• Google profile