Henry Olsen
Senior Fellow
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
For media inquiries or to book Mr. Olsen for an interview, contact [email protected].
Click here to view the full archive of Mr. Olsen’s writings at The Washington Post.
Click here to view the full archive of Mr. Olsen’s writings at National Review Online.
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
Mr. Olsen is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post, where he writes daily pieces focusing on politics, populism, foreign affairs and American conservative thought. He is also the author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism and The Four Faces of the Republican Party, co-authored with Dante Scala.
Mr. Olsen is teaching as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Arizona State University for the Winter/Spring 2023 semester.
Mr. Olsen was previously an editor at UnHerd.com and a regular contributor to American Greatness, City Journal, and World Magazine. Mr. Olsen’s work has been featured in many prominent publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Guardian, and The Weekly Standard.
His predictions of the 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 elections were particularly praised for their remarkable accuracy. In the 2016 campaign, he accurately identified the factors fueling the rise of Donald Trump early in the race, and his election-eve predictions were among the most accurate of any major analyst or commentator.
Mr. Olsen has worked in senior executive positions at many center-right think tanks. He most recently served from 2006 to 2013 as Vice President and Director, National Research Initiative, at the American Enterprise Institute. He previously worked as Vice President of Programs at the Manhattan Institute and President of the Commonwealth Foundation.
Mr. Olsen started his career as a political consultant at the California firm of Hoffenblum-Mollrich. He then worked with the California State Assembly Republican Caucus before attending law school. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Danny J. Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and as an associate at Dechert, Price & Rhoads. He has a B.A. from Claremont McKenna College and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as Comment Editor for the University of Chicago Law Review.
Conservatives Are Still Grappling with the Trump Era. And Many Haven’t yet Learned Their Lesson.
Henry Olsen
The old conservative movement clearly missed something crucial about the national mood to have failed so utterly to prevent President Trump’s nomination and election. Failure to come to grips with this and to be genuinely new in some way will produce the same political failure.
Articles
The Washington Post / July 22, 2019
Democrats Should Confront Their Revolutionaries Before It’s Too Late
Henry Olsen
Notwithstanding the unity that President Trump seems to have offered their party in the last few days, recent events show that period of relative unity among Democrats is probably temporary.
Articles
The Washington Post / July 16, 2019
The Real Reason the 2020 Census Should Include a Citizenship Question
Henry Olsen
President Trump’s decision not to include a question about U.S. citizenship on the 2020 Census questionnaire appears to put the issue to bed for another decade. Don’t believe it.
Articles
The Washington Post / July 14, 2019
The World Doesn’t Hate Trump’s America as Much as People Think
Henry Olsen
President Trump has clearly disrupted traditional U.S. foreign policy — and not always in a good direction. But for all the complaining, the data presented at a recent conference in Copenhagen shows that the United States continues to be well regarded in many places around the globe.
Articles
The Washington Post / July 9, 2019
If the Latest Polls Are Right, Trump Is Favored to Win Reelection
Henry Olsen
Because of the composition of his coalition, President Trump does not need to win the popular vote to win reelection.
Articles
The Washington Post / July 8, 2019
How Does a Center-Right Think Tank Approach Conservatism in the Trump Era?
Henry Olsen
EPPC Senior Fellow Henry Olsen talks with Robert Doar about Mr. Doar’s new role as head of the American Enterprise Institute.
Articles
The Washington Post / July 3, 2019
We Don’t Know If Trump’s Foreign Policy Will Work. but at Least He’s Challenging the…
Henry Olsen
We don’t know how President Trump’s latest maneuvers regarding North Korea and China will fare. The only thing we do know is that the byproduct of economic globalization is and will continue to be the flowing of hard power from the Western allies to non-Western countries, democratic and authoritarian alike.
Articles
The Washington Post / July 1, 2019
Trump Is Living up to His Populist Promise
Henry Olsen
President Trump’s politics are often labeled as “populist.” Three recent executive actions show he’s delivering on the promise of that label.
Articles
The Washington Post / June 25, 2019
The Trump Campaign Has a Terrible 2020 Strategy
Henry Olsen
President Trump’s campaign told Time magazine that its strategy for reelection relies on stoking turnout among his base. If that’s true, the president is much likelier to lose than many Republicans think.
Articles
The Washington Post / June 21, 2019
Trump’s Chances in 2020 Aren’t Nearly as Bad as People Think
Henry Olsen
The leak of unfavorable reelection numbers from Trump’s own internal polling, which show him behind Democratic candidate Joe Biden in many key swing states, has triggered a rush to judgment among many analysts. But as 2016 showed, he doesn’t have to win the popular vote to win an election.
Articles
The Washington Post / June 17, 2019
Conservative Elites Love to Defend Market Orthodoxy. Don’t Fall for It.
Henry Olsen
The New Deal’s intellectual core, that the federal government should vigorously act to correct market failures, remains at the center of what Americans expect from Washington. Donald Trump’s nomination and election proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that even a majority of Republicans agree.
Articles
The Washington Post / June 11, 2019
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