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.
Joe Biden’s Climate Change Plan Is a Gift for Trump
Henry Olsen
The progressive left sees climate change as a life-or-death issue, but other voters don’t seem to agree. Joe Biden’s new climate plan is so aggressive it will give President Trump plenty of targets to shoot at.
Articles
The Washington Post / June 5, 2019
Where in the World is Joe Biden?
Henry Olsen
Joe Biden’s campaign seems to believe that the adage from the story of the tortoise and the hare — “slow and steady wins the race” — is the secret to winning the Democratic primary campaign. That’s probably right, but maybe in this story, Biden is the hare.
Articles
The Washington Post / May 28, 2019
Australia’s Shocking Election Offers a Warning to Democrats
Henry Olsen
The Australian Labor Party’s unexpected defeat in last weekend’s election should be a warning for Democrats. The lesson: Don’t scare swing voters with a platform that’s too left-wing.
Articles
The Washington Post / May 23, 2019
Trump’s Immigration Plan Has One Key Fault
Henry Olsen
To control illegal immigration, the president needs to learn some lessons from another long-standing federal effort: the war on drugs.
Articles
The Washington Post / May 16, 2019
California Wants to Teach Kindergartners About Gender Identity. Seriously.
Henry Olsen
One doesn’t have to be a religious conservative to wonder if California’s gender-identity curriculum isn’t a misplaced policy that says more about adults’ ideology than children’s needs.
Articles
The Washington Post / May 13, 2019
Trump’s Critics Were Wrong. He’s Not a Madman in Foreign Policy.
Henry Olsen
In 2016, fears were rampant that Donald Trump would not be able to handle an international crisis, that he would react either recklessly or timidly and thereby hurt U.S. security. We’re going through a period of intense global pressure right now, and so far he has proved up to the task.
Articles
The Washington Post / May 10, 2019
‘Make America Great Again’ Is the Right Message. But It Needs to Be for Everyone.
Henry Olsen
American identity revolves around a devotion to ideals: freedom, equality and self-government. But that identity is strained whenever one ideal is emphasized at the expense of the others.
Articles
The Washington Post / May 9, 2019
If the Economy Keeps Its Momentum, 2020 Will Be Trump’s to Lose
Henry Olsen
If the economy keeps its momentum, even the Mueller report or President Trump’s failure to trumpet his success might not prevent him from winning a second term.
Articles
The Washington Post / May 3, 2019
Republicans Want Trump to Give up on His Tariffs. He Shouldn’t Budge.
Henry Olsen
President Trump will need to deal with Senator Charles Grassley and others to get his new trade deal passed, and he should. But he cannot lose sight of the fact that he is president today — and can only remain president after 2020 — if he keeps faith with the blue-collar voters who heard him loud and clear.
Articles
The Washington Post / April 30, 2019
Trumpism Isn’t Going Away. Europe Proves It.
Henry Olsen
The rise of Vox, a culturally conservative party opposed to mass immigration, is part of a larger trend in this year’s national elections in Europe that shows the forces that fueled President Trump’s rise are gaining, not losing, strength.
Articles
The Washington Post / April 29, 2019
Courts Can’t Solve Our Gerrymandering Problem. Take It from a Former Gerrymanderer.
Henry Olsen
Courts are increasingly poised to become more heavily involved in determining what type of gerrymandering is constitutionally permissible. But that’s almost impossible to do without injecting partisan bias into the decision itself.
Articles
The Washington Post / April 26, 2019
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