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.

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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 GreatnessCity Journal, and World Magazine. Mr. Olsen’s work has been featured in many prominent publications, including The New York TimesThe Wall Street JournalNational ReviewThe 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.

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An Artful Immigration Deal Would Trade ‘Amnesty’ for the Wall

Henry Olsen

Unless they want to see their hopes utterly dashed, resolute advocates of immigration enforcement need to get in the game now and help their champion pull some meaningful victory from the jaws of potentially catastrophic defeat.

Articles

American Greatness / January 22, 2019

The Counterrevolution to Populism Is Happening All over the World

Henry Olsen

In country after country, the rise of anti-immigrant parties or movements is forcing many supporters of traditional center-right parties to recalibrate.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 21, 2019

What’s the Best Way to Respond to China’s Economic and Military Might?

Henry Olsen

Western governments will need to resist the temptation to take the easy way out and turn a blind eye toward China’s rise.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 18, 2019

John Bolton Is Under Attack

Henry Olsen

Someone inside the administration is leaking against national security adviser John Bolton. Determining who and why is important going forward, especially for conservatives concerned about President Trump ceding too much ground to our adversaries.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 14, 2019

The GOP Must Stamp out the Seeds of Hatred Before It’s Too Late

Henry Olsen

The left has wrongly tarred conservatives as racists for decades. And that’s why conservatives and Republicans should promptly repudiate and condemn renegades in their party whenever they’re guilty of bigoted words or deeds.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 11, 2019

Trump Might Win His Trade War with China

Henry Olsen

It looks as if one of President Trump’s most roundly criticized moves, the implementation of tariffs on many Chinese goods, could prove a master stroke.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 10, 2019

The Manafort Revelations Raise a Haunting Question for Trump

Henry Olsen

The apparent revelation that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data with a suspected Russian intelligence asset has predictably reignited questions of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 9, 2019

Market Fundamentalism or Love of Country?

Henry Olsen

Treating economic action as a solely private preserve, any attempt to regulate or interfere in the terms of trade or the allocation of capital has been attacked by intellectual conservatism and its increasingly powerful libertarian allies. The fact that this has made ever more and more of industrial America a wasteland littered with closed factories, abandoned houses, and dollar stores doesn’t matter to these market fundamentalists.

Articles

American Greatness / January 8, 2019

Trump is Threatening to Go Around Congress to Get His Wall. History Shows He’ll Fail.

Henry Olsen

President Trump has threatened to declare a national emergency to break the impasse over the funding and construction of his beloved border wall. This might be a good negotiating tactic, but actually doing it would be a bad idea, both legally and politically.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 7, 2019

Trump Wants a Witch Hunt. Are Democrats About to Give It to Him?

Henry Olsen

President Trump has long portrayed the Mueller investigation and efforts to remove him from office as a political witch hunt. The best thing that could happen to him is for House Democrats to try to impeach him based on evidence that American swing voters find unconvincing.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 4, 2019

Trump Won’t Lose in a Long Shutdown

Henry Olsen

Americans didn’t want the government to be shut down, but now that it is, they’re likely to want a deal to get it back open. That plays into President Trump’s hands — as long as he demonstrates that he’s willing to deal, too.

Articles

The Washington Post / January 3, 2019

Leftward Shift

Henry Olsen

If President Trump and Republicans want to win the election, they must improve their level of support among the weakly churched segments of America.

Articles

World Magazine / January 2, 2019

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