President's Forum To Feature The McLaughlin Group Sept. 25
One of America's most popular weekly public affairs programs, "The McLaughlin Group," will bring its own inimitable way of discussing key national issues to Baylor University when the panel members take part in the President's Forum at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 25, in Waco Hall.
"The McLaughlin Group" -- comprised of creator, executive producer and host John McLaughlin and panel members Michael Barone, Eleanor Clift, Lawrence O'Donnell and Eric Felten -- airs Fridays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 11:30 a.m. on KWBU-TV Ch. 34.
"The group's presentation will follow the same format as their popular PBS television show, which should make for a lively program," said Larry Brumley, associate vice president for communications.
Tickets for The McLaughlin Group are free of charge for students, faculty and staff and are available at the Bill Daniel Student Center ticket office. Tickets for the general public are $5 and will go on sale Sept. 4.
Several Baylor students also will have the opportunity to meet The McLaughlin Group during an afternoon question-and-answer session, as they did with past lecturers Margaret Thatcher, Desmond Tutu and Steve Forbes.
McLaughlin, known for his incisive interviewing and moderating style and wry sense of humor, has earned numerous awards for The McLaughlin Group, which premiered on PBS stations in 1982. In addition, McLaughlin has served as the Washington editor and columnist for the National Review, a speech writer and special assistant to Presidents Nixon and Ford and associate editor of the weekly opinion journal America. He earned his doctorate from Columbia University and holds two master's degrees from Boston College.
Barone is the senior staff editor for Reader's Digest, based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was senior writer with U.S. News & World Report, editorial page staff member at The Washington Post and vice president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. Barone is the co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, which was nominated for a National Book Award in its first edition in 1971. Its 14th edition appeared in summer 1997. He also is the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan.
Clift became one of the first women at Newsweek to move from secretary to reporter at the magazine. Now a contributing editor to Newsweek where she writes on the White House, Washington, women in politics and other issues, Clift covered the 1992 election, following the campaign of Bill Clinton from its beginning, the Iran-Contra scandal and Jimmy Carter's bid for the presidency. She and her husband, Tom Brazaitis, the Washington bureau chief for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, recently published War Without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics.
O'Donnell is an MSNBC political analyst and writes an opinion column for MSNBC on the Internet. He has served as the Democratic chief of staff of the United States Senate Committee on Finance, chief of staff of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and senior advisor to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. A writer before entering politics and government, O'Donnell published Deadly Force, which was adapted as a CBS movie in 1986, and has written essays and articles for The New York Times, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair and Spy. He is married to actress Kathryn Harrold.
Felten is the new Washington correspondent for Reader's Digest, after spending 1999 as the editor of the Washington business and politics magazine POWER and the previous five years as a member of the editorial board of The Washington Times. A frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, it was in that magazine in 1998 that Felten exposed CNN's Vietnam nerve gas hoax, which eventually led the network to retract the story. He also is the author of The Ruling Class, an influential critique of Congress published in 1993.