Sidney Blumenthal

Sidney Blumenthal
Blumenthal in 2006
Senior Advisor to the President
In office
August 19, 1997 – January 20, 2001
PresidentBill Clinton
Preceded byGeorge Stephanopoulos
Succeeded byKarl Rove
Personal details
Born
Sidney Stone Blumenthal

(1948-11-06) November 6, 1948 (age 75)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse
Jacqueline Jordan
​
(m. 1976)​
Children2, including Max
EducationBrandeis University (BA)

Sidney Stone Blumenthal (born November 6, 1948) is an American journalist, political operative, and Lincoln scholar. A former aide to President Bill Clinton, he is a long-time confidant[1] of Hillary Clinton and was formerly employed by the Clinton Foundation.[2] As a journalist, Blumenthal wrote about American politics and foreign policy. He is also the author of a multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln. Three books of the planned five-volume series have already been published: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel, and All the Powers of Earth. Subsequent volumes were planned for later.[3][4]

Blumenthal has written for publications such as The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, for whom he served for a time as the magazine's Washington correspondent, and, was, briefly, the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for Salon. He is a regular contributor to the openDemocracy website and is a regular columnist for The Guardian.[5] After 2000, he wrote several essays critical of the administration of George W. Bush.[6][7][8][9][10]

Over time, Blumenthal was viewed as a new type of journalist who eroded the divide between independent journalism and partisan journalism: "As the connection between journalists and politicians is umbilical in Washington, Blumenthal's political problem, in part, is journalistic," reporter Michael Powell wrote of him in a profile in The Washington Post: "His is a type found far more often on the right in Washington, a partisan warrior who takes a critically sympathetic stance not just toward his issues but his chosen political party as well. Even as a writer at The Washington Post, where Blumenthal worked in the 1980s, he placed a porous membrane between his political views and his writing. It is the sort of partisan, if also intellectual, engagement that makes mainstream journalists, even those of liberal politics, deeply uncomfortable."[11]

  1. ^ Warren, James (July 5, 2016). "The Hillary Confidant You Can't Escape". Vanity Fair.
  2. ^ Brody, Ben (May 28, 2015). "Report: Clinton Foundation Paid Sidney Blumenthal $10,000 a Month". Bloomberg.
  3. ^ Hahn, Steven (May 13, 2016). "'A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1849,' by Sidney Blumenthal". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 17, 2018.
  4. ^ Pengelly, Martin (September 8, 2019). "What politics is: Sidney Blumenthal on Lincoln and his own Washington life". The Guardian. Retrieved January 18, 2020.
  5. ^ "Sidney Blumenthal". The Guardian.
  6. ^ Blumenthal, Sidney (March 22, 2007). "The Godfather White House". The Guardian. London, UK. Retrieved December 25, 2019.
  7. ^ Blumenthal, Sidney (January 23, 2007). "The Republican Revolt". The Guardian. London, UK. Retrieved December 25, 2019.
  8. ^ What Bush is hiding, Salon; March 22, 2007. Retrieved May 21, 2015.
  9. ^ Blumenthal, Sidney (December 21, 2006). "Delusions of Victory". The Guardian. London. Retrieved December 25, 2019.
  10. ^ Blumenthal, Sidney (September 8, 2019). "What politics is". The Guardian. Retrieved January 18, 2020.
  11. ^ Michael Powell, "Blumenthal, Giving As Good as He Gets ". The Washington Post, September 25, 1998.