Early years Hertzberg graduated from
Suffern High School in
Suffern, New York, after a semester as an exchange student in
Toulouse, France. He began his writing career at
The Harvard Crimson and eventually served as managing editor including writing on local and national politics. In addition, he was president of the Liberal Union, had a jazz program on
WHRB, and belonged to the
Signet Society. Consumed by his Crimson duties, Hertzberg landed on academic probation for a semester, which required him to withdraw from all extracurricular activities. He managed to continue to write Crimson pieces anyway, under the pseudonym Sidney Hart. Hertzberg declined the invitation and after graduating from Harvard in 1965 he took a draft-deferred position as editorial director for the U.S. National Student Association. The following year he joined the San Francisco bureau of
Newsweek as a reporter. Hertzberg covered the rise of the
hippies, the emergence of rock groups such as
the Grateful Dead,
Ronald Reagan's successful campaign for governor of
California, and
The Beatles' last concert.
Spy magazine characterized him during this period of his career as a "lothario."
Politics During the 1976 election, Hertzberg wrote speeches for Governor
Hugh Carey of New York. After the election, he was recruited to join Carter's speech writing team by
James Fallows. After Fallows departed in 1979, Hertzberg became Carter's chief speechwriter. Hertzberg was an author of President
Jimmy Carter's July 15, 1979, speech on energy conservation, widely known as the "
Malaise Speech", and critiqued as one of the most ineffective pieces of political rhetoric in American history. The reaction by some Americans, who were suffering from high unemployment and an American industrial economy in severe recession, was that President Carter blamed them for the economic problems they were facing when they believed that Carter himself was ineffective in alleviating the recession. Others observe that calls and letters to the White House were overwhelmingly positive, and that Carter's approval rating in polls climbed 11 points. Hertzberg's personal favorite speech is Carter's farewell address of January 14, 1981. It opens with Carter declaring that he leaves the White House "to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of President, the title of citizen." As a
liberal author, he also expostulates on the necessity of
humanism and
secularism in democratic societies and critiques the
Conservative Revolution. Hertzberg believes that America's system of winner-take-all elections,
federalism, and
separation of powers is out of date and damaging to political responsibility and democratic accountability. Hertzberg is a frequent guest on television programs, such as
Democracy Now!. In 2004, Hertzberg contributed $2,000 to
John Kerry.
Later career Hertzberg was twice editor of
The New Republic, from 1981 to 1985 and then from 1989 to 1992, alternating in that job with
Michael Kinsley. In between his stints as editor he wrote for that and other magazines and was a fellow at two institutes at
Harvard Kennedy School, the
Institute of Politics and the
Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. In 1992, when
Tina Brown became editor of
The New Yorker, she recruited Hertzberg as her executive editor, and he helped her redesign and revitalize the magazine. Under Brown's successor,
David Remnick, Hertzberg was a senior editor and staff writer and was a main contributor to "Comment," the weekly essay on politics and society in "The Talk of the Town" and continued until early 2014. In 2006, his articles won
The New Yorker a
National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary, and in five other years (2003, 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2011) earned the magazine a Finalist ranking in the awards. From 1995 to 2018, Hertzberg was a board member of
FairVote, an electoral reform organization, and continues on its advisory committee. ==Bibliography==