Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker. He originally joined the magazine as a reporter in 1969, after active duty in the U.S. Navy. He left in 1977 for Washington and the White House, where he was a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. From 1981 through 1991, he was associated with The New Republic, first as its editor, then as a political correspondent, and then as editor again. In 1992, he returned to The New Yorker for good, initially as executive editor. Since 2003, his Comment essays in The Talk of the Town have six times been finalists for the National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary, which he won in 2006. In 2009, Forbes.com put him at No. 17 on its list of “The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media.” He has also been a fellow of two institutes at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government: the Institute of Politics and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. He is the author of “Politics: Observations & Arguments,” “¡Obamanos!: The Birth of a New Political Era,” and “One Million.”

Listen: Hendrik Hertzberg discusses income inequality and its impact on the American political system.