Mara Liasson
Mara Liasson is a national political correspondent for NPR. Her reports can be heard regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazine programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Liasson provides extensive coverage of politics and policy from Washington, DC 鈥� focusing on the White House and Congress 鈥� and also reports on political trends beyond the Beltway.
Each election year, Liasson provides key coverage of the candidates and issues in both presidential and congressional races. During her tenure she has covered seven presidential elections 鈥� in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Prior to her current assignment, Liasson was NPR's White House correspondent for all eight years of the Clinton administration. She has won the White House Correspondents' Association's Merriman Smith Award for daily news coverage in 1994, 1995, and again in 1997. From 1989-1992 Liasson was NPR's congressional correspondent.
Liasson joined NPR in 1985 as a general assignment reporter and newscaster. From September 1988 to June 1989 she took a leave of absence from NPR to attend Columbia University in New York as a recipient of a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism.
Prior to joining NPR, Liasson was a freelance radio and television reporter in San Francisco. She was also managing editor and anchor of California Edition, a California Public Radio nightly news program, and a print journalist for The Vineyard Gazette in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Liasson is a graduate of Brown University where she earned a bachelor's degree in American history.
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Throughout the debate, both Democrats and Republicans have made decisions based on faulty assumptions about the other side. What's still not clear is what it will take to end the crisis. -
Everything former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says gets a tremendous amount of attention, even if she says virtually nothing, says strategist Geoff Garin. And that's not likely to change as the 2016 presidential race gets closer. -
Observers say the president's recent fumbles on Syria and other issues have emboldened Republicans. But President Obama's supporters say he has the upper hand when it comes to showdowns over a possible government shutdown and default on the nation's debt. -
In recent years, Democrats have gained the upper hand in the Electoral College. Virginia and Florida, once GOP strongholds, have turned purple. Now, Democrats are turning their attention to the biggest Republican prize of all, Texas. -
In all the noise and shouting over the NSA data gathering, the unspoken assumption is that the public must be outraged. But in fact, much of the public seems indifferent, and the political fallout may be less predictable than it seems.
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It has been a difficult spring for the president. He couldn't get Congress to work with him on the sequester or gun control legislation. Now he appears to be making an effort to get back to the issues Americans say they care most about. -
They don't want to offend Hispanic voters, but they don't want to turn off the GOP base either, says Ron Bonjean, a former Republican leadership aide. And competing for Hispanic votes is not a top priority for the sizable number of Republican rank and file who still see the bill as amnesty. -
From Chris Christie to Jeb Bush, a slew of potential candidates for president have been getting attention. Most of them are speaking this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, but a few pointedly were not asked.
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The big donors behind Karl Rove's Crossroads superPAC have started a new project to vet and recruit Republican candidates they believe can win. But some anti-establishment groups have viewed the project as an inside-the-Beltway power grab. -
Following November's losses, there's wide agreement among Republicans that the party has to change. A former George W. Bush speechwriter says one model to study is how the Democrats bounced back after a similar political exile in the late 1980s.
