Award-win­ning polit­i­cal colum­nist Wal­ter Shapiro is a Spe­cial Cor­re­spon­dent for The New Repub­lic. He is the win­ner of the Sig­ma Delta Chi Award, giv­en by the Soci­ety of Pro­fes­sion­al Jour­nal­ists, as the best 2010 online colum­nist for his work for Pol­i­tics Dai­ly. In recent years, he was the Wash­ing­ton bureau chief for Salon and a polit­i­cal colum­nist for USA Today and Esquire. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he was on the staffs of Time, Newsweek, and The Wash­ing­ton Post. He was also a White House speech­writer for Jim­my Carter.