Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum
Born (1958-10-19) October 19, 1958.
Long Beach, California
Residence Irvine, California
Occupation Writer

Kevin Drum (born October 19, 1958) is an American political blogger and columnist. He was born in Long Beach, California and now lives in Irvine, California.

Education

Drum attended Caltech for two years before transferring to California State University, Long Beach, where he received his bachelor's degree in journalism in 1981. While at CSULB he served as city editor of the university's student run newspaper, the Daily 49er.

Career

Drum rose to prominence through the popularity of his now-defunct independent liberal blog Calpundit (2003–2004) and through his blog Political Animal (2004–2008) published by the Washington Monthly. In 2008, he took a writing and blogging position at Mother Jones magazine.

Stylistically, his blog is known for offering original statistical and graphical analysis, with special attention to oil supply, especially peak oil theory and related issues. Another provocative series suggested a link between the recent decline in US crime rates and the phaseout of leaded gasoline,[1] a theory popularized by public health researcher Jessica Reyes[2] and economist Rick Nevin,[3] and criticized by Jim Manzi.[4] His posts on education often spark discussion.[5] He is skeptical about flavor-of-the-month school reforms which "disappear within a few years to be replaced by some new silver bullet – and always without producing any scalable, practical, long-lasting results," while he favors increased spending on three- to five-year-olds.[6] At Calpundit, he is credited with pioneering the trend of "Friday catblogging."[7][8]

Before writing full-time about politics, he worked as a technical writer, then moved into high-tech marketing. He was with Kofax Image Products for nine years as VP for Marketing and general manager of the software division. He also has worked as a consultant.

In an interview with Norman Geras, Drum stated that his intellectual heroes were Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes, Edward R. Murrow and Charles Darwin. He also considers Benjamin Franklin his all-time favorite political hero.[9]

Drum has defended Hillary Clinton during her email controversy, stating that her actions were "non-scandalous"[10] and that she is "honest to a fault when discussing policy."[11]

The Iraq war

Drum supported the 2003 Iraq War in its early stages, but just before the United States launched its attack, he changed his mind. He said, "Before the war started I switched to opposition on practical grounds (i.e., that George W. Bush's approach was incapable of accomplishing the goals it was meant to accomplish). Since then, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that, in fact, I should have opposed it all along on philosophical grounds: namely that it was a fundamentally flawed concept and had no chance of working even if it had been competently executed."[9][12]

Personal

On October 24, 2014, Drum posted that he was undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma.[13] On October 18, 2016, he updated readers that it has been two years since his diagnosis and he is "still alive and kicking."[14]

Notes

  1. ↑ Kevin Drum (January–February 2013). "America's Real Criminal Element: Lead". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  2. ↑ Reyes, J. W. (2007). "Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime". The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. 7. doi:10.2202/1935-1682.1796.
  3. ↑ Nevin, R. (2000). "How lead exposure relates to temporal changes in IQ, violent crime, and unwed pregnancy". Environmental research. 83 (1): 1–22. Bibcode:2000ER.....83....1N. doi:10.1006/enrs.1999.4045. PMID 10845777.
  4. ↑ "Lead and Crime". National Review. 2013-01-10. Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  5. ↑ "Matt Yglesias and the Edu-Nihilism Straw Man". Forbes. 2011-06-03. Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  6. ↑ Kevin Drum. "Building Better Kids". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  7. ↑ Terdiman, Daniel. The New York Times, Technology Section, October 28, 2004.
  8. ↑ Drum, Kevin (2003-03-07). "All The World's Problems America". Calpundit. Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  9. 1 2 Geras, Norman. Interview with Kevin Drum, August 19, 2005.
  10. ↑ Drum, Kevin (March 27, 2016). "Hillary Email Scandal Continue To Be Dumb But Non-Scandalous". Mother Jones.
  11. ↑ Drum, Kevin (March 10, 2016). "Hillary Clinton's Honesty Problem Is Not What You Think It Is". Mother Jones.
  12. ↑ "Four Responses to "What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable"". Foreign Affairs. July 11, 2006. Archived from the original on July 13, 2006.
  13. ↑ Drum, Kevin. "Friday Cancer Blogging". Mother Jones. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
  14. ↑ Drum, Kevin. "A Special Post For My Sister". Mother Jones. Retrieved October 19, 2016.

External links

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