Jules Witcover


Jules Joseph Witcover was an American journalist, author and political columnist. With a career lasting 50 years, Witcover wrote for The Baltimore Sun, the now-defunct Washington Star, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. Together with Jack Germond, Witcover co-wrote "Politics Today," a five-day-a-week syndicated column, for over 24 years.

Early life

Witcover was born in Union City, New Jersey, on July 16, 1927. He graduated from Columbia College in 1949 and later from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1951.

Career

Witcover began working in Washington for Newhouse Newspapers in 1954. He was reportedly steps away from where Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968. He was also one of the reporters featured in the 1972 book on campaign journalism, The Boys on the Bus, and eventually came to be seen as a "journalistic institution," according to media critic Howard Kurtz.
For 45 years, Witcover wrote a syndicated political column, from which he retired in 2022. His most recent book is The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power. Published in 2014, Kirkus Reviews described the work as a "valuable book of American history." Other work includes Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Nixon & Agnew, Public Affairs, and Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption. In March 2008, his history of campaign finance reform, "The Longest Campaign," appeared on the Center for Public Integrity's The Buying of the President 2008 website. Joe Biden: A Life Of Trial And Redemptions 2020 update includes 4 additional chapters, picking up where the original version left off and covers Biden's successful presidential campaign.

Personal life and death

Witcover married author and H.L. Mencken scholar Marion Elizabeth Rodgers on June 21, 1997. Witcover died from cardiovascular disease at his home in Washington, D.C., on August 16, 2025, at the age of 98.

Books written with Germond