photo ornstein mug, sept.

CANTON -- Prominent Congress watcher Norman Ornstein, author of the New York Times best selling book "It’s Even Worse Than It Looks," speaks at St. Lawrence University at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 30, in Hepburn Auditorium.

As part of the St. Lawrence’s Contemporary Issues Forum, Ornstein’s talk, titled “The New Politics of Extremism: Outlook for Improvement?” is on the roots of the current difficulties in Congress and examine the outlook for improvement in the next elections and beyond.

Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is a long-time observer and scholar of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for National Journal and The Atlantic called “Washington Inside Out.” For 30 years, he was an election-eve analyst for CBS News, and in 2012 he served as a principal on-air election-eve analyst for BBC News.

Ornstein led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the law, known as McCain-Feingold, aimed at reforming the campaign financing system. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. Ornstein was also spotlighted as one of the 100 Top Global Thinkers in 2012 by Foreign Policy Magazine.

His many books include "The Permanent Campaign and Its Future,” "The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track," with Thomas E. Mann; and most recently The New York Times bestseller "It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism," also with Mann.

For more information, contact Karin Blackburn at 229-5998.