Richard L. Wolffe (born 17 September 1968) is a journalist, MSNBC commentator, and author of the Barack Obama book Renegade: The Making of a President (Crown, June 2009).
Born to an English father and Moroccan mother in Birmingham, England, Wolffe is a 1992 graduate of Oxford University, first-class honours, in English and French literature.
Took the Westminster Press diploma in journalism, starting with the pre-entry course at Hastings in autumn 1992 while a trainee reporter with the Brighton Argus. Moved to the Financial Times and thereafter Newsweek.
Wolffe covered the entire length of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign for Newsweek magazine, traveling with the candidate and his inner circle from his announcement through election day, 21 months later.
He is a political analyst on MSNBC, having appeared frequently on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Hardball. On NBC, he was featured as a political commentator on Meet The Press and TODAY. He features prominently in the forthcoming HBO documentary on the Obama campaign, and played a leading role in the HBO documentary of the 2000 Bush campaign, Journeys With George. He has also appeared on CNN and Fox News, as well as international media including British, Canadian and Australian television.
He now writes regularly for The Daily Beast.
As Newsweek’s senior White House correspondent, his cover stories included "What He Believes" (on Obama’s faith), "Black & White" (about Obama and racial politics), "Bush In The Bubble" (after Hurricane Katrina), and "Weight of the World" (how Bush handled the Lebanon War). Wolffe joined Newsweek in November 2002 as diplomatic correspondent, covering foreign policy and international affairs. In the 2004 presidential election, he covered the Howard Dean campaign before switching to John Kerry.
Before Newsweek, Wolffe was a senior journalist at the Financial Times, serving as its deputy bureau chief and U.S. diplomatic correspondent in Washington. He reported on U.S. foreign policy, covered the Microsoft antitrust trial, as well as regulatory and business issues at the US Department of the Treasury, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In April 2009, he joined Public Strategies, a business advisory firm, as Senior Strategist.Wolffe left the firm in December 2009.
Wolffe is the co-author of The Victim’s Fortune, (HarperCollins, 2002), about the deals that led to billions of dollars in compensation to the Nazis’ victims in the late 1990s. He also co-authored two Spanish cookbooks, Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America (Clarkson Potter in the US and Planeta in Spain, 2005) and Made in Spain: Spanish Dishes for the American Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, 2008). He has also written for food magazines such as Food Arts and Food & Wine. He authored a book on Obama's campaign called Renegade: The Making of a President.
In July 2009, Richard Wolffe guest hosted a few episodes of Countdown with Keith Olbermann. He came under fire shortly afterward from columnist Glenn Greenwald and liberal pundit Ana Marie Cox due to his position at Public Strategies as a "paid lobbyist." Greenwald referred to Wolffe's guest-host appearances as "blatantly sleazy," noting that Olbermann regularly criticized Fox News for having lobbyists on their network. Olbermann has since apologized, claiming he was caught "flat-footed" and announcing that Wolffe would no longer appear on Countdown until his activities outside of MSNBC are made clear. On October 1, 2009 Richard Wolffe appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann discussing Sarah Palin and her autobiography. He announced the decision to let Wolffe back on the show on his blog at DailyKos, stating, "Firstly, as I said when issues about Richard's other work were first raised in August of this year, he wouldn't appear on the newshour until we straightened them out. I'm confident we've done that now. Among other managers, the broadcast network's very tough practices exec vetted this other job (and as indicated, the work he's done for us), found no interrelation, and believes as I do that the failure was in the area of disclosure. Thus will his appearances be limited to areas that don't overlap with his non-journalistic work. Those that could even seem to present a conflict of interest will also be off-limits. Each of his appearances will mention his private work and viewers will be directed to the web for fuller elucidation of what he does - and doesn't - do there."
He also lectures at many universities and institutes. In September 2009, Wolffe lectured on the topic Who is Barack Obama at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
