Washington Post Editor-at-Large Robert Kagan Resigns Over Paper’s Decision Not to Endorse Kamala Harris
(AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke)
Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned on Friday over the newspaper’s decision not to endorse Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
While a number of staff are reportedly angry and considering exiting the paper over the decision, Kagan’s resignation is particularly notable not just because of his standing at the publication, but because of his ties to Republican politics.
Kagan served as a speechwriter for Secretary of State George Shultz during the Reagan administration and as an advisor to Senator John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign.
In 2016, he left the Republican party over its nomination of Trump as its standard bearer and endorsed Hillary Clinton. In November 2023, he published an expansive column in the Post under the headline “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.”
“If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office,” wrote Kagan at the time, lamenting that “we continue to drift toward dictatorship, still hoping for some intervention that will allow us to escape the consequences of our collective cowardice, our complacent, willful ignorance and, above all, our lack of any deep commitment to liberal democracy.”
Earlier in the day, publisher and chief executive officer William Lewis announced that the Post would “not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election.”
“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way,” continued Lewis. “We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.”
