The son of Sidney Hertzberg, a journalist and political activist, and Hazel Whitman Hertzberg, a professor of history and education at Columbia University, Hertzberg was born in New York City and educated in the public schools of Rockland County, New York, and Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1965.

Early years

Hertzberg graduated from Suffern High School in Suffern, New York, after a semester as an exchange student in Toulouse, France.

He began his writing career at the Harvard Crimson and eventually served as managing editor including writing on local and national politics. Hertzberg's case landed him on academic probation for a semester, which required him to withdraw from extracurricular activities. He continued to write Crimson pieces anyway, under the pseudonym Sidney Hart. He was president of the Liberal Union, had a jazz program on WHRB, and belonged to the Signet Society.

William Shawn, the editor of the New Yorker, invited Hertzberg to talk about writing for the magazine when writer Lillian Ross recommended him after seeing him interviewed on a television documentary called "The Shook-Up Generation." Hertzberg declined the invitation and after graduating from Harvard in 1965 he took a draft-deferred position as editorial director for the U.S. National Student Association. The following year he joined the San Francisco bureau of Newsweek as a reporter. Hertzberg covered the rise of the hippies, the emergence of rock groups such as the Grateful Dead, Ronald Reagan's successful campaign for governor of California, and The Beatles' last concert.

In 1967 he enlisted in the United States Navy and became an officer posted in New York City. By late 1968 due to his growing opposition to the Vietnam War he requested conscientious-objector status, which was denied. He was discharged at the end of his commitment in 1969.

From 1969 to 1977 Hertzberg was a staff writer for the New Yorker.

Politics

During the 1976 election, Hertzberg wrote speeches for Governor Hugh Carey of New York. After the election, he was recruited to join Carter's speech writing team by James Fallows. After Fallows departed in 1979, Hertzberg became Carter's chief speechwriter. Hertzberg was an author of President Jimmy Carter's July 15, 1979, speech on energy conservation, widely known as the "Malaise Speech" and considered by numerous commentators as one of the most ineffective pieces of political rhetoric in American history. The reaction by most Americans, who were suffering from high unemployment and an American industrial economy in severe recession, was that President Carter blamed them for the economic problems they were facing when they believed that Carter himself was ineffective in alleviating the recession.. Others, however, point out that calls and letters to the White House were overwhelmingly positive, and that Carter's approval rating in polls climbed 11 points. Vice President Walter Mondale predicted that the speech would not be well-received. Hertzberg's personal favorite speech is the Carter's farewell address of January 14, 1981. It opens with Carter declaring that he leaves the White House "to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of President, the title of citizen."

Later career

Hertzberg was twice editor of The New Republic, from 1981 to 1985 and then from 1989 to 1992, alternating in that job with Michael Kinsley. In between his stints as editor he wrote for that and other magazines and was a fellow at two institutes at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government: the Institute of Politics and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. Under his editorship The New Republic twice won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the magazine world’s highest honor.

In 1992, when Tina Brown became editor of The New Yorker, she recruited Hertzberg as her executive editor, and he helped her redesign and revitalize the magazine. Under Brown's successor, David Remnick, Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer and is a main contributor to "Comment," the weekly essay on politics and society in "The Talk of the Town." In 2006, his articles won The New Yorker a National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary.

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Books

Hertzberg is the author of the book, Politics: Observations and Arguments, 1966-2004 ISBN 1-59420-018-1, a collection of essays and reports on four decades of American political debates, campaigns, and ideological clashes; culture, counterculture, and pop culture; and presidents from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush, with excursions into neoconservatives, the religious right, and wars from Vietnam to the war on terror. As a liberal author, he also expostulates on the necessity of humanism and secularism in democratic societies and critiques the Conservative Revolution. Hertzberg believes that America’s system of winner-take-all elections, federalism, and separation of powers is out of date and damaging to political responsibility and democratic accountability. He is a supporter of such reforms as instant runoff voting, proportional representation, and election of the president by national popular vote.

Hertzberg was interviewed August 7, 2005, on cable television CSPAN2's BookTV.

Articles

Hertzberg is married to Virginia Cannon, a former Vanity Fair editor and a current New Yorker editor. They have a son, Wolf.