Experts

Mary Kate Cary

Practitioner Senior Fellow

Fast Facts

  • Former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush
  • Provides political commentary for NPR, CNN, Fox News Channel, and CTV (Canada)
  • Executive producer of 41ON41, a documentary about President George H.W. Bush
  • Expertise on presidential communications, speechwriting

Areas Of Expertise

  • Domestic Affairs
  • Media and the Press
  • Governance
  • Elections
  • Leadership
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Mary Kate Cary, practitioner senior fellow, served as a White House speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to early 1992, authoring more than 100 of his presidential addresses. She also has ghostwritten several books related to President Bush’s life and career and served as senior writer for communications for the 1988 Bush-Quayle presidential campaign.

Currently an adjunct professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Politics, Cary teaches classes on political speechwriting; the greatest American political speeches; and the 2020 presidential election. In her first year in the politics department, she was recognized by the UVA Student Council for excellence in teaching.

Cary currently chairs the advisory board of the George and Barbara Bush Foundation, where she has been a member since 2004. The Bush Foundation oversees the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and the Bush School of Government & Public Service, with campuses at Texas A&M University and in Washington, D.C.. In 2014, she was the creator and executive producer of 41ON41, a documentary about President George H. W. Bush, which premiered internationally on CNN. She is also a producer of President in Waiting, a documentary about the modern vice presidency that features interviews with all of the living vice presidents, which debuted on CNN in December 2020.

Following her tenure at the White House, Cary served as spokesman and deputy director of policy and communications for U.S. Attorney General William Barr and deputy director of communications at the Republican National Committee under Chairman Haley Barbour. She also served as a long-time columnist at US News & World Report, writing on politics and the presidency.

Cary is currently a member of the Ronald Reagan Institute's Women in Civics Advisory Council; UVA's Darden School of Business Leadership Communication Council; and the national advisory board of The Network of Enlightened Women, which supports conservative female leaders on more than 50 college campuses. She is a long-time member of the Judson Welliver Society of former presidential speechwriters.

Mary Kate Cary News Feed

Bipodisan
Riding the pink wave
Bipodisan heads to the campus of George Washington University this week, to hear from four former candidates for office from both sides of the aisle. All of them come from very different walks of life and are different ages — and all happen to be fascinating women. In front of a packed house, listen as they talk about what it was like to run for office, the obstacles they overcame, and some of the crazy comments they got from voters. Warning: listening might make you want to run for office, too.
Mary Kate Cary Bipodisan
TIME
President Trump Told Congress Something Untrue. Here's Why That's a Big Deal
Mary Kate Cary, who worked as a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to early 1992, said that speeches to Congress are typically given the highest-level of fact-checking within the White House. “It was one researcher one speechwriter for every speech,” she recalled. “Then, once you wrote it, the researchers would fact check literally every word and, in those days, they had to put a check mark over every word.”
Mary Kate Cary TIME
Bipodisan
Straight, No Chaser
It’s August in Washington, and it seems all the D’s and R’s are on vacation. No worries: over at the bar at Chatter, Mary Kate sits down with her friend Jonathan Allen — not a partisan but a straight-down-the-middle ace reporter for NBC News — to hear what it was like to be in the room with President Trump, Kim Jung Un, Vladimir Putin, AND among the crowd at the Trump rally in Tampa. He also gives his straight take on Kavanaugh, the Koch brothers, and the midterms. Jon’s the co-author of a New York Times #1 best-seller about the 2016 race, and he offers up what 2020 presidential contenders on both sides of the aisle could learn about messaging, data analytics, and demographics in 2016. (See if you can guess the two words HRC thought would never come out of her mouth — but did.) Plus ending gridlock, and being hopeful.
Mary Kate Cary Bipodisan
MPR News
Why aren't more millennials voting?
A study from the Pew Research Center shows that millennials make up the majority of the electorate, yet many don't show up to vote. Why are young people discouraged from going to the polls? And what are candidates doing to encourage them to cast ballots in the upcoming midterm elections? MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke with Khalilah Brown-Dean, associate professor of political science at Quinnipiac University, and Mary Kate Cary, senior fellow for presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center and former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush.
Mary Kate Cary MPR News
UVA Today
A Democrat and a Republican walk into a bar
“We were having a hard time finding podcasts that featured both sides actually talking to each other,” said Mary Kate Cary, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush. That’s how she and fellow presidential speechwriter Paul Orzulak – a Democrat who worked for President Bill Clinton – ended up sitting opposite each other every Thursday at Chatter Bar and Grill, a Washington watering hole and part-time recording studio owned by ESPN talk show host Tony Kornheiser.
Mary Kate Cary UVA Today
Bipodisan
And now for something completely different
Hear left and right discuss the hottest news — Justice Kennedy’s retirement, the travel ban, the Janus decision, the Red Hen Incident, and Maxine Waters’ heated rhetoric — all without yelling, screaming, slapping or punching? Bipodisan is the ONLY place to get a civil conversation on this week’s issues. Plus Mary Kate reports on the newest member of President Bush 41’s team, Jean talks about her fave new comedienne, and Paul relays a surprising story about a CNN reporter amidst a Trump rally.
Mary Kate Cary Bipodisan