Media Seek Out SPP’s New MPP Director for Expertise About Elections

Politicians and campaign workers aren’t the only ones whose lives get busier around election time. Mark J. Rozell, SPP’s new master’s program director, can attest to that. One of the media’s favorite experts to quote about U.S. and Virginia politics, Rozell has made recent appearances on Fox-4 News, NBC and PBS’s Religion and Ethics News Weekly. He has been quoted in Bloomberg, the Washington Post, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Scripps-Howard News wire, St. Petersburg Times and USA Today. But this list accounts for only a few of the media outlets that have featured him in interviews over the past few weeks. Meeting the onslaught of demands for interviews while also starting a new job can’t be easy, but Rozell feels responsible for sharing his expertise. “It is a useful way to communicate the findings of political science to a wider public,” he says.
		Mark J. Rozell is SPP’s new master’s program director.

“Our job is to communicate knowledge, and that can be done in the classroom, through public speaking and media interviews. For good or bad, the reality is that media coverage reaches the most people by far.”

Some of the topics Rozell has addressed are bound to elicit strong opinions from both political camps: Catholic voting in the US, the role of the vice president in the presidential campaigns, the charges by Bush that Kerry and Edwards are “flip-flopping,” the importance of the religious right in Bush’s reelection and the effects of the presidential debates. Despite the sensitivity of the topics, Rozell insists that he always strives to maintain his role as a “non-partisan academic who will play it completely straight with reporters.”

“The idea is that the media have someone to talk to who has some expertise and who is not spinning any point of view,” he says.

Rozell came to Mason from Catholic University where he chaired the politics department. He has authored or co-authored nine books and been published in 50 journals. His most recent book was “Power and Prudence: The Presidency of George H.W. Bush.” In a 1995 commentary entitled “The Meaning of ‘Informed,’” former Washington Post ombudswoman Joann Byrd named Rozell among five “articulate experts” used frequently by media.