Kenneth Baer is director of communications for the Obama White House's Office of Management and Budget. He is the founder and co-editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.
Baer is a former White House speechwriter, author, and analyst.
Baer graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Afterward, Baer obtained a doctorate in Politics from Oxford University as a Thouron Scholar.
Baer was Deputy Director of Speechwriting for Gore-Lieberman 2000 and Senior Speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore; he also wrote on technology and telecommunications issues for Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman William E. Kennard. Following the election of Barack Obama, he was named director of communications for Peter Orszag, then director of the Office of Management and Budget. Baer remained in the position when Orszag resigned.
During the 2004 presidential election, he was a senior advisor to the Joe Lieberman for President campaign and later advised the Kerry-Edwards campaign on a variety of policy issues. He is the author of Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton (University Press of Kansas, 2000), has published commentaries in publications such as Slate, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, and has been a political analyst on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC News, NPR, BBC, and CBC.