Jamie Stiehm is a Washington journalist and public speaker who writes a syndicated column on national politics and history for Creators Syndicate, an independent media and syndication company. Some of her latest work for their readership can be seen here:
The Three Women of San Francisco
Jan 18, 2023
WASHINGTON — So, what city gave America the only woman House speaker, the most senior senator and the first woman vice president? San Francisco, of course, that fair city. Read More
Full House Theater: An American Tragedy
Jan 11, 2023
WASHINGTON — A full House for four days and four nights felt like 40 in the political wilderness. Pumping his fist like a frat bro, California Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy eked out a victory for House speaker. Read More
New Year's Light on Lies Clears the Air
Jan 04, 2023
WASHINGTON — They thought they'd fool the grown-ups and get away with it all. George Santos and Sam Bankman-Fried are arrivistes in their 30s. A coincidence? I think not. Read More
The Kindness of Women Who Made You Feel at Home
May 4, 2022
My mother calls me every morning from Santa Monica, sounding like a lark, ever since the pandemic. A professor into her 80s, she has a subversive streak and went places all over the world, once to a civil war with a United Nations peacekeeping team. She sees her three daughters as a bit "unadventurous." Read More
Racing Away From Our Past With Judge Jackson
April 6, 2022
The vortex of our vexed record on race came out with the cherry blossoms. These three things: the Senate vote on a historic Supreme Court nominee; an anti-lynching law passed at last; and marking the cruel April day Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee.
Read More
Two Californias Clash in a Divided House: Pelosi Versus McCarthy
(for Mark Shields)
Aug 7, 2021
It's a first in American history: The speaker of the House and the minority leader hail from the same state. But they barely speak. Read More
Disunion Series
The New York Times
Lincoln on Stage
April 13, 2015
“The enthralling young Lincoln thrived on his rough stages in Springfield, Ill., much as an Elizabethan actor might at the uproarious, open-air Globe. As best we know, Lincoln’s voice was not a rumbling bass, but a tenor with a drawl, a trained instrument for penetrating across rooms, lyceum halls and distances.”
Whitman in Washington
December 28, 2012
“When Whitman arrived at the field hospital set up in a mansion, he found a scene from hell, watched over by an imposing angel: Clara Barton moved amid screams of surgery, ministering to youths, bandaging the bleeding and soothing the dying with low-spoken words and water.”
Compassion Under Fire
December 9, 2011
“From the first day blood was spilled in 1861 — some of her old Massachusetts schoolmates were among the Yankee soldiers besieged in Baltimore by a mob of Southern sympathizers — the Civil War was what [Clara Barton] lived for. She left a job in Washington as a Patent Office copyist for scenes of mass misery that broke all the record books.”
The War Comes Home for Lee
July 30, 2011
“Orchards on the vast expanse of Arlington acres were clear-cut to make room for roads and telegraph poles. Union soldiers drilled on land that had been tilled by enslaved people for generations. A nameless number who died at the First Battle of Bull Run were later buried on the grounds in a not-so-subtle message that their blood was on Lee’s hands.”
Parallel Lives from the Eastern Shore
June 24, 2011
“Twenty miles away, Tubman’s family lived in still deeper isolation, in a hardscrabble part of the world with few fine indoor things. But she had the luck to know and live with most of her close-knit family; Douglass was separated from his mother and grandmother as a child, a cut that never healed.”
With Friends Like These…
April 8, 2011
“Lucretia Mott, the Philadelphia Quaker famous for her work in the abolition and women’s rights movements, never met Abraham Lincoln. But Mott and many of her faith thought they knew him well enough to be wary: though the South was up in arms over his antislavery statements, he was nowhere near radical enough for Mott’s small but influential religious community.”
SWATTALK: “STORMING DEMOCRACY: TWO JOURNEYS ON JAN. 6”
featuring Alex Friedfeld with Jamie Stiehm
Recorded at Swarthmore College on Monday, Jan. 24, 2022
SWATTALK: “REMEMBERING RBG: HER LIFE AND LEGACY”
With Jed Rakoff ’64, Andrea Young ’76, and Phil Weiser ’90
Recorded at Swarthmore College on Thursday, November 5, 2020
Stiehm’s byline has also been seen in a spectrum of newspapers, magazines and online news organizations:
The Baltimore Sun
The Capital Times (Madison)
The Christian Science Monitor
Columbia Journalism Review
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)
Daily Herald (Chicago)
Dallas Morning News
The Hartford Courant
History News Network
Houston Chronicle
Huffington Post
International Herald Tribune
The Miami Herald
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The National Memo
News Chief (Winter Park, Fla.)
Noozhawk (Santa Barbara, Ca.)
Orange County Register
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
Providence Sunday Journal
RealClearPolitics
The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
San Jose Mercury News
The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Tuscaloosa News (Ala.)
U.S. News & World Report (Opinion Page contributor)
The Washington Monthly
The Week (U.K. edition) quoted as one of the week’s best columns
Wisconsin State Journal
Zocalo Public Square
Selected Pieces
Democracy under fire: A first-person account inside the Capitol
San Francisco Chronicle, January 10, 2021
“Then there were footsteps, shouting, broken glass, tear gas inside. The clamor became an onslaught. Members and reporters donned escape hoods, to kneel and head for locked doors and a secret staircase. Nobody could take their eyes off a gun standoff at the chamber door. That was when I called my family.”
Capitol siege: An eyewitness account from inside the House chamber (condensed interview)
BBC News, January 7, 2021
“Many of us are hardened journalists - I've seen my share of violence covering homicides in Baltimore - but this was very unpredictable. The police didn't seem to know what was happening. They weren't coordinated. They locked the chamber doors but at the same time, they told us we would have to evacuate. So there was a sense of panic.”
Another Kennedy Family Tragedy
American Heritage, July/August 2020
“I know the place where they were lost. I kept thinking of lovely Shady Side on the shore of the Bay while we were celebrating the life of that remarkable woman during an online memorial service.”
Trump's Plot to Take Out the Post Office
Creators Syndicate, April 29, 2020
“The United States Postal Service is under silent siege, just as the American people are, in the coronavirus crisis. Trump views the pandemic as an opportunity to choke the post office, to strangle a precious part of democracy.”
A tale of two cities on the streets: from D.C. to Santa Monica
San Francisco Chronicle, June 4, 2020
“It was the worst of times. But the best of times are far from here. President Trump is veering toward martial law, as announced in the Rose Garden the very moment peaceful resisters were forced out of nearby Lafayette Square.”
2020 may be historic for women in more ways than one
Washington Post, February 10, 2019
“The recent shift to the Senate as the proving ground for a presidential run serves women well. It was once an article of faith among pundits that governors made the best candidates. Women have more opportunities to enter political careers and rise on the national stage as as lawmakers than as governors.”
It’s easier to have a boyfriend from the past than in messy real life
The Washington Post, February 2018
“Historical boyfriends never let you down. They never leave. You don’t have to worry about whether they’ll call or text. They are always in your heart.”