Mary Kate Cary

Mary Kate Cary is a professional speaker and panelist on the American presidency, political rhetoric, and current politics. She 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. In 2019, when she began her teaching career at the University of Virginia, Cary became a leading voice in the free speech and viewpoint diversity movement in higher education across the United States.

In addition to being a guest lecturer at dozens of universities nationwide, Ms. Cary has spoken at corporate conferences and presidential libraries, and led conversations on political panels, during leadership training sessions, and at college alumni gatherings. Cary also has appeared on bipartisan political roundtable panel discussions for the National Constitution Center, Harvard’s Kennedy School, the National Press Club, the Miller Center and numerous corporate conferences and trade associations.

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.

She wrote a biweekly column on politics from 2009 to 2017, serving as a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report. Her columns often appeared on Real Clear Politics. She was also a regular political analyst on National Public Radio, as well as a regular contributor on CTV, the largest cable news network in Canada, analyzing American politics with a liberal colleague. In 2017, she co-founded and hosted the political podcast Bipodisan with former Bill Clinton speechwriter Paul Orzulak.