Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson is the host of MSNBC's Tucker, a fast paced, no-holds-barred conversation about the day's developments in news, politics, world issues and pop culture. His show airs live at 6:00 PM (Eastern) Monday thru Friday.
Carlson joined MSNBC in February 2005 from CNN, where he was the youngest anchor in the history of that network. At CNN, he hosted a number of shows and specials, including the network's political debate program, Crossfire. During the same period, Carlson also hosted a weekly public affairs program on PBS, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered.
A longtime magazine and newspaper journalist, Carlson has reported from around the world, most recently from Iraq and Lebanon. He has been a columnist for New York magazine and Reader's Digest. He currently writes for Esquire, The Weekly Standard and New York Times magazine. Carlson began his journalism career at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper in Little Rock. His first book, Politicians, Partisans and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News, was published in the fall of 2003. In 2006, he competed on ABC's Dancing with the Stars.
Paul Begala
The 2006 midterm elections shocked many in the political world. But not Paul Begala. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has said the CNN political analyst and former top aide to President Clinton was the first person to predict the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives - well over a year before the election.
But Begala did not merely predict the outcome of the election, he affected it. Tom DeLay, the former Republican House Majority Leader, named Begala as one of five architects of the coalition that ousted his party from power. "I have never seen such a powerful coalition," DeLay said.
As a strategist for Bob Casey, Jr., he helped direct Casey's landslide victory over Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania - the third-ranking Member of the Senate and the highest-ranking Republican to lose in 2006. Santorum had never lost an election in his life, yet Casey defeated him in the biggest landslide any Democrat has ever won in a Pennsylvania Senate race, and the biggest landslide any Senate challenger has achieved in 25 years.
Begala also made more than two-dozen appearances on the campaign trail for Democratic House challengers, from New Hampshire to California and from Nevada to Florida.
Begala served as counselor to President Clinton in the White House, where he helped define and defend the Administration's agenda, from the State of the Union Address to the economic, domestic and international issues the White House faces each day. With his partner James Carville he was a senior strategist for the Clinton-Gore Presidential Campaign in 1992, and he has helped direct the political strategy of numerous other campaigns across the country and around the world, including advising politicians in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.
He helped his friend John F. Kennedy, Jr. launch the political magazine George and wrote the "Capitol Hillbilly" column, but left the magazine after John passed away. He has also written for Esquire magazine and The Washington Monthly, and is the author of the New York Times best-selling book Is Our Children Learning? The Case Against George W. Bush. His books, Buck Up, Suck Up, and Come Back When You Foul Up and Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future (2006), both written with James Carville, were also New York Times best sellers.
Begala received his BA in Government and his law degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was student body president. He is currently a research professor at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute.