Todd S. Purdum is senior writer at POLITICO and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He was formerly with The New York Times, where he worked for 23 years, covering politics from city hall to the White House, and also serving as diplomatic correspondent and Los Angeles bureau chief. He is a native of Macomb, Ill., and a graduate of Princeton University. He is the author of "Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution," and “An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” both published by Henry Holt & Co. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Dee Dee Myers, the former White House press secretary, executive vice president for worldwide corporate communications and public affairs at Warner Bros., and their two children.