Robert Shrum is the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and the Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics at the University of Southern California. He is a former political consultant, who has worked on the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 and on the Gore-Lieberman campaign in 2000. Shrum served as speechwriter to various politicians from 1970 to 1984 and as a political consultant until 2009.