Eugene J. "E.J." Dionne, Jr. (born April 23, 1952 in Boston, Massachusetts), raised in Fall River, Massachusetts, an American journalist and political commentator, is a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown Public Policy Institute, a Senior Research Fellow at Saint Anselm College, and an NPR Commentator.

A frequent critic of the Bush Administration, Dionne generally writes from a liberal political viewpoint. His published works include the influential 1991 bestseller Why Americans Hate Politics, which argued that several decades of political polarization was alienating a silent centrist majority, as well as They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (1996), and Stand up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and Politics of Revenge (2004).

Dionne holds a B.A. from Harvard University (1973), where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a D.Phil. (1982) from Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Before becoming a columnist for the Post in 1993, he worked as a reporter for the Post and The New York Times.

He lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife and three children.