His father was the pundit Ben Wattenberg and his aunt is the actress Rebecca Schull.
He was first assigned to the embassy in Paris before being called back to Foggy Bottom to serve as a speechwriter for Elliott Abrams.
He joined the staff of The Washington Times, and became one of the founding staffers of its spinoff, Insight on the News.
In the early 1990s, he moved on to the magazine American Spectator where he collaborated with David Brock on a number of exposés of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Wattenberg went on to work as a writer and editor for such magazines as The Weekly Standard and John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s George.