More and Better Think Tanks

Readers have no doubt noticed that I've gotten in the habit of throwing brickbats in the direction of the Brookings Institution's work on Iraq and the Middle East (it's a very big institution and I don't want to over-generalize since the dynamics of different programs seem very different to me) but as Ilan Goldenberg points out in a well-argued post, while this stuff makes for good blog-fodder it doesn't ultimate change anything. Rather, as he says:

Ultimately, the problem with the liberal VSP community has less to do with being “serious” and more to do with institutions On the right, groups such as AEI and Heritage act as a conservative VSP machine that systematically nurtures and promotes its experts. On the left, there are not enough mechanisms for picking out the best scholars, elevating their work and increasing their media profile. We all assume that because so many liberal experts sit inside CFR and Brookings, these institutions should play that role, but it’s not what they were set up to do. Heritage and AEI are there to push an agenda. Brookings and CFR are meant to be purely idea factories, without a coherent advocacy strategy.

Right. We now have a couple of institutions, most notably the Center for American Progress, but also the smaller National Security Network where Ilan works and some extent the things Steve Clemons has done at the New America Foundation that are capable of pushing a coherent progressive approach to national security issues (the newish Center for a New American Security is also potentially promising, though I'm a bit skeptical). What we need, in essence, are more institutions like that, and more capacity at the institutions we have. Meanwhile, there are plenty of good people lurking inside the corridors of Brookings and other shops and, in a world with a bigger and better progressive ideas infrastructure, those people might be situated inside places where they can work more effectively.

At any rate, there's been a great deal of progressive infrastructure building in Washington and around the country over the past five years or so, but considering that 9/11 and Iraq have been the defining political events of the current era, remarkably little of it has gone into national security issues.

Comments

"What we need, in essence, are more institutions like that, and more capacity at the institutions we have."

Yup.

Posted by Petey | September 18, 2007 9:08 AM

You know, this can be done on the cheap. Get a few young "analysts" and a public-relations professional. Get the analysts to pour through academic journals to find the best experts that they want to promote, and get them to partner up with this hypothetical institution. The PR guy can promote these experts to the press and maybe even provide some press training.

The think tank machine tends to place too much emphasis on creating experts when, in fact, there are plenty available already who just aren't sufficiently promoted to the press and people in the beltway.

Posted by Tyro | September 18, 2007 9:11 AM

Think tanks are powered by money, and there will never be enough money available to anti-war institutions to match the resources of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Every year, the MIC harvests a fresh crop of graduating national security paranoids and installs them as apprentice "scholars" at AEI and other war-promoting institutions. These pro-war think tanks pay well and they reward loyalty to the war machine. The pro-war "scholars" of AEI, Brookings, and the other NeoCon propaganda mills dominates the "serious" discussion of foreign policy, despite the Iraq disaster and the pending lunacy of attacking Iran.

Only economic collapse or military defeat will stop the American MIC. No amount of wishful institutional conjuring will do it.

Posted by HH | September 18, 2007 9:20 AM

While Goldenberg is basically right - I'd suggest that it's not that Brookings is a nonpartisan "idea factory" but it's just a center-right think tank - I think there's another purpose to MY's focus on Brookings.

We need to kill the connection between Brookings and the center-left in the media narrative - "at the liberal Brookings Institution" needs to die as a locution. Matt's work (and that of Atrios et al) works, albeit slowly, as media critique.

Posted by DivGuy | September 18, 2007 9:25 AM

It strikes me as just possible, per Tyro, that you wouldn't actually need much institutional machinery to pick out and promote the best progressive ideas. There are probably people out in there world who read the Brookings' stuff for fun. If they write something up and post it, someone else might link to it. Etc.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 18, 2007 9:25 AM

As with most of the successful (depending on how that term is defined) Republican infrastructure painstakingly and presciently built and nutured over the past couple of decades (or more), progressives are having to play catch-up. From the systematic consolidation of most of print and TV media, to the grass-roots foundations of political might through rural and religious pandering, we have much to do. The creation of these 'think-tanks' and their seeding with degreed and experienced--and sadly, often totalitarian-minded--intellectuals, this is yet another instance where we are scurrying to catch up. But catch up we must, to provide a vocal and powerful counter to those who would dissolve and transform our Republic into a quasi-dictatorial state based on happy consumption and limited intellect.

Posted by terraformer | September 18, 2007 9:26 AM

I think there's a generational tide here-- Once upon a time, faculty at high-prestige universities went back between government and academia. Think tanks took their cue from this and modeled themselves as neutral 'academic, but without students' institutions. However, under attack from both the left and the right, this model broke down. Institutional neutrality is seen now as a weakness.

Personally, I think either way works fine-- but Brookings is stuck in the past. Maybe it's time for a sequel, 'Son of Brookings'.

Posted by MattF | September 18, 2007 10:08 AM

Sadly the more cynical interpretation is probably right. Brookings has been bought off. They've hired a lot of bad analysts who parrot any interpretation that supports the people with power.

Now they've become a pretty destructive force - a lot like the New Republic - allegedly liberal, but really just another establishment cog. Another cog that spits out the Washington Group think. And the Washigton group think is pretty consistently weak.

Forty years ago the Washington think tanks were on the cutting edge of many policy debates in the world. Now they're just not. Washington is not even close to being the intellectual center of the world anymore. It's the tired, hachneyed, paid-off, new court of Versailles. We should look at most of the Brookings folks as courtiers not analysts. It might once have been a think tank, but it really isn't doing much "thinking" anymore.

Posted by Samuel Knight | September 18, 2007 10:10 AM

And what's the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, chopped liver???

Yes, liberal think tanks are woefully underfunded and much smaller, but they do exist. And - CEIP is a perfect example - they do excellent work on foreign policy and other large issues. The problem is that they are not listened to until it is too late.

Not even Kevin Drum could be troubled to consider with any seriousness CEIP's extremely skeptical report in late '02/'03 on the prospect of democracy building through military invasion of Iraq. They were, of course, absolutely right.

Furthermore, the first commentary I read outside of a blog about CEIP's proposal for "coerced inspections" of Iraq was by Rick Hertzberg in The New Yorker, one week or so after the invasion officially began. He thought it would be a good idea. Well, yes. Two weeks earlier, it would have been a very good idea to bring up in a major forum like the New Yorker.

The ideas and people are available. What's not available is ready access to microphones. Even now? Even now. Remember: David Brooks and Thomas Friedman are filling up op-ed space that could be far better filled by, say, Barbara Ehrenreich and Jessica Mathews.

Posted by tristero | September 18, 2007 10:14 AM

Only economic collapse or military defeat will stop the American MIC. No amount of wishful institutional conjuring will do it.

A bit overly dramatic, HH. While your contention that the MIC has vast fiscal resources is true, they also have a lot bigger hill to climb. They have to convince people to vote against their best interests, often with very ham-handed efforts (no personal pun intended). Hysterical fear and hate have been the engine the past few years, and it has failed pretty miserably. I think the "maybe the crazies are right and they really do know what to do" approach has worn it's course given the disastrous results of the so-called War On Terror so far. It is going to be harder to convince folks there are Mooslims behind every bush and every Middle Eastern person is a frothing lunatic waiting to pounce. The public is largely go-along-to-get-along, but now that the economy is getting hare-lipped by war and infrastructure is starting to break down it is getting to be personal, and the largess given to defense contractors is going to be a much, much harder sell.

Posted by LittlePig | September 18, 2007 10:32 AM

Perhaps the models one needs to look to on the right are not just the think tanks, but the politically activist publicists and agents who promote talented pundits and talkers, and place them in the public view - outfits like Benador Associates. Building a political movement requires more than just a few elite idea factories - even idea factories that are good at in-house promotion. A movement requires organized broad-based work to promote and disseminate the ideas the movement seeks to advance, and to win converts to the cause.

One thing that has been holding back change is an attachment in parts of the Democratic establishment to a debased plebiscitory and consumerist model of democracy. Opinions are sometimes treated as a sort of natural phenomenon which is beyond political control, and to which their holders all have a sacred "right". The purpose of politics, on this approach, is just to measure and identify opinions, as they currently exist, and then design political deliverables that win votes by addressing these measurable wants. People with this managerial orientation often seem to believe there is something unseemly about working hard to change people's minds, as arguing people into rejecting their present views and adopting a new outlook is inherently an affront to their dignity. Unfortunately, the right works very hard to change public opinion, not just adapt to it. So if the other side fails to do battle for hearts and minds, one can expect a long term drift to the right.

It is also hard to organize any sort of movement if the proposed movement lacks intellectual coherence and definition. Matt uses the three terms "left", "liberal", and "progressive" all in this one blog post. Do these all refer to the same thing? Exactly what agenda do he and Ilan Goldenberg want to promote? Is the intention to counter right-wing ideas with left-wing ideas? Or is it to counter right wing ideas with moderate and centrist ideas? To take one of Matt's examples, the New America Foundation deserves credit for taking on a number of sacred cows. But it really is not markedly an institution of the left. I thought they viewed their position as something called "radical centrism".

The other groups all seem to be creatures of the Clinton government in exile. I find Madeleine Albright and John Podesta turning up everywhere I look. The Center for a New American Security is just another arm of the Clinton machine, as was shown by the imprimatur of the HRC keynote kickoff it received. If the Clinton-Podesta-Albright view of the universe constitutes one's vision of the left, then by all means, work to advocate that agenda. But some of us want a bit more spice.

I have noticed another phenomenon in looking into the individual figures and institutions connected with what some people are pleased to call the "left" side of the VSP world. Many of these people are connected with private strategic consultancies. Albright herself runs one of these consultancies. These consultancies have for their very purpose the goal of advising their clients - generally corporations - on conditions abroad, and also working abroad to advance the interests of those clients. Call me a red, but somehow I don't think one can expect to find a vibrant left-oriented movement for social change lead by the support institutions of global capitalism. This is a problem that is not going to be fixed just by getting a few more television gigs for these VSPs.

There is also a deeper structural communication challenge that any left-oriented movement must face. Both the right and the left want to change our society in significant ways, and draw it away from the neoliberal mainstream. But the right generally wants to change things in ways that benefit the owners of the means of public communication, while the left wants to change them in ways that might be threatening to the interests of those owners. Again, one can work harder to get more appearances for left-oriented thinkers in the corporate media outlets. But it's going to be an uphill fight if the owners and managers of those outlets are hostile to the left's message. Perhaps we need to think about deeper structural approaches to changing the landscape of our highly privatized, corporatized media environment.

Posted by Dan Kervick | September 18, 2007 10:50 AM

Part of the problem: when writing about a self-sustaining insiderish claque, you shouldn't use inscrutable insiderish jargon. I know a lot about politics and policy, but I have no idea, even after googling, what "VSP" means.

Please advise.

Posted by Rick Perlstein | September 18, 2007 12:14 PM

"I have no idea, even after googling, what "VSP" means."

I'm not sure either, but my guess from context was "very serious people".

Posted by Petey | September 18, 2007 12:20 PM

That seems likely:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4DMUS_enUS219US219&q=VSP+%22very+serious+people%22

Posted by JJ | September 18, 2007 12:32 PM

Fewer think tanks please.

Ideas aren't created by magic. Experts, such as they exist, are available for hire directly and don't need to be kept in a think tank like fish. The backers of these think tanks are not always clear and the think tank aspect of public scholarship seems designed to launder the money of people pushing an agenda ideas as much or more than they increase public knowledge and solve problems.

You could argue that outside the DC bubble policy work is MORE valuable if it doesn't come from think tanks. Who the hell knows the difference between AEI, Heritage and Brookings outside of 5% of the population? Who among that 5% knows who is funding AEI, Heritage, and Brookings? So how many people exactly knows where these ideas are coming from?

I think Peter Orszag is the bee's knees but that's because he shows his work and his numbers are solid, not because he had Brookings Institution attached to his name (he since left to run CBO). He could have done the exact same work as a policy expert for Sen. Lugar, Sen. Feingold, AARP or Wal-Mart and if the he showed his work and his numbers could be checked the work would be just as valuable.

Posted by joejoejoe | September 18, 2007 1:04 PM

Considering the vast wealth of America's billionaires, the cost to one of them of funding a new think tank is nugatory. Us intellectuals can't be bought, but we can can be rented annually for what one of these guys pays for the second flight attendant on his G-5.

Probably what the country needs most at present is a well-funded Republican but anti-neocon foreign policy think tank.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 18, 2007 3:28 PM

I'm with tyro. Lots of people, particularly academics, are doing great work. Let's find them and publicize them and get them on all the Rolodexes.

I'd even start blogging again to promote this effort.

Posted by Joyful Alternative | September 18, 2007 5:15 PM

Clearly MY and his commentors are not familiar with the nascent progressive think tank, the New Vision Institute. Change from within is how I see our work (yes, I'm a member), as we're all young academics/policy wonks trying building this institution from the ground up, and frankly, from within the policy/academy bubble (This includes internal debate whether we're really that progressive versus more mainstream liberal).

Our biggest success so far is an education policy piece that Obama has introduced as legislation (this project was before my time so I'm a little sketchy on the details).

We maintain a blog that is heavily stacked with in-depth analyses of topics in foreign policy, political theory, education policy, economic development, urban politics, environmental policy and social justice activism - incl. in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. (And we do our fair share of responding to David Brooks.)

I think you all should check us out!

http://www.newvisioninstitute.org/foresight/

PS: I personally agree with DivGuy that Brookings is center-right...as for another commentor's 'Son of Brookings' - why not Daughter? Child? Can't we break out of the male wonk mold?

Posted by Leigh | September 18, 2007 5:50 PM

PS: Ignore my typo's above...

PPS: Given the chaotic universe that is the blogosphere, I'd like to add to the shameless self-promotion above that we were cross-posting at TPM Cafe for several months last fall.

Ok, I think I'm done with the marketing portion of New Vision/Foresight for today.

Posted by Leigh | September 18, 2007 5:55 PM

yeah, more insider DC policy analysis! that's the ticket. i suggest making this a kind of sinecure so that your opinions as a young DC professional become proscribed by the allowed paradigm that gets you paid. this will never cause a young progressive to moderate their views in order to get ahead. it just can't/won't happen.

/sarcasm.

losers.

Posted by Robert Green | September 18, 2007 7:21 PM