White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

Birth of an Institution in Boston

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Do think tanks really think? It’s not that these organizations — mostly centered in Washington, D.C., but also scattered across the country – don’t harbor some fine minds among their scholars and fellows, but the problem is we know what they think — and have often known for a long time. The rest is articulation.

Among Washington think tanks, we know what to expect from the Brookings Institution: earnest, slightly left-of-center analysis of major issues. Likewise, we know that the Center for Strategic and International Studies will do the same job with a right-of-center shading, and a greater emphasis on defense and geopolitics.

What the tanks provide is support for political and policy views; detailed argument in favor of a known point of view. By and large, the verdict is in before the trial has begun.

There a few exceptions, house contrarians. The most notable is Norman Ornstein, who goes his own way at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Ornstein, hugely respected as an analyst and historian of Congress, often expresses opinions in articles and books which seem to be wildly at odds with the orthodoxy of AEI.

A less-celebrated role of the thinks tanks is as resting places for the political elite when their party is out of power. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, rumored to be favored as a future Republican secretary of state, is hosted at AEI. National Security Adviser Susan Rice was comfortable at Brookings between service in the Clinton and he Obama administrations. At any time, dozens of possible office holders reside at the Washington think tanks, building reputations and waiting.

My interest in think tanks and their thinkers has led me to what might be developing into a think tank, although it’s too early to say. It’s so early that it has no headquarters, secretariat or paid staff. But this nascent think tank has gathered a loose faculty from a coterie of public intellectuals, mainly in and around Boston, and abroad in Hanoi, Tokyo and Berlin.

It’s called the Boston Global Forum. Formed in 2012, it’s led by two very different but, apparently, compatible men: Michael Dukakis, former Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential nominee, and Nguyen Anh Tuan, who founded a successful internet company in Vietnam and now lives in Boston.

The concept of the forum is to study and discuss a single topic for a year. Last year, in forums and internet hookups between Boston and Asian and European cities, the topic was security in the South and East China seas, where war could easily erupt over territorial disputes. After a year of discussion, the participants concluded that a framework for peace in the region needs to be established and that current international arrangements and organizations don’t go far enough in that direction. This year’s topic is cybersecurity.

The Boston Global Forum has strong ties to the faculties at Harvard and Northeastern University, where Dukakis is a professor. Most forum meetings take place on the Harvard campus. Two of the forum’s most conspicuous champions are Harvard professors Joseph Nye and Tom Patterson. Patterson’s office at the John F. Kennedy School of Government serves as a kind of de facto headquarters.

This new entrant into the think tank cohort is very East Coast-tony, and very energetic. This year it has plans for meetings in Vietnam, Tokyo and somewhere in Europe, and has attracted media heavyweights like David Sanger of The New York Times and Charles Sennott, one of the founders of the online GlobalPost.

As the Boston Global Forum is a new think tank, questions abound: Will it get funding? Will it find premises and staff ? Will it get public recognition?

The big question about anything that looks like a think tank is, will thinking happen there? Will the Boston Global Forum be a crucible for big ideas? Or will it, like other think tanks, develop its own binding ideology?

Will the Boston Global Forum become, like so many, a smooth propaganda machine? Or will it be a place where the outlandish can live with the orthodox?  — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

The Swamp in Washington That Awaits

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Dear John, Barack, Sarah and Joe,

You have come a long way, gang, and two of you are going all the way. Congratulations. All four of you say you are going to change Washington. Here in the nation’s capital, we are not convinced.

For starters, let us take earmarks. They run in the thousands. They may be dented by a new administration, but they will not be stopped. Bringing home the pork is largely why we, as voters, send our senators and representatives to Capitol Hill. Earmarks have become a clumsy redress for the indifference of the central government to local need. They have become the palpable evidence of our tax dollars at work. We cannot sense the value of a missile shield in Eastern Europe, but we can measure the stop-and-go traffic on our way to work.

If all politics are local, so are all earmarks. The courts have said that the president is not entitled to a line-item veto. Ergo John McCain, unless you can substitute a funding initiative that Congress will agree to, or you are prepared to shut down the government often, your promises will go unfulfilled. (Check the shutting-down-the-government option with Newt Gingrich,)

Then, friends, there is the permanent alternative administration: the think tanks. These are the intellectual halfway houses where ambitious public servants park between tours of duty in government. Their influence is pervasive, subtle and continual. Every administration leans on think tanks which agree philosophically with it. And here is always a think tank which is particularly close to every administration. For Ronald Reagan, it was The Heritage Foundation; for Bill Clinton, it was The Brookings Institution; and for George W. Bush, it was the American Enterprise Institute.

The epicenter of neoconservatism, The American Enterprise Institute provided the Bush administration with ideas, personnel, moral support, and rationales for the invasion of Iraq and the formulation and promotion of the troop surge. Vice President Cheney has been especially close to AEI. His wife, Lynne, is a fellow there and many old colleagues inhabit its halls on 17th Street. They include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Lawrence Lindsey and David Frum. You have to admire the place and its initiative in seducing an entire administration.

Growing in influence on the conservative side, and waiting for a friend in the White House, is the Cato Institute, which has been strengthening its roster of libertarian/conservative thinkers.

Meanwhile, the liberal Brookings Institution is churning out policy papers on everything from education reform to Pakistan. A team of powerful liberals is ready to take Barack Obama by the hand and lead him down the path of liberal righteousness. Already Brookings experts are advising the Obama campaign, including Susan Rice, Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Of course Strobe Talbott, Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, is president of the think tank and the nation’s leading liberal columnist, E.J. Dionne, Jr., hangs his hat there.

The point is not that the think tanks are bad but that they are powerful, and they generate the ideas of government. Remember you may not be interested in them, but they are interested in you. The press tends to point to the lobbyists of K Street as controlling Washington. The lobbyists influence Congress, but the think tanks influence an administration.

Finally, White House hopefuls, there is the bureaucracy: permanent, entrenched and bloody-minded. The civil service approaches each new administration with skepticism and often hostility. With every administration, the bureaucracy gets a new senior management team in the form of political appointees (secretary, deputy secretary, assistant secretary, etc.). Often, the bureaucracy frustrates these appointees from the get-go. Many a cabinet secretary has had to bring in a small group of loyalists in order to wage war on the larger staff. One agency head told me that she felt she could only confide in her chauffeur and her secretary.

You two lucky victors in this presidential contest will learn that it is easier to invade a faraway country than it is to reform the Washington establishment. Orthodox or maverick, liberal or conservative, Washington is waiting for you.

 

The Swamp in Washington That Awaits

by 1 Comment

 

 

Dear John, Barack, Sarah and Joe,

You have come a long way, gang, and two of you are going all the way. Congratulations. All four of you say you are going to change Washington. Here in the nation’s capital, we are not convinced.

For starters, let us take earmarks. They run in the thousands. They may be dented by a new administration, but they will not be stopped. Bringing home the pork is largely why we, as voters, send our senators and representatives to Capitol Hill. Earmarks have become a clumsy redress for the indifference of the central government to local need. They have become the palpable evidence of our tax dollars at work. We cannot sense the value of a missile shield in Eastern Europe, but we can measure the stop-and-go traffic on our way to work.

If all politics are local, so are all earmarks. The courts have said that the president is not entitled to a line-item veto. Ergo John McCain, unless you can substitute a funding initiative that Congress will agree to, or you are prepared to shut down the government often, your promises will go unfulfilled. (Check the shutting-down-the-government option with Newt Gingrich,)

Then, friends, there is the permanent alternative administration: the think tanks. These are the intellectual halfway houses where ambitious public servants park between tours of duty in government. Their influence is pervasive, subtle and continual. Every administration leans on think tanks which agree philosophically with it. And here is always a think tank which is particularly close to every administration. For Ronald Reagan, it was The Heritage Foundation; for Bill Clinton, it was The Brookings Institution; and for George W. Bush, it was the American Enterprise Institute.

The epicenter of neoconservatism, The American Enterprise Institute provided the Bush administration with ideas, personnel, moral support, and rationales for the invasion of Iraq and the formulation and promotion of the troop surge. Vice President Cheney has been especially close to AEI. His wife, Lynne, is a fellow there and many old colleagues inhabit its halls on 17th Street. They include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Lawrence Lindsey and David Frum. You have to admire the place and its initiative in seducing an entire administration.

Growing in influence on the conservative side, and waiting for a friend in the White House, is the Cato Institute, which has been strengthening its roster of libertarian/conservative thinkers.

Meanwhile, the liberal Brookings Institution is churning out policy papers on everything from education reform to Pakistan. A team of powerful liberals is ready to take Barack Obama by the hand and lead him down the path of liberal righteousness. Already Brookings experts are advising the Obama campaign, including Susan Rice, Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Of course Strobe Talbott, Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, is president of the think tank and the nation’s leading liberal columnist, E.J. Dionne, Jr., hangs his hat there.

The point is not that the think tanks are bad but that they are powerful, and they generate the ideas of government. Remember you may not be interested in them, but they are interested in you. The press tends to point to the lobbyists of K Street as controlling Washington. The lobbyists influence Congress, but the think tanks influence an administration.

Finally, White House hopefuls, there is the bureaucracy: permanent, entrenched and bloody-minded. The civil service approaches each new administration with skepticism and often hostility. With every administration, the bureaucracy gets a new senior management team in the form of political appointees (secretary, deputy secretary, assistant secretary, etc.). Often, the bureaucracy frustrates these appointees from the get-go. Many a cabinet secretary has had to bring in a small group of loyalists in order to wage war on the larger staff. One agency head told me that she felt she could only confide in her chauffeur and her secretary.

You two lucky victors in this presidential contest will learn that it is easier to invade a faraway country than it is to reform the Washington establishment. Orthodox or maverick, liberal or conservative, Washington is waiting for you.