Think Tanks

Promoted. Debate is good. -Patrick

Last week, my friend Jon Henke wrote a post criticizing Heritage President Ed Feulner and more broadly the entire conservative movement (full disclosure: Dr. Feulner is my boss, but in this post I write only for myself and am representing my own views) .

As you might have guessed, I have to take issue with Jon. While he makes some valid points (as always), I still think he goes too far on a couple.

First, Jon argues that the personnel of the Republican Party apparatus is composed of movement conservatives. As someone who spent a good deal of time working in the Senate, I am surprised that he would make that argument.

I think Jon and I are both painfully aware of some the types of staffers who have clawed their way to the top throughout the beltway-Party infrastructure. In many instances, these are people who have openly disdained us and our ideas. Far too many of them desperately cling to power for power’s sake. And far too many of them wouldn’t know a great, principled policy idea if it smacked them in the face.

To say that the conservative movement should bear responsibility in that arena is something I vehemently disagree with. I mean heck, as a staffer for Jim DeMint over the better part of the last two years, I saw first hand how the good Senator repeatedly went toe to toe with GOP establishment and received nothing but scorn for it – from staffers and senators alike.

And for Heritage’s part, they have been in the battle every step of the way. But frankly, since Heritage got banned from then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s office back in 2003 over our opposition to the prescription drug bill, it has been an adversarial relationship most of the way. And that is as it should be given the makeup of the Party right now.

This adversarial relationship has continued to manifest itself over the years. Whether it be on immigration reform, Harriet Miers, No Child Left Behind or Bridges to Nowhere, Heritage and the broader movement have stood opposed to the powers that be – both elected and unelected – in the Republican Party.

That leads to my second gripe. Jon says we need to push the reset button on ideas. Look, I am somewhat susceptible to this argument. I liked parts of David Frum’s book Comeback, I read Brooks regularly and can even stomach some Douthat on occasion. I certainly don’t agree with all that these guys are pushing, but I love the outside the box thinking when and if it advances the cause. But it is, in my opinion, unfair to write a post that portrays Ed Feulner and the Heritage Foundation as a group lacking ideas.

Stuart Butler, Heritage’s Domestic Policy VP, has been the national leader in pushing the idea of a revamped employer-based health system as the alternative to Obamacare as well as a major reform of the tax treatment of health care – a proposal that would achieve equity while empowering those without employer coverage. Who knows? Heritage’s persistence may even yield successes under our new liberal overlords. The rest of our health care team have been effective as well in pushing “transformational” ideas as evidenced by nearly all the major candidates adopting some form of our proposal.

Or take entitlements. Heritage convinced the top people at left-leaning Brookings and Urban Institute to seriously address this issue. It was Heritage who argued for a transformation in the budget process to “end entitlements as we know them” by putting Medicare, Medicaid, etc. on to the same budget basis as defense.

These are ideas that are, as Jon says, “transformational” and they would be enormously beneficial to the country if acted upon.

There is plenty more.

The problem has not been within the idea incubators, it has been with the politicians who either cannot explain their position, or frankly don’t have the heart and the passion to advance the idea. We make ideas, we don’t coach politicians. Not in our job description.

Finally, Jon ends with a call to “reset the movement” and develop a new guard to “compete” with the old guard. We are conservatives, not revolutionaries. We do not reset. Conservatives build on the past by identifying what has worked and discarding what has not. We stand on the shoulders of giants and we yes, we must train up the next generation. Edmund Burke said the true mark of a statesman is the disposition to preserve and the ability to improve. I bet we both agree that should be our model.

The Freedom Coalition is scrambling. Bipartisan bailouts and a profligate Republican Party seem not only to have conjured up the specter of Keynes but the American Left in force. The left has outsmarted the center-right Freedom Coalition in all the ways that count. That is, our democratic republic is, and always has been, about getting that 50 percent plus one. The left has figured this out and put the bulk of its investments behind this fact. And while we may like to tell ourselves that 'politics goes in cycles,' no one may credibly doubt the effort and organization of Democrats and progressives and the failure of the Freedom Coalition to adapt.

Meanwhile, as libertarians smugly explained the irrationality of voting – you know, clustering problems, paradoxes and the improbability of the tie-breaking vote – leftwing activists have spent a fortune in time and money getting people to do something irrational. And it worked. Aging right-wingers have been content to jockey their wingback chairs and will their estates to AEI, Cato or Heritage, so these goliath think tanks can print up yet more high-quality policy reports 250 people will read. This is a problem.

The Think Tank Bubble

F.A. Hayek is known among freedom lovers as describing the structure of production. The idea is often rendered as a triangle cut into thirds, like a simple hierarchy: At the top are the raw materials (say, silicon). The second slice is the capital goods (assembly line). Then come the consumer goods (iPod, marketing). The idea is of a production process whereby resources pass through each stage before finally satisfying human wants and needs.  Likewise, we can imagine socio-political change going through a similar process. First, you have some abstract academic theory, which filters down to the think tanks and policy shops, finally to be run through the legislative sausage grinder or presented to voters as talking points. That's the 30,000 foot view. From ideas to policy to implementation (or from academia to think tanks to ordinary politics). Obviously, the structure of social change is much more complicated than this simplified model reveals. But it's largely correct. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Now, if we look at the average "freedom portfolio" we're going to see something that will go very far in explaining the Freedom Coalition's most recent voting booth humiliations—an investment bubble. Too many resources are going to think tanks—that is, that second slice of the structure. (The left has put most of its resources into implementation, never mind academia, which it has always owned.) Any renaissance of the Freedom Coalition will require freedom-lovers to divest themselves of legacy think tanks and start putting their freedom investments into something else. But where?

First, the Freedom Coalition is going to have to play catch-up on the one hand and tit-for-tat on the other. To figure out how to compete, it will have to look at the competition for benchmarks. What are they doing right? If the Freedom Coalition does its due diligence, it will find a second-mover advantage. Then, the right is going to have innovatively to reconfigure itself around what it has learned: new media; mass media, branding and marketing and get out the vote (GOTV)—and any other unseemly aspect of deadweight activism. Individualist-types may find this unsavory. We prefer ideas and analysis to groupish activism. We relish the holistic logic of market solutions and believe the world must kneel to rational argument. Tough. That's not the world in which we find ourselves. So unless we're prepared to argue with the machine or take up arms and rebel, we've got to play the implementation game and play it better. (Part Two here - Max Borders, Free to Choose Network)

Google Trends says the Heritage Foundation is winning the battle for traffic among prominent Think Tank websites, followed by the Cato Institute, Brookings and then the Center for American Progress. 

Note: Heritage.org traffic rose sharply immediately after the launch of the Heritage Foundry blog in early 2008.  I'm not sure how much of a causal connection there is, but it's very likely that the blog (a) improved their daily visitor traffic, (b) improved their Google visibility, and (c) led new blog readers to explore more of the Heritage site.

However, there is an interesting complexity.  The Heritage Foundation and the Center for American Progress are both 501(c)3 organizations, focusing only on policy analysis and education.  They "may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of ... activities [and] may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates."   That sharply limits their ability to use the information they collect effectively in the blogosphere or in audiences outside of policy, academic and some narrow media communities. 

However, political advocacy and campaign activity are fuel to bloggers and internet activists.  So, the Center for American Progress set up a separate 501(c)4 organization: the American Progress Action Fund.  501(c)4 organizations can engage in political advocacy and "some political activities".   The Action Fund produces the research distribution outlet, ThinkProgress.org, and the daily talking points newsletter, The Progress Report. 

Look at how Think Progress compares to the Heritage Foundation.

These, not its own legally limited website, are the communications weapons of the Center for American Progress. 

Rather than trying to consolidate power within a single bureacracy, they realized their goals required separate organizations, each specializing in one aspect of the larger goal.  They have created one organization to play in the academic and policy world and a second organization to play in the media and activist world.  

Differentiation allows specialization, and specialization allows...well, the kind of success you see above.  This allows them to pursue multiple, coordinated paths to achieve their goals.  As a result, the Center for American Progress is not so much a Think Tank as it is a Marketing Tank.

The lesson here is that, while organizations should think of information as an asset, but they should not necessarily assume they are also the best distributors of that information.  The collection and analysis of information is a task distinct from framing, synthesis and distribution of information. 

Note: the measurement tools are, of course, imperfect; consider this a best-available approximation.