The Alarming Corruption of the Think Tanks
By BRUCE BARTLETT<
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Authors/B/Bruce-Bartlett.aspx>,
The Fiscal Times December 14, 2012
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/12/14/The-Alarming-Corruption-of-the-Think-Tanks.aspx#page1
------------------------------
Item: U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) resigns from Congress to become president
of the Heritage
Foundation<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/conservative-sen-jim-demint-resigning-from-senate-to-head-conservative-think-tank/2012/12/06/3f815f26-3fbe-11e2-a2d9-822f58ac9fd5_story.html.>
Item: Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey resigns
<
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-04/politics/35625085_1_grass-roots-conservative-movement-freedomworks-jamie-radtke.>as
chairman of FreedomWorks over $12 million in secret cash payments
<
http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2012/secret-money-fuels-freedomworks/>to
the organization, leaves with $8 million payout.
These two items illustrate an important phenomenon now taking place in
Washington: the end of the think tank as we know it. Rather than being
institutions for scholarship and research, often employing people with
advanced degrees in specialized fields, think tanks are becoming more like
lobbying and public relations companies. Increasingly, their output
involves advertising and grassroots political operations rather than books
and studies. They are also becoming more closely allied with political
parties and members of Congress, to whom they have become virtual adjuncts.
Historically, think tanks like the Brookings Institution were universities
without teaching. Indeed, Brookings was originally established as a
university and it still has a dot-edu web address. Its goal was to bridge
the gap between academia and the policymaking establishment.
the 1970s, this model began to change with the founding of the Heritage
Foundation. Unlike Brookings, Heritage was not especially interested in
research; its goal was to directly influence policy, especially on Capitol
Hill.
Rather than produce books that might take years to write and become the
definitive statement on some policy topic, Heritage produced short, often
one-page analyses of issues that might be on the House or Senate floor that
day.
What Heritage understood is that a little bit of timely information was
vastly more valuable than something definitive that arrives too late to
matter. Eventually, other think tanks such as the American Enterprise
Institute, Cato Institute and the Center for American Progress adopted
Heritage-style brief-but-timely reports in lieu of the more academic style
of Brookings and the Hoover Institution.
This model worked very well and was greatly improved by the advent of the
Internet, which allowed even faster dissemination of research. It also
turned out that the sort of political immediacy of the new era of think
tank studies very well suited the media as well as policymakers. Reporters
writing on deadline often found Heritage issue briefs easier to digest than
the academic quality research coming from Brookings.
Unfortunately, one consequence of this fact was a degrading in the quality
of experts the media turned to for analysis. The views of world class
scholars such as Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution now carried no
more weight than the simplistic talking points regurgitated by a Heritage
Foundation analyst a couple of years out of college.
One reason for this is that it is tough to explain complex issues in areas
such as health or taxation without sacrificing critical nuance. Scholars
often become tongue-tied trying to speak in sound-bite and reporters have
difficulty quoting them. It’s much easier to quote a Heritage analyst only
concerned with coating the Republican agenda in Congress with a thin gloss
of think tank respectability.
The effectiveness of think tanks in advancing a political agenda increased
their budgets and the salaries of their leaders. It’s reported that Ed
Feulner, retiring head of the Heritage Foundation, makes more than $1
million per year. It’s now common for think tank analysts to have
six-figure salaries.
The next step was for think tanks to abandon any pretense of objectivity
and scholarship and become full-blown political action committees. Now many
think tanks, which are tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code,
have affiliated lobbying and PR operations that are not tax-exempt and are
organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.
Thus the Heritage Foundation has a C4 affiliate called Heritage Action for
America, the Center for American Progress has one called the Center for
American Progress Action Fund
<
http://firststreetresearch.cqpress.com/2012/01/27/think-tanks-and-their-lobbying-sisters/>and
so on. It’s become common for people to move back and forth between
government, lobbying, political campaigns and think
tanks<
http://firststreetresearch.cqpress.com/2012/01/26/think-tank-scholars-and-their-lobbying-ties/>.
This corruption of the academic ideal of the think tank would have been
unthinkable not too many years ago.
As Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin put it in commenting on Sen.
DeMint’s move from politics to think tank head, “By embracing him,
Heritage, to a greater extent than ever before, becomes a political
instrument<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2012/12/06/good-riddance-mr-demint/>in
service of extremism, not a well-respected think tank and source of
scholarship.”
There is nothing per se wrong with this except when policymakers, those in
the media and general public don’t realize that think tanks have gone from
having philosophical orientations that might be liberal or conservative to
being effective arms of political parties. I think a line has been crossed
and for that reason I seldom rely much on think tank research other than to
find out what the partisan line of the day is on some issue.
Another problem is that members of Congress now seem content to farm out
their analytical needs to think tanks rather than rely on in-house
analysts. For example, two years ago Rep. Paul Ryan had the Heritage
Foundation cost-out his budget plan rather than having it done by the
Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s official budget
scorekeeper<
http://www.gop.gov/resources/library/documents/budget/path-to-prosperity.pdf>
.
This outsourcing of congressional research, especially on the Republican
side, has been so successful that some conservatives are now questioning
the need for organizations such as the Congressional Research Service.
There have also been efforts to undermine its independence and make it
subservient to the partisan agendas
<
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/republicans-censor-what-they-cant-refute/>of
the congressional leadership.
I think this is a very dangerous trend. Policymaking must, ultimately, rest
on a foundation of facts, data, analysis based on scientific methods, and
be as free as possible of partisan bias. But these days, policymakers, like
the public and the media, care more for congenial opinions that suite their
partisan or philosophical predisposition than solid research that may
undermine simplistic but deeply held opinions.
Famously, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that people
are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. My personal
corollary is that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not to
have them taken seriously. The politicization of the think tank makes it
harder for even serious people to discern the distinction between fact or
truth and partisan spin. Policymaking is suffering as a consequence.
Received on Thu Dec 27 2012 - 00:44:29 EST
