AEI Scholar Tried to Hide Trump Attacks to Snag White House Job

Here is more from The Washington Post:

Leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Andrew Bowen, like many scholars in Washington, predicted Hillary Clinton would surely win.

Bowen, then a global fellow in the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, wrote a weekly column in Arab News, an English-language outlet based in Saudi Arabia. In his columns before the election, Bowen frequently criticized Donald Trump, denouncing his temper and xenophobic remarks and calling him “a man not often suited to the responsibilities of the presidency.”

Like many others, Bowen was shocked on Nov. 8. But within days, his tone changed, calling for a “new beginning” under President Trump.

Now, months later, Arab News says that Bowen requested that it delete his earlier, pre-election columns, stating he needed “to be cleared” for a possible job with the Trump administration’s State Department.

Arab News initially refused to take down the articles, and fired back — publicly. In an unapologetic post on its website, Arab News announced Tuesday it would be discontinuing Bowen’s column, explaining Bowen’s request and blasting it as “unprofessional journalistically, particularly given that there were no factual errors or libelous comments that require a redaction or correction.”

Here is what Foreign Policy has to say about  this incident.  As Think Tank Watch previously noted, any attacks on Trump by think tankers have made it nearly impossible for them to get jobs in the Trump Administration.

Bowen was reportedly recommended for the State Department post by Brian Hook, co-founder of the John Hay Initiative, a group of former Mitt Romney foreign policy advisors.

Andrew Bowen is now a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), focusing on the Middle East.  His biography says that he concurrently advises Greenmantle (an economic/geopolitical advisory firm) and writes a weekly column for Al Arabiya English.

He was previously a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center and Senior Fellow and Director of Middle East for the Center for the National Interest.

AEI Has Grand Opening Party for New Headquarters

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) continues to celebrate its new headquarters in Washington, DC. 

Here is more from Politico:

AEI President Arthur Brooks and AEI scholars hosted the grand opening of their new HQ, The Daniel A. D’Aniello building, at 1789 Massachusetts Ave. last night. SPOTTED: Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), Rep. Pat Meehan (R-Pa.), Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), RSC Chairman Bill Flores (R-Texas), RSC Chairman-elect Mark Walker (R-N.C.), Carl Cannon, S.E. Cupp and John Goodwin, Hugo Gurdon, Daniel Halper, John Parkinson, Paul Teller, Chris Isham, Jonathan Karl, Michele Kelemen, Bill Kristol, Libby Liu, Josh and Ali Rogin, Neil Irwin, Chris Bedford, Lauren Zelt, Benny Johnson, Katie Glueck, Rich Lowry, Chris Stirewalt, Niels Lesniewski, Matt Continetti, Jim Geraghty, John Bolton, Jim DeMint, Strobe Talbot [sic], Sue Desmond-Hellman, Jonah Goldberg, Robby George, Ramesh Ponnuru, April Ponnuru, Cornel West, Marc Thiessen, Tim Carney, David French, Danielle Pletka, Michael Strain, Kevin Hassett, Michael Barone, Paul Wolfowitz.

In truly bipartisan fashion, AEI, a conservative think tank, invited Strobe Talbott, President of the liberal think tank Brookings Institution, as well as think tank competitor Jim DeMint, the head of the Heritage Foundation.

Here is more from Think Tank Watch on AEI's new headquarters.

AEI Moves Next to Brookings, Carnegie

The conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has just moved into the Daniel A. D'Aniello Building at 1789 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC, right next to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution.

The new location is only a few blocks away from its previous address of 1150 17th Street, NW and is the first permanent home in AEI's 78-year history.  In the past, AEI has always leased office space.

Think Tank Watch first wrote about the move in 2013, the same year that AEI purchased the building from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  In 2014, we noted that the new headquarters was estimated to cost $50 million.  A large portion of the cost was funded by Daniel A. D'Aniello, for whom the building is named after.

Mr. D'Aniello, who is Vice Chairman of AEI's Board of Trustees and Chairman and Co-founder of The Carlyle Group, gave a generous $20 million to the think tank.

Pictures of AEI's swanky new headquarters can be found here.  And here is a picture of the outside of the building with AEI's flag (and a closer view of the flag).  It seems like some Brookings scholars are already getting think tank flag envy, although the center-left think tank has warmly welcomed AEI to the block.

Here is a picture of AEI head Arthur Brooks and his colleagues exploring their new home.  It looks like everyone got new AEI water bottles and Post-It notes with the phrase "A Competition of Ideas" on the side.

Fun fact: The address of AEI's new headquarters used to be 1785 Massachusetts Ave. but the think tank was able to get it renumbered to 1789.  [Another fun fact: RAND Corporation's address in Santa Monica, California is 1776 Main Street.]

Here is a little about the farewell toast for AEI's new headquarters, via Politico.

AEI Head Makes Fortune List of World's 50 Greatest Leaders

Arthur Brooks, President of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) made the 2016 Fortune list of the "world's 50 greatest leaders," ranked at #32 on that list.   He is the only think tanker who made the list.

David Wessel, Director of the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution, wrote a brief clip about him for the list:

If the right is to have a shot at steering American public policy, Arthur Brooks will be one of the architects of its vision.  Hi conservatism stands for something more than tax cuts for the rich and ever-tighter restrictions on abortions.  The New York Times' David Brooks described it as "capitalism for the masses": It includes a heavy emphasis on social entrepreneurship - leveraging business techniques to solve social problems.  Not what you'd expect from a Seattle-born French-horn player.

An full biography of Arthur Brooks can be found here.

AEI Launches Open Source Policy Center

During the week of April 4 the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) formally launched the Open Source Policy Center (OSPC), which is dedicated to making policy analysis transparent and accessible through open source computer modeling.

On April 4, OSPC launched its first web application, TaxBrain.  Here is more from a press release:

Today, OSPC launches its first web application, TaxBrain, which allows the public and experts alike to study the effect of individual income and payroll tax policy reforms using open source economic simulation models.

This breakthrough in open source public policy research inaugurates a new era in government transparency by making economic modeling and data analysis both accessible and collaborative.

Here is more from another AEI press release:

TaxBrain relies on several open source simulation models that work together to allow for “static” scoring and various types of dynamic scoring of individual income and payroll tax reforms. In static scoring, the overall size of the economy is held fixed. In dynamic scoring, policy changes can affect the size of the economy.

A core team of contributors oversees each simulation model. The core team members for models currently available on TaxBrain are T.J. Alumbaugh, Jason DeBacker, Richard Evans, Daniel Feenberg, Martin Holmer, John O’Hare, Amy Xu, and Matt Jensen.

Matt Jensen is the Founder and Managing Director of OSPC at AEI.  He is also a core contributor to open source modeling projects such as Tax-Calculator and TaxData.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) just had a lead editorial entitled "Cracking Washington's Black Box," which praised the opening of the Open Source Policy Center.  Here is an excerpt from WSJ:

The American Enterprise Institute will soon unveil its Open Source Policy Center in an effort to crack the codes used by government bean counters. The think tank’s goal is to produce open-source economic modeling to give outside academics, experts and average Americans the tools to test, check and improve the hidden calculations that government uses to design policy. This is wonky stuff, and therefore it won’t make the cable TV shows, but it is an essential step toward holding accountable the increasingly powerful administrative state.

Here is a link to OSPC and here is a link to TaxBrain.

Also, Think Tank Watch has noticed that OSPC is looking to hire.  Want to be an economics research assistant?  How about a summer intern?  Apply today!

Washingtonian: AEI Has One of the Best Lunches in Washington

The March 2016 edition of the Washingtonian is out with a new piece on the best lunches at US agencies, nonprofits, and schools.

The conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) made the list, along with Kramer Middle School, the law firm of WilmerHale, Holton-Arms School, and National Geographic Society.

Here is what is said about AEI:

Salt-crusted beef tenderloin, whiskey-smoked rack of lamb, Kobe beef, and duck are staples for the red-tie crowd at the conservative think tank in downtown DC - and that's just the buffet.  "We try not to get too repetitive," deadpans chef Richard McCreadie, formerly of the Ritz-Carlton, in a Scottish brogue.  The high-end grub comes in handy when VIP panelists stay for lunch and McCreadie has minutes to whip the day's chow-line offering into an elegant sit-down.

The magazine has a picture of an AEI meal of charbroiled Maine lobster with marjoram butter sauce in a tomato concasse.  Posh.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece on a think tank's strength being measured by its food.

Matt Ridley's New Book Bashed for Overreliance on Think Tanker

In a new review of Matt Ridley's new book "The Evolution of Everything," Jim Tankersley, the economic policy correspondent for The Washington Post, takes a swipe at Ridley for being overly reliant on the work of a think tank expert.  Here is more:

Like a cable-news junkie, he skips past volumes of rigorous scholarship and comes to rest on almost anything that supports his convictions.

This is particularly true in Ridley’s economics chapters. His theory of the 2008 financial crisis — that it was caused mainly by federal government policy — draws largely on the work of one conservative economist, Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, whose theories are, to put it mildly, not widely shared in the field.

Peter Wallison, who was in the Ronald Reagan Administration, is the Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).  All of his work can be found here.

Netanyahu's Think Tank Balancing Act: AEI & CAP

When heads of state and foreign leaders come to Washington, it is customary for them these days to do a bit of the think tank circuit.

As Think Tank Watch reported earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu will be coming to the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on November 9 to pick up the 2015 Irving Kristol Award.

But in a new twist, he will also be visiting the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank with extremely close ties to the Clintons and the Obama Administration.  Here is more from Foreign Policy:

Call it think tank diplomacy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on his way to Washington for a Nov. 9 meeting with President Barack Obama — the first between the two leaders since they engaged in a bruising and protracted feud over the Iran nuclear deal.

Netanyahu has been under pressure to try to repair his battered relationship with Obama and other leading Democrats and raised eyebrows when he scheduled an event at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for the same day. Perhaps mindful of the poor optics, Netanyahu has settled on a simple way of trying to defuse the controversy: giving an address to the liberal Center for American Progress, which announced Tuesday that it, too, would host the Israeli leader during his November visit.

The decision to visit the liberal think tank is being welcomed by some pro-Israel Democrats, who have urged Netanyahu to try to strengthen his ties to the American left. Critics of the hard-line leader, though, said they doubted he’d use the address to announce any substantive policy shifts.

Initial liberal complaints about Netanyahu’s upcoming visit emerged when the Israeli government announced that the prime minister would visit AEI the same day as his meeting at the White House. AEI is a prominent conservative think tank in Washington that routinely blasts Obama’s policies and maintains relationships with a wide array of veterans of the George W. Bush administration. In September, it hosted former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said the Iran deal was “madness.”

The center’s decision to host Netanyahu has rankled some employees of the progressive research organization. “I’m not thrilled with the idea of giving Netanyahu a platform, but as long as his ideas are challenged in an open way, I think it’s healthy,” said an employee who works in the center’s network.

The Huffington Post has some pretty in-depth reporting on how CAP was able to land Netanyahu for a policy address.  The general conclusion is that it took a lot of lobbying from the Israeli Embassy as well as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  Here is more:

As part of the tour, the Israeli government pushed hard for an invite to the Center for American Progress and landed an event at the progressive institution on Nov. 10, the day after Netanyahu has a scheduled meeting with Obama. The embassy's push for the invite, sources familiar with the lobbying said, was joined by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which also applied pressure to CAP to allow Netanyahu to speak.

Some current and former CAP employees were disappointed by the news of Netanyahu’s upcoming visit, which was first floated Tuesday by the Jewish Insider, a newsletter on Jewish politics. Multiple sources confirmed the news to The Huffington Post. (Tanden declined to comment.)

“He’s looking for that progressive validation,” said a former CAP staffer, “and they’re basically validating a guy who race-baited during his election and has disavowed the two-state solution, which is CAP’s own prior work."

 “This is someone who is an enemy of the progressive agenda, who has targeted Israeli human rights organizations throughout his term, and was re-elected on the back of blatant anti-Arab race-baiting,” echoed Matt Duss, who used to work at CAP and now heads the Foundation for Middle East Peace. “The idea that CAP would agree to give him bipartisan cover is really disappointing.”

As part of the effort to restore Netanyahu’s clout with Democrats, the Israeli embassy reached out to Tanden, the president of CAP, requesting the institution host the prime minister during his November trip. AIPAC, which has paid for multiple CAP employees to visit Israel, followed up to pressure the think tank on the request.

CAP’s relationship with AIPAC and its allies is fraught. Three years ago, CAP employed policy analyst Matt Duss, and its publication ThinkProgress employed Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton; all three wrote controversial pieces challenging the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Pro-Israel lobbyists pushed hard against CAP, and all three felt the pressure and have since left.

Some former staffers have criticized CAP for not engaging aggressively enough in the Iran debate, a contention those involved in the fight say is simply inaccurate, and doesn't account for both its public statements and behind-the-scenes work. 

Netanyahu is among many of the world's prime ministers and presidents who have recently visited Washington, DC's top think tanks.  For example, on October 27, Indonesian President Joko Widodo spoke at the Brookings Institution.  And earlier this month, South Korean President Park Geun-hye spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Here is a link to CAP's Netanyahu event on November 10.

Update: Here is what The Washington Free Beacon has to say about Netanyahu speaking at CAP.  And here is what The Nation is saying about the upcoming speech in an piece written by former CAP staffer Ali Gharib entitled "Why Is the Center For American Progress Hosting Benjamin Netanyahu."  It notes that MoveOn has started a petition to disinvite Netanyahu to CAP.  As of this writing, the petition had more than 700 signatures.

Update: Los Angeles Times: CAP should host Netanyahu.

Update: Foreign Policy: "Netanyahu Visit Sparks Internal Backlash at Powerhouse DC Think Tank."  CAP held an all-staff meeting Friday on the Netanyahu speech, and at the end of the meeting, around a dozen CAP employees stood up and delivered an impassioned joint statement criticizing CAP's decision to host Netanyahu.  The article also notes that the Arab American Institute and Jewish Voice for Peace has have issued an open letter to CAP criticizing the think tank for hosting Netanyahu.

Update: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is planning to picket outside of CAP's office on Nov. 10.

Update: Washington Post: CAP under fire for hosting Netanyahu.

Update: Jeffrey Goldberg says that Netanyahu should speak at CAP.

Ezra Klein Interview AEI President Arthur Brooks

Following are some of Think Tank Watch's favorite quotes from the recent interview by Ezra Klein of American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Arthur Brooks.

• Ezra Klein: "Arthur Brooks is a snappy dresser and his think tank really matters...he is now wearing a huge, cool silver watch and big, colorful cuff links.  You are, I think it is fair to say, the nattiest of the think tank executives I know."

• Arthur Brooks: "Think tanks are an industry that grew out of academia and academia is the dowdiest possible way of making a living."

• Arthur Brooks: "AEI reached out to me to become a visiting scholar...before that I was actually a donor to AEI.  I was writing checks to AEI even before joining the think tank."

• Arthur Brooks: "The reason many think tank presidencies haven't ended so well is because nobody knows what the industry standard is supposed to be."

• Arthur Brooks: "We don't have any corporate positions at AEI...in fact, we bring in people who don't share our mission precisely to 'murder board' our ideas."

•  Arthur Brooks: "Half of economists [at AEI] think a carbon tax is good and half think it is bad...you should hear them yelling in the hall."

• Arthur Brooks: "We do 350 events per year [at AEI.]  We invite people who disagree with our view.  We regularly have people from the Center for American Progress (CAP) and give them the podium."

• Ezra Klein: "And you [AEI] are known for having the best food." 

• Ezra Klein: "You can find a think tank to justify anything."

• Ezra Klein: "The think tank world in DC is a very cheap way of buying credibility."

• Arthur Brooks: "You often hear 'center-right AEI' but there is no qualifier for liberal think tanks like Brookings.  And there is a tendency [by the media] to stick a finger in stuff by the center-right."

When asked what think tank is the most interesting right now (besides AEI), Brooks said there are a lot of interesting ones at the state and local level, and cited the State Policy Network (SPN) and Goldwater Institute.

And since Think Tank Watch tracks all the world's fantasy/made-up think tanks, we should mention that during the interview, Ezra Klein (purposely) invented his own think tank - The Institute for Competitive Freedom.

Update:  Here is a list that AEI's Michael Strain put together in National Review of his favorite quotes from Think Tank Watch's favorite quotes of the Ezra Klein interview of Arthur Brooks.

Netanyahu to Receive Prestigious AEI Award

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be visiting the United States in November, and besides meeting with President Barack Obama, he will also be making a stop in think tank land to pick up a reward from a conservative think tanks.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has just announced that Mr. Netanyahu will receive the 2015 Irving Kristol Award on November 9 in Washington, DC.  The annual award is considered the think tank's highest honor, and is given to individuals who have "made exceptional practical and intellectual contributions to improve government policy, social welfare, or political understanding."

The winner, selected by AEI's Council of Academic Advisors, was established in 2002 in honor of AEI Senior Fellow Irving Kristol.  It replaced the think tank's Francis Boyer Award, which had been awarded annually for the previous 25 years.

The think tank's Council of Academic Advisors is chaired by Yale Law School Professor George Priest.  The other 15 people on the Council are: Alan Auerbach, Eliot Cohen, Eugene Fama, Martin Feldstein, Aaron Friedberg, Robert George, Eric Hanushek, Glenn Hubbard, Walter Russell Mead, John Palmer, Mark Pauly, Sam Peltzman, Jeremy Rabkin, Harvey Rosen, and Richard Zeckhauser.

Previous recipients of the award include Arthur Burns, Dick Cheney, Gerald Ford, Alan Greenspan, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Paul Ryan, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.

The award ceremony will be held at the National Building Museum.

Pope Francis Turns Two Offices Into "Think Tanks for the Church"

It looks like Pope Francis has embraced think tanks so much that he decided to create a couple of his own.

Here is more from Jason Berry in the Global Post:

And drawing down Rome's propensity for theological battles of scant interest to most Catholics, Francis rejuvenated two offices that had been around for years: the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Peace and Justice. He has turned them into think tanks for a church looking outward at the wider world.

Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana runs Peace and Justice, and guided the drafting of the ecology encyclical.

Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo of Argentina runs Sciences, and oversaw this month's conference with the mayors on climate change.

Think Tank Watch should note that the official English name for the above-mentioned "think tank" is the Pontifical Council of Peace and Justice.  A link to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences can be found here.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on how one think tank sought to block the Pope's climate encyclical.

Think Tank Watch has heard rumors that Pope Francis may visit at least one think tank when he visits Washington, DC later this year.  Is American Enterprise Institute (AEI) a likely courter?