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.

Think Tank Quickies (#199)

• Micah Zenko's look into CIA's "what if?" think tank, the Red Cell.
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• New America Foundation (NAF) debate: Will libraries outlive books.
• Google-chaired think tank (NAF) says Google is #1 for digital rights; Google gives to 140 think tanks, civil society groups, and academics.
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• Irish think tanks don't think any more?
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• Former World Bank VP and Nigeria's Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala joins CGD. 
• CIA Director John Brennan gives keynote at CSIS's Global Security Forum 2015.
• Grover Norquist says AEI head Arthur Brooks is brilliant and all should read him.

Think Tank Quickies (#197)

• AEI: 20 reasons ride-sharing is better than taxis.
• Are think tanks undermining democracy? (via Dr. Glenn Savage of University of Melbourne)
• Karen Attiah of Washington Post: "DC think tanks keep excluding Africans from Africa panels."
• Think tank CEI: "Glyphosate in Tampons, Oh My!"
• RAND Corp. on how to stop the world's growing heroin crisis.
• A case study of the US foreign policy think tanks' debates in the general elections of 2004, 2008, and 2012 (via Seyed Hamidreza Serri).
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• Bill Kristol interviews AEI President Arthur Brooks.
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• Image of think tank financing. (h/t Transparify)
• Vladimir Putin's close confidant Vladimir Yukunin launches new think tank.

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.

WSJ: AEI is Washington's "Hottest" Think Tank

Following are Think Tank Watch's favorite excerpts from a new piece by William McGurn, a Wall Street Journal columnist and member of its editorial board, on the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and its president, Arthur Brooks.

On think tanks and their distinct personalities:

...think tanks have distinct personalities in addition to their politics.  The libertarian Cato Institute, for example, looks as though it had been designed by Howard Roark, the hero architect of Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead.” The Liberty Bell on the Heritage Foundation logo evokes a classic conservatism rooted in the American founding. The clean modernist lines of the Brookings Institution suggest its faith in good, rational government.

On how unconventional Arthur Brooks (President of AEI) is:

Before he was president of the American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks played the French horn. Not on the side. For a living.

It’s not the standard route to the top job at a Beltway think tank. Then again, not much about Mr. Brooks is standard. From dropping out of college to go to Spain to play for the Barcelona City Orchestra, to earning his B.A. degree via correspondence courses from Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey, his life makes for an eclectic résumé.

Today he boasts a Ph.D. from the RAND Graduate School and enjoys an honored spot in the capital’s intellectual firmament. But the horn still defines how he sees the world.

On AEI and its Bush alumni:

In Mr. Brooks’s hands, AEI has become an orchestra. Sure, it is sometimes labeled “neocon” (almost always deployed as a pejorative) because of the home it provides for former George W. Bush administration officials such as John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz, not to mention scholars such as Fred Kagan who write on military matters. These people are all vital to AEI, but they are only part of a larger ensemble.

On the office of AEI President Arthur Brooks:

He is speaking over lunch in his corner office overlooking 17th and M streets in northwest Washington, D.C. The office isn’t standard-issue, either.

The walls are bereft of the signed photos and tributes from presidents, senators and other pooh-bahs that are de riguer for the capital’s movers and shakers. The largest piece in the room is a poster featuring José Tomás, Spain’s greatest bullfighter. Mr. Brooks once saw him in the ring. “A true master artist,” he says.

The other poster is from the Soviet Union circa 1964. It features two workers. One is a drunk scratching his head as he looks at the one-ruble note in his hand. The other is a hale-and-hearty type proudly looking at the 10 rubles he has earned. The caption: “Work more, earn more.”

On AEI's growth:

Donors seem to like what they are hearing. AEI has never lacked for influence, and its scholars have helped staff many a Republican White House. But under Mr. Brooks the organization is experiencing explosive growth.

In the six years since he took over as president, annual donations have nearly doubled, to $40 million today from roughly $22 million in 2009. The endowment is about $90 million. “We don’t accept government money,” he says, “and we’re proud of that.”

There are more people too—225 full-time scholars and staff, up from 145. They range from political economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, public-opinion analyst Karlyn Bowman and political scientist Charles Murray to political scientist and journalist Norman Ornstein, Yale Medical School’s Sally Satel and Kevin Hassett, a former senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

On AEI's new office space:

But the many additions that AEI has made means it is now busting at the seams. This forced a big decision: Come February, AEI will move out of the office building it has called home since 1971 and into a refurbished historic landmark off DuPont Circle. It’s a former luxury apartment building where Andrew Mellon once lived.

In 2015, AEI was ranked as the US's 12th best think tank and the world's 24th best think tank by the University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.

Think Tank Quickies (#184)

• What are think tanks thinking about EU-China relations? (via European Parliamentary Research Service)
• Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and IMF chief Christine Lagarde speak at Brookings on July 8; DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson speaks at CSIS on July 8.
• Cato scholar blasts Atlantic Council for allowing Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to speak.
• Cato Institute on the miracle of air-conditioning.
• NBR scholar (and former CNAS scholar) Abraham Denmark named as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia.
• AEI President Arthur Brooks' new book Conservative Heart coming out July 14.
• Lauren Bohn: Male talkfest at think tanks isn't just anecdotal.
• CSIS pics of disputed islands used to attack China on environment.
• World Bank deletes section on China report.  Do think tanks also cave into the same pressure?

AEI Trying to Shape 2016 Presidential Elections

From the Washington Post's PowerPost:

Best known for housing foreign-policy hawks and the high priests of supply-side economics, the American Enterprise Institute has long been a regular, if low-key stop for Republican presidential candidates, be it for a hand with their white papers or huddles with resident scholars like John Bolton.

But for 2016, Arthur C. Brooks — AEI’s 51-year-old, French horn-playing president — is positioning the think tank on 17th Street to be a bigger player in the presidential campaign by putting itself in the middle of its biggest debates.

Instead of hosting scattered briefings on Iraq or tax policy — and leaving it at that — Brooks envisions AEI as an engine for refashioning conservatism for a weary electorate.

Nowhere is Brooks’s approach more evident than on addressing the rising gap between the rich and the poor — and the failure of many Republicans to speak cogently about income inequality and the stagnation of the middle class.

If Brooks and AEI can help give Republicans a persuasive argument, then they might be able to take their case to Democrats and independent voters disenchanted with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The article goes on to note that a variety of former AEI scholars have started working with 2016 presidential candidate, including Abby McCloskey, who recently left the think tank to join former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's policy shop.

Interestingly, the article says that when presidential candidates show up at AEI, they are often steered toward a meeting with Robert Doar, an AEI fellow in poverty studies.

Arthur Brooks said that the most called-upon AEI experts on poverty also include tax economist Kevin Hassett, and labor scholars Andrew Biggs and Michael Strain.  The article notes that James Pethokoukis is "plugged in" with GOP strategists.

The article also notes that AEI will co-host a Republican presidential debate, and Arthur Brooks and Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Preiebus are currently working on the details of that.

Earlier this year, AEI was ranked as the world's 24th best think tank by the University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.  It was ranked as the 12th best think tank in the United States.