Think Tankers "Hope They'll be Rescued" From Their Jobs

This is from the opening of a new piece on Brookings Institution scholar and former Trump Administration official Fiona Hill that was penned by New Yorker writer Adam Entous:

The Brookings Institution is one of many think tanks in Washington, D.C., where scholars and bureaucrats sit in quiet offices and wait by the phone. They write op-eds and books, give talks and convene seminars, hoping that, when reputations falter or Administrations shift, they will be rescued from the life of opining and contemplation and return to the adrenaline rush and consequence of government. Nearly always, the yearning is to be inside. Strobe Talbott, who became the president of Brookings in 2002, served in Bill Clinton’s Administration as his leading Russia expert, and he was rumored to be on the shortlist for Hillary Clinton’s Secretary of State. Others, too, may have expected a call. But, after Donald Trump was elected, only one prominent Brookings stalwart was summoned, and her story became emblematic of all those in Washington who entered the Administration full of trepidation but hoping to be a “normalizing” influence on a distinctly abnormal President.

Former managing director at Brookings, William Antholis, said he was "deeply offended" by the line about being "rescued" from life at a think tank.

Think Tank Watch's favorite line from the New Yorker piece:  "After Trump’s victory, the mood at Brookings was funereal."

After her stint within the Trump Administration, Hill returned to Brookings where she is currently a Senior Fellow in the Center for on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy Program.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about Hill.

Historians Quit UVA Think Tank After Hiring of Ex-Trump Aide

Here is more from HuffPost:

Two distinguished historians at the University of Virginia have resigned from its public policy center following the school’s recent hiring of a former aide to President Donald Trump, a decision that has also spurred protests among students and faculty.

William I. Hitchcock and Melvyn P. Leffler announced their departures from the Miller Center of Public Affairs on Monday to protest Marc Short, Trump’s former legislative affairs director, receiving a paid fellowship at the think tank that also studies the presidency. The professors blasted Short’s fellowship as running counter to the center’s values.

“By associating himself with an administration that shows no respect for truth, he has contributed to the erosion of civil discourse and democratic norms that are essential to democratic governance and that are central to the mission of the Miller Center,” read a letter shared by Hitchcock on Twitter.

William Antholis, the center’s director and CEO, said in a statement he was saddened by their departure but that Short’s appointment would help promote the think tank’s goals.

From 2004-2014, Mr. Antholis was managing director of the Brookings Institution, a think tank that has been embroiled in various controversies for years.  Here is a statement from Antholis.

A National Review piece entitled "A Baseless Attack on Marc Short" is on the UVA think tank's website.  Slate says the two professors were right to leave.

Politico asks if the UVA drama is a warning to Trump officials looking for new gigs, including at think tanks.

AEI President Calls for "Politics Cleanse"

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) President Arthur Brooks is calling for a "politics cleanse" in a new op-ed in the New York Times.  Here is an excerpt:

Have you felt less popular lately than you once were? Are people avoiding you? Are your party invitations getting lost in the mail? Maybe it’s your breath.

Or, just maybe, it’s because you can’t stop talking about politics.

What to do? Start with a politics cleanse: For two weeks — maybe over your August vacation — resolve not to read, watch or listen to anything about politics. Don’t discuss politics with anyone. When you find yourself thinking about politics, distract yourself with something else. (I listen to Bach cantatas, but that’s not for everybody.) This is hard to do, of course, but not impossible. You just have to plan ahead and stand firm. Think of it as ideological veganism. On the one hand, your friends will think you’re a little wacky. On the other hand, you’ll feel superior to them.

Think Tank Watch should note that Arthur Brooks is stepping down from his think tank perch next summer.  Some say that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who is retiring from Congress, would be the "perfect fit" to succeed Brooks.  The job, which pays around $1 million, would give Ryan nearly five times what he makes now.

H.R. McMaster Returns to Hoover Institution

Here is more from the Wall Street Journal:

H.R. McMaster, pushed out in April as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, is joining Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where he hopes to develop bipartisan national security ideas.

Mr. McMaster, who struggled to retain influence in the fractious White House, said, as a senior fellow, he hopes his work can influence national security policy as the U.S. works to combat rising threats from rivals such as Russia and China.

While working at Hoover, Mr. McMaster said he also is planning to write a book. But those looking for a tell-all tale of West Wing intrigue are likely to be disappointed. Mr. McMaster said he plans to write a substantive book about national security.

Mr. McMaster first worked at Hoover in 2002 as a national security affairs fellow and then served as a visiting fellow from 2003 to 2017. He will now become the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow, a post commemorating the Middle East scholar who was friends with Mr. McMaster.

It was already expected that McMaster would return to think tank land.  Here is a Think Tank Watch post about conservatives attacking McMaster for his previous think tank work.

How Heritage Stocked Trump's Government

Here are our favorite excerpts from a New York Times Magazine piece by Jonathan Mahler about how the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has staffed the Trump Administration:


On staffing the Trump Administration:

The Trump team may not have been prepared to staff the government, but the Heritage Foundation was. In the summer of 2014, a year before Trump even declared his candidacy, the right-wing think tank had started assembling a 3,000-name searchable database of trusted movement conservatives from around the country who were eager to serve in a post-Obama government. The initiative was called the Project to Restore America, a dog-whistle appeal to the so-called silent majority that foreshadowed Trump’s own campaign slogan.

On Trump and Heritage being an unlikely match:

In some ways, Trump and Heritage were an unlikely match. Trump had no personal connection to the think tank and had fared poorly on a “Presidential Platform Review” from its sister lobbying shop, Heritage Action for America, which essentially concluded that he wasn’t even a conservative.

On helping each other:

And yet Heritage and Trump were uniquely positioned to help each other. Much like Trump’s, Heritage’s constituency is equal parts donor class and populist base. Its $80 million annual budget depends on six-figure donations from rich Republicans like Rebekah Mercer, whose family foundation has reportedly given Heritage $500,000 a year since 2013. But it also relies on a network of 500,000 small donors, Heritage “members” whom it bombards with millions of pieces of direct mail every year. The Heritage Foundation is a marketing company, a branding agency — it sells its own Heritage neckties, embroidered with miniature versions of its Liberty Bell logo — and a policy shop rolled into one. But above all, Heritage is a networking group.

On victory for Heritage:

Today it is clear that for all the chaos and churn of the current administration, Heritage has achieved a huge strategic victory. Those who worked on the project estimate that hundreds of the people the think tank put forward landed jobs, in just about every government agency. Heritage’s recommendations included some of the most prominent members of Trump’s cabinet: Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos (whose in-laws endowed Heritage’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society), Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions and many more. Dozens of Heritage employees and alumni also joined the Trump administration — at last count 66 of them, according to Heritage, with two more still awaiting Senate confirmation. It is a kind of critical mass that Heritage had been working toward for nearly a half-century.

On the five ideologies of Heritage:

[Heritage co-founded Ed] Feulner packaged his fledgling think tank’s ideology into five basic principles: free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional values and a strong national defense. 

Heritage avoids never-Trump:

In March 2016, the Republican establishment stepped up its effort to stop Trump. More than 100 Republican national-security experts signed an open letter publicly committing to fight his election, calling him a “racketeer” and denouncing his dishonesty and “admiration for foreign dictators.” A number of the signatories were fellows of conservative think tanks; none were affiliated with Heritage at the time. Heritage treated Trump as it would any other candidate, giving his campaign staff more than a dozen briefings and sending them off with decks of cards bearing Heritage policy proposals and market-tested “power phrases.”

On what Heritage staffers ate during election night:

On election night, Heritage turned its first floor over to a viewing party with an open bar, chicken wings and red, white and blue cupcakes.

On Heritage staffing the Trump Administration:

Heritage helped place countless others, from staff assistants to cabinet secretaries. In some cases, DeMint intervened directly, calling Pence to argue for Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman whose political career DeMint helped start years earlier in South Carolina. Mulvaney is now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and as this article went to press, he was serving out the remaining time in a stint as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...

On current Heritage-Trump relations:

The president and his favorite think tank continue to draw closer. Administration officials speak regularly at Heritage and give frequent interviews to The Daily Signal. In April, Pruitt and Attorney General Jeff Sessions were both scheduled to speak at a Heritage donor conference in Palm Beach, Fla. (Sessions, under fire from the president because of the Russia investigation, dropped out.)

On the Trump-Heritage revolving door:

Churn is a central feature of this administration, even for its unofficial staffing agency. Paul Winfree, a Heritage economist who helped draft Trump’s first budget, is back at the think tank. So are Stephen Moore, who worked on the Trump tax cuts; David Kreutzer, who played a key role in dissolving a White House working group that was studying the monetary costs associated with climate-warming carbon dioxide; and Hans von Spakovsky, who helped run the now-defunct voter-fraud commission...

Here is a recent Think Tank Watch piece about big changes that have taken place recently at the Heritage Foundation.

Politico: Heritage's Cozy Relationship With Trump Put to Test

Is the Heritage Foundation, a think tank which helped transition Donald Trump into the White House, turning into Donald Trump's worst nightmare?

Here  is more from Politico:

The Heritage Foundation has been cozying up to top White House aides and congressional leaders for months, hoping to put its conservative imprint on President Donald Trump’s policy agenda. But the first major bill that Republicans proposed — to repeal and replace Obamacare — runs completely afoul of Heritage’s priorities and threatens to upend a critical relationship between conservative activists and the Trump administration.

Now the 44-year-old think tank must decide whether to stay in the administration’s good graces by compromising some of its core values to get things done or embrace its long-standing reputation as a political bomb-thrower.

What’s happening at The Heritage Foundation is a revealing example of the path the group has taken from conservative rabble-rouser to insider. And it’s a test of how conservatives in the Trump era cope with being part of the establishment.

Heritage Action, the 501(c)(4) associated with the foundation, quickly bashed the bill on Tuesday, calling it “bad politics and, more importantly, bad policy.” Former Sen. Jim DeMint, Heritage Foundation president, is slated to go to the White House later Wednesday to discuss the bill with Trump, according to a Heritage source, part of Trump’s broader push to win over conservative groups.

And health care will not be the last fissure between Heritage and the administration. DeMint has been quietly working behind the scenes for months to kill policy proposals that depart from Heritage’s conservative values.

Even with all the disagreements and likely future disagreements, Politico notes that the Heritage Foundation is "closer to Trump world than any other administration since that of Ronald Reagan."

The article also notes that Heritage President Jim DeMint "strongly encouraged" the think tank's staff to work for Trump's transition, without taking leave from the think tank.  That has led to a number of Heritage staffers being hired by the Trump Administration.

Here is a recent Think Tank Watch piece on how the think tank's fingerprints are all over the White House budget.

AEI Scholar Tapped to run FDA

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a health policy expert at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has been selected by President Donald Trump to be the next head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Gottlieb, a Resident Fellow at AEI, has for the past decade also been a partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a global venture capital firm investing in technology and healthcare.

The Washington Post reports that Dr. Gottlieb has longstanding ties to the drug industry, serving as a consultant or board member for several companies, including GlaxoSmithKline and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.  "He received ore than $400,000 in payments from pharmaceutical companies between 2013 and 2015, according to a federal database," says the Post.

A number of high-level think tankers have been tapped to join the Trump Administration in recent weeks, including Atlantic Council Chairman Jon Hunstman (to be US envoy to Russia), and Brookings scholar Fiona Hill (to join the National Security Council).

Agri-Pulse notes that Gottlieb's writings at the think tank focused on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and prescription drug policy.

More on the White House-think tank revolving door can be found here.

Could Atlantic Council Chairman Jon Huntsman be Trump's VP?

Rumors continue to swirl around who will be Donald Trump's vice presidential pick, and some have even floated the idea that a think tanker could be in the running.

Huffington Post recently said that Jon Huntsman is on Trump's short list as a VP candidate.  Huntsman, who is the Chairman of the think tank Atlantic Council, said back in February that he could support Trump if he is nominated.

Huntsman has been eager to try to impact the thinking of the next president, releasing in April a "policy playbook for America's next president."  He released that "playbook" along with Joe Lieberman, both co-chairs of the group No Labels.

Huntsman, who was a 2012 presidential candidate, may not be the only think tank head being considered by Trump.  Another possibility is former Sen. Jim DeMint, who some speculate is also in the running for VP.