An Idea Factory for the Democrats

For Democrats suffering from Scarecrow Syndrome ("if we only had a brain"), John Podesta, the man behind the curtain at the Center for American Progress, thinks he has the cure: a $10-million-a-year think tank now taking shape in Washington. In a city heavy with well-funded right-wing think tanks (Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute, Federalist Society), the center is designed to provide some ballast for the other side. Starting in the 1970s, the conservative tanks have forged the ideas that built Fortress GOP. Podesta believes that what the Democrats need to "balance the national debate" is a Heritage Foundation of their own. Finally, the Democratic Party will have a "brain."

As yet barely known outside policy-wonk circles in Washington, within that world Podesta's center had generated lots of buzz even before it opened its doors last fall. Its arrival has been welcomed--eagerly, cautiously or jealously, depending on who's doing the welcoming--by the liberal and progressive Washington community. All agree that, at the very least, the center can add energy and ideas to the overall anti-Bush effort in 2004. But both Podesta's and the center's close ties to the Clintons, and their desire to appeal to Democrats across the political spectrum, have many people asking how much the center will accomplish in the end.

Podesta, a lawyer and twenty-five-year Washington veteran who worked for the Justice Department, for ACTION (the federal volunteer agency) and on Capitol Hill, is best known as President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff. Now, backed by a small group of wealthy donors, Podesta is assembling a team of former Clinton officials, Capitol Hill veterans and refugees from other liberal think tanks. Thirty-five-strong and growing (around Washington, it seems like nearly everyone with liberal credentials has sent a résumé to Podesta), the center also includes a phalanx of big-think "fellows," including Ruy Teixeira, Gene Sperling, Matt Miller and The Nation's Eric Alterman. Podesta's second-in-command is Morton Halperin, the longtime national security and civil liberties activist, while Laura Nichols, a former top aide to Representative Dick Gephardt, oversees a stable of media-relations experts. The center already boasts a significant web presence (www.centerforamericanprogress.org), and its daily Progress Report, compiled by former Capitol Hill aide David Sirota and delivered electronically to 28,000 subscribers, is a political junkie's "Bush Watch."

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