The Center for American Progress:“Think Tank On Steroids”

By John Gizzi

May 2007

The Center for American ProgressPage 1

Briefly Noted

Page 8

Summary: The liberal Center for AmericanProgress (CAP) is off to a roaring start.Headed by John Podesta, President BillClinton’s former White House chief of staff,and funded by George Soros, the four-year-old think tank aspires to be nothing lessthan a ‘Heritage Foundation’ for America’sleft.

CONTENTS

The Center for American Progress(CAP) sees itself as the intellectualammunition depot for contemporary

liberalism. As liberals become increasinglyangry and their rhetoric becomes more andmore strident and insulting, the Center, ac-cording to a National Public Radio profile,aims “to reinvigorate political thinking andadvocacy among Democrats.” Now, with astaff of 120, nine research fellows, and a $23million budget (2005) funded in large part bybillionaire George Soros and his friends, thefour-year-old think tank is making its pres-ence known—and flexing considerable po-litical muscle.

The Center likes to note that its experts hadracked up more than 300 appearances on TVnews programs in the eight months followingits founding in 2003. CAP founder JohnPodesta, onetime White House chief of staffto Bill Clinton, has gone mano a mano intelevised fisticuffs with conservative mediapugilists Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, andthe Center has been churning out white pa-pers and holding conferences on a host ofissues ranging from immigration reform torepealing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’tTell” policy. Last year, it was turning outmonographs mapping out “a responsible exit”of U.S. forces from Iraq.

Today CAP manages its own radio studio(which produces a daily radio talk program byliberal TV commentator Bill Press, who is aformer California Democratic Party chairman),it publishes a daily e-mail newsletter, and ithas a full-time blogger commenting on politi-cal news and policy issues. CAP also sup-ports student publications at colleges anduniversities – it even sponsored a nationalconference of “campus progressives”—notunlike the annual Conservative Political Ac-tion Conference, which has attracted youngconservatives since 1973.

In contrast to venerable liberal researchorganizations such as the Brookings Institu-

tion, with its older scholars and longer books,CAP is high-tech and projects an air of irrev-erence and panache. In 2004, CAP workedwith “Project Billboard,” a Berkeley, Califor-nia-based nonprofit financed by DeborahRappaport, the Silicon Valley political funder,to unveil two anti-war billboards in the heart

President Bill Clinton (left) with John Podesta (right), on January 19, 2001, Clinton’slast full day as U.S. president. Podesta, now head of the Center for AmericanProgress, was White House chief of staff from 1998 to 2001.

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of New York City’s Times Square. One fea-tured a ticking clock displaying the cost ofthe Iraq War—it started at $134.5 billion andincreased at a rate of $177 million per day, $7.4million per hour, and $122,820 per minute.Today on CAP’s website, one can play“Contractopoly,” a game “that lets you winsweetheart deals from the Bush Administra-tion as you rebuild Iraq.” (See graphic onpage 7.)

Podesta and other top CAP supportersmay enjoy considerable influence inWashington’s Georgetown dinner party cir-cuit and in the highest circles of the Demo-cratic National Committee, but it is abun-dantly clear that the Center for AmericanProgress has the inventiveness, resources,media savvy, and intellectual firepower to bea significant player in politics nationwide.

Inevitably CAP is compared to the conser-vative Heritage Foundation, which began infar humbler surroundings in the 1970s andwith less “venture capital” at its launch.Heritage, of course, has since mushroomedinto a $39.5 million a year operation (2005) andit provided ideas and personnel for the Reaganand Bush administrations and for the“Gingrich Revolution” that was the Republi-can takeover of the U.S. House of Represen-tatives in 1994. “A hatchery of ideas, yes, butalso a packager, promoter, expediter, whole-

saler, matchmaker, and orchestrator,” is howthe Washington Post characterized the Heri-tage Foundation. The evidence suggeststhat the Center will soon merit the same sortof commentary. “A think tank on steroids” isPodesta’s own sound-bite for the Center forAmerican Progress.

Given its size and scope and those rapidlyassociating themselves with the liberals’ “new kid in town,” the Center could well be provid-ing personnel and ideas for a “PresidentClinton 44” or a “President Obama” shouldDemocrats recapture the White House in2008.

2002: The Liberals’ Wake-Up Year For John Podesta, the elections of 2002were an epiphany. After the 2000 elections,Republicans and Democrats had 50 seatseach in the Senate, and with Vice PresidentDick Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote,the GOP had control. This changed in 2001when Vermont’s James Jeffords switchedparties. But after the votes were counted in2002, the GOP had won outright control ofboth the Senate and the House—and it heldthe presidency. For the first time since 1953the Republicans were totally in charge.

Republican dominance over politics andpolicymaking terrified Podesta and other lib-eral Democrats. “For as long as I can remem-ber,” Podesta, onetime chief of staff to Presi-

dent Bill Clinton and a professor atGeorgetown University, later recalled to theWashington Post, “people have talked aboutthe rise of the Republican think tank machinewith a powerful communications machineryreally embedded inside it—creating the abil-ity not just to develop the philosophy, butsell it.” Was the Democrats’ fate sealed?Slowly, it began to sink in among liberals thatthey would need new ways to flesh outalternative policy proposals and aggressivelycommunicate their ideas to the media and thepublic.

Podesta, whom the Post calls “a man withmany admirers and few enemies despite 30years in politics,” took on the project ofcreating a new laboratory for liberalism. TheCenter for American Progress was born.

How to achieve its goals? The Center pro-poses to “develop bold new ideas,” “learneverything we can about the vital issuesfacing America and the world,” and “shapethe national debate.” However, the nature ofits mission – linking the nonprofit advocacyworld to the arena of politics— and Podesta’sinvolvement in CAP signaled something im-portant: George Soros was in on the deal.

Sure enough, the Hungarian immigrantknown as the “paymaster of the left” weighedin with seed money for the Center. So did hisfriends Herbert and Marion Sandler, the bil-lionaire mortgage bankers who last year soldtheir interest in Golden West Financial toWachovia for $24.2 billion. Soros and theSandlers reportedly provided CAP with al-most $13 million in initial funding. They re-main the only publicly-identified Centerfunders.

CAP has no information about funding onits website, and Daniella Leger, CAP’s direc-tor of press relations, would only say: “Wedon’t release the names of donors becausethey are private citizens.” However, it’s likelythat the Center solicits grants from donorsparticipating in the Democracy Alliance, theSoros-led effort to fund a permanent political

Richard C. Leone, president of the CenturyFoundation, sits on CAP’s board.

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infrastructure of think tanks, nonprofits, mediaoutlets, leadership schools, and activistgroups. CAP’s board includes MarionSandler; Richard C. Leone, president of theCentury Foundation; and Peter B. Lewis, aclose Soros friend and chairman of Progres-sive Insurance. Lewis gave nearly $23 millionto anti-Bush “527” groups in the 2004 elec-tion. (For more, see “George Soros’s Democ-racy Alliance: In Search of a Permanent Demo-cratic Majority,” by James Dellinger andMatthew Vadum, in Foundation Watch,December 2006; “Peter B. Lewis: Aviator ofthe Left,” by John Gizzi, in Foundation Watch,May 2005; and “The Century Foundation,”by Martin Morse Wooster, in FoundationWatch, February 2006.)

As for becoming another Heritage Founda-tion, Podesta repeatedly salutes it as a model,pointing out to National Public Radio that“one of the things that the Heritage Founda-tion, I think, has done a good job of is thatthey’ve gotten their people out into thatpublic debate. They’ve had a strategy to notjust come up with analysis, not just to writegood ideas in papers and in academic jour-nals, but to actually get out and fight for thehearts and minds of the American people forpublic opinion. And that’s what we aim todo.”

The Center is certainly growing at a fasterclip than Heritage 30 years ago. According toits tax forms, it took in $11.7 million and spent$2.9 million in 2003, its first year of operation.In 2005, the latest year available, donorscontributed $22.9 million and expenses were$16.2 million.

The Center’s output of position papersrivals its counterparts, the Brookings Insti-tution, the oldest think tank in Washington

(founded 1927), the Progressive Policy Insti-tute (PPI) and the far-left Institute for PolicyStudies (IPS), which have been churning outposition papers for many years. However,CAP differs from these groups in that itemphasizes the communication of ideas andthe training of a new generation of spokes-men for the liberal cause. In this sense, theCenter is more like Heritage.

As the Washington Post states: “But analy-sis and philosophy amount to little in politicalterms unless there is someone to sell theresults. This Podesta learned from watchingHeritage. It is not the largest think tank inWashington (that would be the venerableBrookings Institution) nor is it stocked withthe most sheepskins. But it would be hard toname an outfit as good at taking an idea thatsounds extreme and moving it onto theagenda.”

“We definitely learned from other existingthink tanks,” said Leger, “and what they didwell.”

Laura Nichols, CAP’s senior vice presidentfor communications and strategy, has sum-marized the plight of liberals. In 2003, she toldthe Washington Post, “We progressives feelwe’re not in the game when it comes to themedia. We’re not on cable to the extent theother side is. We don’t have the talkingheads. We’re not offering effective pushbackfor the right-wing agenda. So one of our goalsis to start building a new bench of cablecommentators.”

Billionaire couple Marion (left) and Herb Sandler (right) gavethe Center millions of dollars in seed money.

CAP helped Representative John Murtha develop the concept of “strategicredeployment,” leftist double-speak for withdrawing troops on a timetable.

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Old Proposals, Familiar Faces Despite its emphasis on improved market-ing and communications, the Center forAmerican Progress does not really have freshideas.

An examination of the “Fifteen New Ideas”section of the organization’s website revealsold and familiar liberal policy prescriptions,but whether they are actually new ideas is amatter of opinion.

For example, the section on “Building StrongCommunities” promotes universal health carecoverage, a longtime favorite of left-leaningpolicy groups. The “Offering Opportunity for All,” calls on policymakers to “extend learning time,” a euphemism for longer classroom hours, a panacea that teachers’ unionshave backed for years.

The topics of CAP’s most recent reportsand conferences also reflect remedies thatliberal Democrats typically prescribe.

* It wants Congress to repeal the military’s“don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on openly gaymilitary personnel.

* It favors racial integration to improve theschool performance of minorities but com-plains that despite a half-century of progress,

“thousands of schools around the countryare almost completely segregated.”

* It collaborated with the conservative Ameri-can Enterprise Institute and the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce to issue a March 2007report card on American education that con-tended that states are failing students andputting American competitiveness at risk. If

an alliance between CAP and the voice ofAmerican business appears incongruous,CAP spokeswoman Leger explained that“Tom Donahue, president of the Chamber,reached out to us and wanted the partneringwith us. He was aware of the work we haddone on education and agreed that educa-tion was important to prepare young Ameri-cans for the workplace.”

* Also in March, the Center hosted a day-long panel on immigration reform where threespeakers discussed “the daily consequencesof an unjust system that causes undue suf-fering and hardship to the people they serve.”The panelists: Rev. Sam Rodriguez, presi-dent of the National Hispanic Christian Lead-ership Conference; Rev. Alexia Salvatierra,executive director of the Clergy and LaityUnited for Economic Justice; and Jim Wallis,president and executive director of Sojourn-ers/Call to Renewal.

* Perhaps the Center’s most important rec-ommendation was a 2006 report calling onU.S. troops to leave Iraq “as part of a bal-anced global strategy to make Americanssafer.” CAP helped Representative JohnMurtha (D-Pennsylvania) develop the con-cept “strategic redeployment,” which is theleft’s double-speak for withdrawing troopson a timetable. Six months later came “Strate-

CAP’s David Sirota is a prominent bloggerand Democratic strategist.

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gic Redeployment 2.0,” which underscoredthe earlier report and spelled out a strategy tohave U.S. troops exit Iraq by 2007. The reportwas prepared by CAP senior fellow LawrenceJ. Korb, a former assistant secretary of de-fense in the Reagan administration and, morerecently, a senior fellow at the Council onForeign Relations and the Brookings Institu-tion.

As times change and new issues emerge,the Center for American Progress will appar-ently have the resources to offer new ideas.But it remains to be seen whether the ideasCAP espouses will be as groundbreakingand revolutionary as, for example, the con-cept of school vouchers, which the HeritageFoundation brought into the mainstream.

Meanwhile, the Center’s roll call of fellowscontains many familiar names: political scien-tist Ruy Teixeira, formerly with the Progres-sive Policy Institute and co-author of thewidely-praised political book The EmergingDemocratic Majority; economist GeneSperling, onetime national economic adviserto President Clinton; health care expert JeanneLambrew; Africa expert Gayle E. Smith; na-tionally syndicated columnist MatthewMiller; and former Senate Democratic LeaderTom Daschle (D-South Dakota).

More controversial is Podesta’s recruit-ment of Morton Halperin to head CAP’s“Security and Peace Initiative.” A veterandenizen of liberal groups (Brookings, theCarnegie Endowment for International Peace,the ACLU and the Council on Foreign Rela-tions), Halperin was in 1993 PresidentClinton’s failed nominee to be assistant sec-retary of defense for democracy and peace-keeping. He came under intense fire fromintelligence agencies and senators in bothparties because of his long history of con-demning U.S. covert intelligence activitiesand his outspoken defense of Phillip Agee,the renegade CIA turncoat. (President Clintoneventually pulled the nomination and gaveHalperin a position that did not require Sen-ate confirmation.)

Halperin has called for dissolving the CIA’scovert career service, criticized the intelli-gence agency as “the subverter of everyoneelse’s freedom,” and declared it “an openquestion” whether it might one day turn toassassinating American citizens.

Media Training and Lobbying: The CAPAction Fund To ramp up its media operations CAP staff-ers attend what amounts to a “boot camp” forcommentators and “talking heads.” CAP hiredDebbie Berger, a former producer of CNN’s“Crossfire” show, to conduct media trainingand set up a booking operation to put CAPspokesmen on radio and TV talk shows.Berger’s staff includes one assistant for talkradio and another whose job it is to “findways to reach young people,” according tothe Post. CAP also has hired blogger DavidSirota, who, the Post reports, “patrols theInternet daily before dawn to compose asummary and critique of the day’s news froma liberal perspective.” A Democratic Partystrategist known as a progressive populist,Sirota used to work as a key aide to Represen-tative Dave Obey (D-Wisconsin), now chair-man of the House Appropriations Commit-tee.

The Center’s success in nailing down radioand TV spots for its budding talking heads iswell-recognized. Genevieve Wood, directorof strategic operations at the Heritage Foun-dation and a media trainer for the conserva-tive Leadership Institute, has said of CAP:“[W]e welcome them into the arena. They willtry to cover up bad policies with good soundbites but if we’re doing our job effectively,the American public will see through it.”

To push its ideas into legislation CAP hascreated the Center for American ProgressAction Fund. As a legally separate 501(c)(4)lobbying group, the Fund can undertake agreater number of grassroots and legislativelobbying activities than the Center. TheCenter’s 2005 tax form shows that it trans-ferred $162,500 to the Action Fund for lobby-ing activities (and $953,976 to the ActionFund for educational activities). The ActionFund had 2005 revenue of $1.8 million. (For asnaphot of the Fund’s website, see graphicon page 7.)

* The Action Fund sponsors a “Kick the OilHabit” campaign led by actor-environmen-talist Robert Redford.

* The Fund’s “Campus Progress” program,two years old in January, is meant tostrengthen liberal political activism on cam-pus—as if that were a big problem. It sup-ports campus newspapers at more than 50

Photo Gallery: Three of theCenter’s heavy hitters.

Top: CAP Fellow Lawrence KorbCenter: commentator Bill PressBottom: analyst Morton Halperin

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6 May 2007OT

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colleges and universities; runs a speakers’bureau for campus lectures, debates, filmscreenings, and training workshops; con-ducts national issue campaigns to reinforcestudent issue campaigns; and sponsorsCampusProgress.org, a daily web magazine(estimated readership: 1.8 million) that inter-views political celebrities such as Sen. BarackObama (D-Illinois), White House reporterHelen Thomas, and Seymour Hersh, the NewYorker magazine writer.

*In March 2007, the Action Fund sponsoreda “Presidential Forum” on health care in LasVegas in which—as a sign of the clout theCenter and its advocacy arm packs—sevenof the eight announced Democratic presi-dential candidates participated.

* Most interesting of all is the Action Fund’sannual National Student Conference. Someliken the conference to the annual Conserva-tive Political Action Conference (CPAC) as avital staging ground for campus politicalactivists. However, far-left activists worrythat the Conference could channel radicalstudent energies into a more centrist politics

and serve merely as a prop to support ambi-tious politicians.

“For the first time ever, campus progressivesconvened, conversed and organized at theirown national conference—something right-wing groups have done annually since the1970s,” wrote Sam Graham-Felsen, a writerfor The Nation magazine soon after the firstconference in Washington D.C. in July 2005(at which the guest of honor was Bill Clinton).“The conference left students from YoungDemocrats to radical activists, energized andteeming with hope. Almost everyone I spokewith left the conference believing that a real,thriving, and broad-based progressive stu-dent movement was overdue, necessary andmost importantly, possible.”

From Here to Where? In July 2006, the second annual NationalStudent Conference was held in Washingtonand drew more than 1,000 attendees. CPAC,its 34-year-old conservative counterpart, hadits largest-ever session seven months later,with more than 6,000 participants. The differ-ence in numbers is glaring. But evidence ismounting that the left will soon match theright. Its annual national conference couldsoon feature just as many participants, high-profile speakers, and panels and workshopson issues and political action.

Consider CAP’s rapid-response to thefirestorm over the actions of Attorney Gen-eral Alberto Gonzales concerning the firingof eight U.S. Attorneys in March. CAP didnot wait to issue a lengthy legal analysis.Instead, it made it easy for producers and talkshow hosts to have anti-Bush oppositionresearch at their fingertips. For instance, whenGonzales conceded that “mistakes weremade,” CAP blitzed cyberspace with a“Progress Report” entitled “More Than Mis-takes.” The report details what its authorsconsider “an orchestrated effort to fire sev-eral U.S. attorneys, counter to Gonzales’sprevious assertions that the firings were notinstigated by the White House.” Other“Progress Reports” are dotted with provoca-tive bold-faced lead-ins such as “White HouseDirectly Involved” and “The ‘Clinton Did ItToo’ Defense Further Weakened.”

As it approaches its fifth birthday, theCenter is going strong. It now has a staff of120 and its media placements now far exceed

the 300 radio and TV appearances of its firsteight months.

The obvious question facing the Center is:What about the elections of 2008 and be-yond? If a Democrat wins, will CAP becomethe type of clearinghouse for White Housestaff and administration appointments thatthe Heritage Foundation was for RonaldReagan in 1980? It’s worth noting that bothSenators Barack Obama and Hillary Clintonhave ties to CAP. Obama was a featuredspeaker at the second annual National Stu-dent Conference in 2006. Senator Clinton,according to Podesta, has “been helpful,she’s talked to people about what we’redoing.”

“But,” he quickly added in response tointerviewer Juan Williams, “we’re beholdento no individual politician.”

Echoed CAP spokeswoman Leger: “Obvi-ously we have people here who worked in theClinton White House and are supporters ofdifferent candidates [for president]. But weare a non-partisan think tank that is pushingprogressive ideas and we welcome supportfrom Republicans and Democrats.” She notedthat Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) deliv-ered the keynote address at a Center forum onagriculture and that moderate RepublicanRepresentatives Chris Shays (R-Connecti-cut) and Michael Castle (R-Delaware) havealso participated in Center events. “We willhost other events with other Republicans,”she added.

In laying out his vision of the Center, Podestahas proclaimed that it will be a long-termproject, “to modernize the [progressive]movement, marry it to policies that work, andsell it all over again.” An argument can bemade that the Center has already modernizedthe movement by showing how to effectivelypackage liberal ideas.

One thing is clear: in a short time the Centerfor American Progress has cut a wide swathin liberal policy and earned the ultimate Wash-ington encomium: a player. All signs nowpoint to it being a player that is listened to fora long time.

John Gizzi is the political editor for HumanEvents , a weekly Washington news journal.

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“Contractopoly,” on CAP’s website, mocks President Bush’s Iraq policy.

The website of CAP’s lobbying arm, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, as of April 12, 2007

From the websites of the Center for American Progress

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BrieflyNotedJames Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has complained that the Bushadministration is preventing him from speaking to the media because he believes global warming could becatastrophic. But he admitted giving 1,400 interviews to the media on the taxpayer’s dime. Hansen, whoseadvocacy work was examined in Organization Trends (June 2006), told the House Oversight and GovernmentReform Committee March 19 that he has no regrets. “For the sake of the taxpayers, they should be availed ofmy expertise,” Hansen said. He also refused to distance himself from his previous statement that the WhiteHouse was a “propaganda office,” and that “it seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than theUnited States.” In 2001 Hansen received a $250,000 Heinz Foundation award from Teresa Heinz Kerry.

The antiwar feminist group Code Pink has been hounding Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at nearly everypresidential campaign event she attends. Recently it angered officials of the International Brotherhood ofElectrical Workers meeting Clinton at a Washington hotel. Spokeswoman Gael Murphy said the group willcontinue trailing Clinton until she sponsors legislation to withdraw U.S. soldiers from Iraq. Code Pink, whosemost famous public face is Cindy Sheehan, was profiled in Organization Trends (December 2006).

Lending money to racial minorities violates their civil rights, says the National Council of La Raza (“TheRace,” in Spanish). In coalition with other race-based pressure groups, it is demanding that subprime mortgagelenders slap a six-month moratorium on foreclosures, arguing they should have known better than to lendmoney to people with bad credit, many of whom are visible minorities. “We are calling on them to match fami-lies to the sustainable loans that they should have gotten in the first place,” said Janet Murguia, president of LaRaza. She charges racism because 2005 data shows subprime loans with high interest rates comprise morethan 50% of all mortgages taken out by African-American borrowers and 40% of Latino borrowers, compared to19% of white borrowers. A wave of foreclosures stemming from “reckless and unaffordable loans” will hit thenation soon, the coalition predicted, and lenders, real estate agents, and investors who bought up subprimeloans could be sued using a federal law forbidding housing discrimination.

Americans are lucky to be filing their 1040s, according to the pro-tax group United for a Fair Economy. In fact,April 15 should be called “Tax Pride Day,” said Karen Kraut, coordinator of the Boston-based nonprofit’s TaxFairness Organizing Collaborative. “In the face of all the greed and laying up of treasure going on all around usin our consumerist society, let’s celebrate those who want a good government that provides all citizens withopportunity and essential services,” Kraut said.

The recent emergency war supplemental appropriations bill debated in the U.S. Senate was greased heavilywith pork and items most Americans wouldn’t consider emergencies. Included was $31 million for the MilkIncome Loss Contract program, $24 million for sugar beets, $425 million for education grants for rural areas,$13 million for mine safety technology research, and another $13 million for the Ewe Lamb Replacement andRetention program.

Burger King is the latest mega-corporation caving in to pressure from animal rights radicals. The companyhas agreed to begin purchasing eggs and pork from companies that do not keep their animals in crates andcages, and will favor suppliers that use more humane methods of slaughtering livestock, the New York Timesreported. Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, said the company’s policychange is “an important trigger for reform throughout the entire industry.”

Clint Bolick has stepped down as president of the Alliance for School Choice in order to return to publicinterest litigation. Bolick will launch a new Center for Constitutional Litigation at the Phoenix, Arizona-basedGoldwater Institute.