The establishment of well-funded think tanks - that generate long-term strategic initiatives, policy positions, propagate issue frames, and do much of the work of legitimizing the ideas of a political party - is a game at which the Republicans have been better than the Democrats over the last 40 years.
Progressives of all stripes, currently joined in the passionate rejection of almost everything George W. Bush has done for the last 4 years, will not have that galvanizing influence once he's sent back to Crawford next Tuesday. Nevertheless, it is imperative that we capture the passion and momentum we now enjoy and save some of it for the long haul towards the world that we want to inhabit, and want to pass onto our children, in years to come.
full proposal after the break
I hope that the Kerry Edwards administration works quickly to heal some of the divisions that polarize the country, and to peel off the more reasonable Republicans from the wingnuts who are going to oppose us no matter what we do by governing for ALL of the people rather than just those of us who voted for them. Kerry and Edwards HAVE to devote their energy and attention to short-term issues - because they have been handed a world, a country, and a citizenry in almost complete chaos.
Thus, it is up to us - those that can see the future, those that are willing to work for a future ruled not by our fears or our vindictiveness, but by the confidence that this country, emerging out of bitter conflict, must move forward in a way that embraces the better angels of our nature - to do the long-term thinking and acting that Kerry and Edwards cannot possibly attend to for at least the next 12 months.
We need to establish progressive and pragmatic Think Tanks to compete (as clearly articulated in Lacoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant) with the right wing Think Tanks that helped spawn the current crop of sociopathic neocons, the Gingrich revolution 10 years ago, and numerous other challenges to any sort of intelligent, thoughtful, inclusive, compassionate leadership.
Think Tanks take money. Democrats have money, but tend, being compassionate, to spend it attending to all the immediate needs of the poor and downtrodden, rather than to the slow and steady creation of a long-term progressive intellectual architecture. This is where the DailyKos community comes to the rescue. We have the technology. We have the passion, and we don't need nearly as much money to do a Think Tank as the Republicans do.
A Republican Think Tank is a coat and tie office at a prestigious address, with expensive conference rooms, reasonably high salaries, expense accounts, etc. Whatever their cost of doing business - dollars spent per significant idea, position paper, or strategic initiative - is, it is orders of magnitude higher than what I have in mind - the DailyKos Virtual Think Tank.
We have, for the last few months, enjoyed the privilege of tapping into the best thinking of the entire DailyKos community for free - with startlingly good diaries (KidOakland's recent analysis of the new Eminem video, for instance, or several incredibly thoughtful expositions of really complex poll-number analysis) often arriving 5 or 10 a day. Once the election is over, obviously, the traffic will subside substantially, but these last few months have already demonstrated, in the easily searched diaries, who the progressive experts are on every politically relevant topic you could imagine, so we don't need to worry about a post election traffic slowdown.
The Virtual Think Tank works like a normal think tank - you bring together experts, conduct research, and articulate the best thinking on topics of political relevance that serve the interests of whomever the sponsors are or the ideology of the institution. The Virtual Think Tank, however, is cheaper, faster, and better. Cheaper because all you need is a few full-time employees to coordinate everything, and no need for the fancy office as everything is done online. Faster because there are more of us who can share the research burden on any given project (a political research equivalent, as it were, of the SETI@Home effort), so that conclusions can start being drafted a week after the questions are first asked. Better because there are more experts to choose from than a brick-and-mortar Think Tank could possibly access, and because the research we do en masse is inherently quadruple-or-more-checked for accuracy and relevance.
Here's what I have in mind:
Two directors - both politically savvy, both big-picture-seeing, one up and coming mover-and-shaker (Kos, you interested?), one established (James Carville or equivalent). My guess is that the up-and-coming guy is going to do most of the directorial work, and the established guy, as part-time figurehead, is going to do more of the hand-shaking and speech making, but both contribute importantly to determining what topics get investigated, and how to disseminate the results. - cost: $250K salary/benefits combined.
One full time administrator with enough funding to offer $200 for a full day's research, $1,000 for a week-long major report, or even $5,000 for a substantial group effort. This person spends most of his or her day posting the research needs, making assignments from amongst the hundreds of clearly capable dailyKos contributors available, communicating with everyone about progress, and collecting the submissions. Cost - administrator salary/benefits $70K, research budget commensurate with the number of topics addressed and the number of published articles or strategy reviews desired - but whatever that budget is, the bang for the buck will be unprecedented.
One full-time writer/assembler/publisher - a great wordsmith, wide-ranging thinker, and someone who can shape whatever we produce into really great, compelling documents of appropriate size and scope (a young Aaron Sorkin would be great at this). Cost - salary/benefits 80K. (if you need a candidate, I've got a resume ready)
So - what we have here is a proposal for a progressive frames, ideas, and strategy assembly line - which for $400K a year and research expenses a tenth of what the republican think tanks probably spend, manages to determine, articulate, publish, and spread an entire progressive political agenda, and back it up with why it is better for everybody.
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Lincoln, faced with the challenge of reuniting a divided country, offered the compelling vision of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I propose that this virtual think tank is how we're going to get that kind of government, how we're going to keep it, and how we're going to prove that is more than just a good idea.