Dear Will,
You used to be the hottest shit around.
As head of the Progressive Policy Institute, you helped flesh out the Third Way with innovative policy ideas that defined the Clinton era.
Yet you became disheartened when Dick Morris changed the meaning of the term from "liberal goals by conservative means" into, in your words, "nothing more than a shallow political calculation."
With Clinton and the DLC now decidedly out of power, your influence is at an ebb.
Your think tank still puts out lots of great ideas, but hardly anyone is listening anymore. A Google news search for "Progressive Policy Institute" yields a paltry 130 hits, but "Center for American Progress" calls up 1,160 references, and "New America Foundation" is good for 1,990.
Even though their policy arms are quite thin, it's clear that CAP and NAF are the new hotness, and PPI is old and busted.
It's time to prove that PPI can innovate once again.
In today's frenzied media environment, journalists and idea-watchers are bombarded with information at a pace that makes it almost impossible for anyone to keep up. Yet on the web, ideas and stories (call them memes, if you aren't sick of the term yet) operate like viruses--they seem to spread exponentially through the uncoordinated actions of a decentralized network of players, academics, policy wonks, journalists, and political junkies. The maturation of XML is changing the rules of opinion-making forever.
In this new environment, to ensure that your ideas become viruses you have to enter the fray--relentlessly so.
It's time to enter the blogosphere, Will.
P2P or perish.
Best,
praktike