Im-Politic: The Washington Post’s Self-Serving Defense of Think Tanks

I guess no one should be surprised to see the Washington Post editorial board come out with a ringing defense of American think tanks.  Sure, the paper has gone through major editorial changes over the last year and a half –  that have indeed – as its owner, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos intended – made its opinion pages less predictably pro-mainstream Democratic party.  And that’s been welcome.  

But the Post overall remains a central pillar of a cozy, arrogant Washington, D.C.-centric Swamp whose top priority is self-preservation.  More specifically, the objective is ensuring that the nation’s “uniparty” – its large, thoroughly bipartisan, rigidly establishmentarian, and socially incestuous class of political, permanent government, once-Mainstream Media, and lobbying movers, shakers, hired guns, and hangers on – can keep rewarding its members with influence, plum positions, and (above all), lucrative and virtually uninterrupted income streams.

Hence the paper’s description today of think tanks as playing “an unsung role in holding governments accountable at all levels. They incubate ideas and employ people, especially from whichever party is out of power, who will staff future White Houses.”  

Without them, the Post continues, “governments would face less scrutiny of whether their policies actually work….”

But aside from actually endorsing (“employing folks from the out party”) how think tanks help Swamp members scratch each others’ backs and preserve their status and lifestyles, the editorial completely overlooks how these institutions subvert democracy by what I’ve called “idea laundering.”

As I’ve described it, this practice entails “special interests (like corporations) using think tanks to issue materials that push the particular agendas of these funders while garbing them in quasi-academic raiment to create the impressions of objectivity and intellectual respectability.”   

Of course, think tank funders have every legal right to propagate their ideas.  And often they present the valuable perspectives of important stakeholders in how various issues are handled.  But they also have a corresponding obligation (not legal, but vital nonetheless in order to ensure informed public policy debates), to come clean about their tactics.  

And not only do their think tank flacks do a poor job on the transparency front.  They’re aided by journalists, including at the Post, who routinely report their findings without mentioning who’s signing the checks (as I’ve described in detail, e.g.,  here and here).

I agree with the main point of this Post editorial:  As long as they’re engaged in Constitutionally protected speech, think tanks shouldn’t be facing the threat of prosecution from the Trump administration, or any government at any level.  (Whether highly partisan tanks deserve their tax-exempt status – especially when they maintain close institutional and even financial links  with political parties – is another matter.)

But if the Post was really interested in preventing democracy from “dying in darkness” (its motto), it would spend less time romanticizing think tanks and more holding them to account.