Think Tank's Leader Charts A New Course

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) with John D. Podesta, chief executive of the Center for American Progress, at a news conference earlier this month. Feinstein has adopted the center's proposal for troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2007. (By Mark Wilson -- Getty Images)

The center traces its birth to Soros, who has financed a number of anti-Bush projects and wanted to start an institute in Washington to counter conservative ideas. Discussions in 2002 with Morton H. Halperin, who heads the Washington office of Soros's Open Society Institute, brought in Podesta.

A wiry, Georgetown-trained lawyer with a sharp mind and equally sharp tongue, Podesta has worked in government and politics in Washington for three decades and seemingly knows everyone. He is one of the few people who still keeps an actual Rolodex on his desk; during a recent visit, it was open to a Newsweek reporter.

Those connections made him the right man for Soros, who has committed $3 million over three years. The Sandlers, who head Golden West Financial Corp., saw a Podesta memo and joined up, becoming the center's biggest benefactors. A $10 million-a-year bankroll instantly vaulted it past most think tanks, and Podesta enlisted many fellow Clinton veterans, such as Robert O. Boorstin, P.J. Crowley, Maria Echaveste, Jennifer Palmieri, Gene Sperling and Todd Stern. It has grown to a $16 million-a-year, 100-employee organization.

Podesta's goal was to create a Heritage Foundation for the left. Founded in 1973, Heritage revolutionized the think-tank world by boiling down policy books into short backgrounders, "something a congressman or staffer could read in a half-hour on the way to the airport," said Lee Edwards, a Heritage fellow who wrote a book on the foundation's history.

Podesta, 56, is adapting that concept for the 21st century. Unlike other think tanks, the center devotes 40 percent of its budget to communications. It has its own blog, television booker and a campus affiliate that sponsors publications, speeches and a national tour with the bands Foo Fighters and Weezer.

"This is a new kind of model," Edwards said. "This brings new meaning to the term 'advocacy think tank.' It's gone where no think tank has gone before."

Edwards sees a distinction between Podesta's center and Heritage, which has grown into a $35 million-a-year, 200-person outfit. "They should pay as much attention to a philosophy and ideas as they do to process," he said. "We're not Republicans, we are conservatives, therefore that frees us to criticize Republicans when they go wrong. The problem for Mr. Podesta is: Can he say, 'we are liberal' -- or 'progressive' -- thereby freeing them to build their organization upon a set of ideas, upon a set of principles?"

The center seems less interested in philosophy than opposition research. "They're part think tank, part message operation," said Bruce Reed, another former Clinton aide and president of the Democratic Leadership Council. Although the council has its own, more centrist think tank, Reed welcomes the new arrival: "The more the merrier. John has been able to put a lot of the party's talent on the case, which is what the party needs."