Busting big fat liars

It was very receptive -- partly, I think, because there are other institutions being created and people have begun to understand that what the conservatives call the war of ideas doesn't go away after an election is won or lost. That's a critical thing in terms of donor awareness. Again, because of the education others were doing, people were beginning to understand at least what had happened to Gore in 2000.

With your book and with Media Matters, the Center for American Progress and the Air America radio network getting started, is the good news that the progressive media infrastructure is being laid in place, and the bad news that that puts the left where the right was in about 1972 in terms of trying to shape the media debate?

Not exactly, because information moves much, much faster today. Reed Irvine [at Accuracy in Media] used to write letters to the editor, and when they weren't published he would take out little ads. Today, there's a much more sophisticated system in place, so that you can, with proper funding and good research, drive the message much more quickly. But it's true that progressives are behind the curve. In addition, I come out of a conservative culture where there's a lot of patient capital. [Members of the right] invested in the idea of school vouchers for, like, 19 years before they got any political traction on it. So, yes, it is the beginning, but it might not take $1 billion, which [is how much] the right has spent on just 50 think tanks. It's going to take some strategic philanthropy, and it's going to take attention to sustainability.

You mention the proliferation of conservative think tanks. Why did the left mostly ignore the think tank game?

One aspect is that the conservative organizations were themselves organized in response to what they saw as threats from various liberal movements, like the consumer movement and the women's movement. But all those liberal movements were organized as single issue; there really wasn't an effort to bring them together into a broader ideological stance in the way the right has done. What John Podesta is doing [at the Center for American Progress] is a broad-based and multi-issue organization. There are very few of those. Conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation (I worked at Heritage) have very slick marketing savvy, with a high amount of their budgets going to promotion and public relations. I imagine there's an intellectual resistance to doing that [on the left] on the basis of its being gimmickry, or too slick: If our ideas are good, why do we have to sell them?

You write about the conservative cradle-to-grave jobs network that goes along with the think tanks, opinion journals, magazines, radio shows and syndicated columns, and book deals and speaking fees. It sounds pretty cushy.

It is. There's every financial incentive in the world to stay in the conservative movement forever. That [network] allows the conservatives the freedom and the confidence to devote their attention to influencing the mainstream without actually becoming a part of it. It also means that when young people are trained they can stay -- it's not an up-or-out situation. You have very senior people editing magazines who can have families. And, again, it's sustained support. Editors of conservative magazines aren't out trying to raise money. The money is there; the cash reserves are in the bank.

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