Savage on CAP

Charlie Savage, fresh from investigated the abuses of power at the heart of the Bush administration, takes a gander at John Podesta and the Center for American Progress. This isn’t the main point of the piece, but I did want to emphasize one thing:

With Democrats back in control of the executive branch, the question now, Professor McGann said, is whether the center will keep going. If its policy experts all leave for government jobs, he said, it could collapse as quickly as it rose.

Mr. Podesta, for one, plans to stay. On Wednesday, when he was named to the transition team, he sent an e-mail message to the center’s staff pledging that “I will not be joining the new administration and will return to American Progress after the transition ends.”

We could all be killed in a meteor strike next week but, really, everyone has every intention of the Center continuing to exist. The Heritage Foundation didn’t close its doors when Ronald Reagan came into office. If anything, it grew in size and influence as people realized that this whole conservative movement thing was kind of a big deal. Politicians being in office who are sympathetic to progressive ideas doesn’t obviate the need for politically engaged policy analysis and communication. Indeed, in a lot of ways it makes it more important for someone to be doing work that’s a bit detached from the day-to-day dictates of political expediency.