NYT Mag: Notion Building (Podesta forming Liberal think tank)

[kskiska]

Exiled from power, the stalwarts of the Democratic Party's Washington establishment plot their return at dinner parties in the capital's tonier neighborhoods. On a recent evening, I attended one of these meetings in a spacious living room in suburban Maryland, where about 50 former ambassadors and administration officials, mostly from the Clinton era, have been gathering regularly to grill the party's presidential candidates. I was invited to attend on the condition that I not identify the host, the guests or the precise location.

The featured speaker this time was not a candidate for office or even a politician. It was John Podesta, who was Bill Clinton's last White House chief of staff and who is considered one of the party's sharpest and toughest operatives. Podesta is a 54-year-old marathon runner with an intense, angular face that seems to suggest he is always calculating something you would never be able to grasp. He is also the leader and architect of a new liberal think tank in Washington known as the Center for American Progress. His goal is to build an organization to rethink the very idea of liberalism, a reproduction in mirror image of the conservative think tanks that have dominated the country's political dialogue for a generation.

Many such left-leaning ventures have been tried over the years and have failed to wield much influence, but Podesta's effort seems different, not only because of his considerable personal stature within the party but also because rage at the Bush administration has galvanized Democrats.

''The rise of the machinery of ideas on the right has been impressive,'' Podesta told the gathering, to nods of assent. ''People have noticed it, and we have talked about it. But we haven't really found the vehicles to compete with what's coming at us.''

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http://nytimes.com/2003/10/12/magazine/12PODESTA.html