The Decibel - The think tank writing the ‘blueprint’ for Trump’s second term

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Opponents of Donald Trump have been sounding alarms about Project 2025, a policy plan for a conservative presidency put forward by an influential think tank called the Heritage Foundation. But what exactly is the Heritage Foundation and how much power do they really have?Donald Abelson is a political scientist at McMaster University who has written extensively about think tanks. He joins us to discuss their history and evolving role in American politics.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

So some of you may have heard Donald Trump's running mate deliver remarks at the Republican National Convention. He did not talk about Project 2025, their 900-page blueprint for a second Trump term. That's U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris at a recent rally. He did not talk about it because their plans are extreme and they are divisive. If you've been following the U.S. election, you've probably heard about Project 2025. It's the plan put together by the influential think tank, the Heritage Foundation. It's meant to be a roadmap for a potential Republican government. The plan focuses partly on standard policy like tax reform, but it also details grander ambitions like abolishing the Department of Education, and replacing thousands of civil servants with political appointees.

Donald Trump has publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 and called parts of it extreme, though a video recently resurfaced of him saying the Heritage Foundation will, quote, "...lay the groundwork for his movement." But how much power do think tanks like the Heritage Foundation really have in influencing the government? To answer that question, I'll speak to Don Abelson, a political scientist at McMaster University, who's written extensively about the relationship between think tanks and policymakers. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and policymakers. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Don, thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, it's my pleasure. So Project 2025 was put together by a think tank called the Heritage Foundation, along with input from other conservative groups as well. So what is the Heritage Foundation? Well, the Heritage Foundation is considered among the most influential think tanks in the world, not only in the United States. The Heritage Foundation was set up in 1973 by two former Republican congressional aides, Paul Weyrich and Edwin Fulner. And both, you know, were very eager to establish a new think tank. But what really triggered things was one day in the early 70s, it was during the Nixon administration, Weirich and Fulner were sitting down for breakfast on Capitol Hill, and they were talking about a

report that they had received from another conservative think tank called the American Enterprise Institute. And the issue was whether or called the American Enterprise Institute. And the issue was whether or not the U.S. government should fund the supersonic transport. And it was a very, very controversial issue at the time. And Weirich and Fulner looked at each other and they said, you know what, this is an unbelievable report. I wish more think tanks were producing this kind of work. But the problem was they received the report about four days after the vote had taken place in the U.S. Congress. So you couldn't actually use that information that was in the report then? Absolutely. So what happened was they picked up the phone and they called then president of the American Enterprise Institute, a gentleman by the name

of William Baruti. And they said, Dr. Baruti, we just wanted to tell you, we received the report on the supersonic transport. It was incredible. But we have one question for you. Why did it arrive after the vote took place in Congress? And Baruti's response was, we simply didn't want to influence what was taking place on the floor of the House and the Senate. And at that point, the idea for creating the Heritage Foundation was born. So Fulner and Weirich combined had experience in government, in the academic world, in the business world, and they felt that there was a need to create a think tank that was conservative in orientation that would serve as a counterweight to the more liberal Brookings Institution. But they needed to develop a new model, a model that really transformed the think tank landscape in the United States and around the world.

So, Don, it sounds like what they wanted to do really was actually influence the people making those decisions then, right? Absolutely. And particularly decisions being made on Capitol Hill. So they knew how government worked. They knew how important ideas were and how to work the process. And so they put their heads together. They came up with $250,000 in seed money from Joseph Coors. And that was in 1973, 1974. By 1980, so only five, six years later, the Heritage Foundation had produced a massive blueprint. And I know we're going to be talking about Project 2025. But Project 2025 was really based on the initial report that Heritage produced called Mandate for Leadership. And it was intended to be a conservative blueprint for the incoming Reagan administration. And Reagan referred to it as the Bible of his administration.

It was well over 1,200 pages. It made the Washington Post bestseller list because reporters thought, oh, my goodness, there are hundreds and hundreds of policy recommendations in this report based on conservative principles. We need to pay a lot of attention to what Heritage is doing and the impact that they have. So was this, I guess, the first time that a think tank or some kind of institution like this had such influence in American politics? Because you mentioned the Brookings Institute, but was this substantially different than what came before? It wasn't the first time that think tanks had influence. I mean, the Brookings Institution was the organization responsible for creating a national budget system in the United States. There were other think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations that played a very important role in terms of developing a war and peace studies project. The RAND Corporation

that many people have heard of was extremely influential because its number one patron was the U.S. Department of Defense. It was the RAND Corporation, which was set up in 1946, that began to entertain ideas about mutual assured destruction and thinking about the unthinkable. Could the United States survive a nuclear war? So there were plenty of examples of think tanks having influence. The difference was that Heritage changed the model by which to assert influence. They became what was known as an advocacy think tank. They combined policy research with aggressive marketing and promotion. That's interesting. So how is that different than something like a lobby group here, Don? Yeah, so it is different, although the boundaries have become increasingly blurred.

So it's a question that a lot of people ask. Well, think tanks engage in lobbying. Are they not a lobbyist? There are different rules that govern their behavior. The majority of think tanks in the United States are registered under the Internal Revenue Code as 501 Chapter 3 organizations. They are tax exempt, and most of them are charitable. And this is important because it allows them to go out and raise money. Part of the problem with charitable status, though, particularly for think tanks, is because they're registered as educational research institutions, they are only allowed to engage in a little lobbying, in a little advocacy.

So what think tanks in the United States have done over the last number of years, including heritage, is to create separate organizations. In this case, it's called Heritage Action, which is treated differently by the Internal Revenue Service, which allows them to engage in far more lobbying and political advocacy. And there is still a connection, though, to the original organization? Absolutely. So they're almost like sister organizations. They're joined at the hip. They should be governed differently because they have a different mandate, but there is cross-fertilization. So it is possible and indeed probable that senior level people involved in the Heritage Foundation are also involved in heritage action.

So it allows them to, you know, have their cake and eat it, too. Wow. OK. And you talked about kind of the origin of the Heritage Foundation. What place does it occupy today in American politics? The Heritage Foundation is considered among the top two or three think tanks on the globe. They have a budget well in excess of $100 million U.S. a year. They have well over 200 staff. They have the capacity to engage in projects like Project 2025, which cost in excess of $22 million US, when you look at the budget of the Heritage Foundation alone, it is more than probably all think tanks in Canada combined with plenty left over.

We're going to talk more in depth about Project 2025. But first on, I just want to ask you how this compares to Canada, because it sounds like think tanks have a very specific and ingrained role in American politics now. Is that the same in Canadian politics? Well, of course, we have two very different political systems. The United States has far more points of access for think tanks to become involved. When a new administration comes to office in the United States, pretty much the top layer of the senior bureaucracy is hived off. So overnight, 5,000 to 8,000 relatively senior positions become available. Many of those positions end up being filled by think tank experts. That does not happen in Canada. Far fewer access points, interest groups, think tanks, advocacy coalitions know that in Canada, there's no point trying to

lobby members of parliament because of the parliamentary principle of strong party unity. In the United States, it makes all the difference to target individual members of Congress because they are not bound by party unity. Now, the country has become increasingly toxic and partisan over the last number of years, but it does not dissuade policymakers from reaching out to whomever they would like to speak for information and advice. Generally speaking, that doesn't happen as often in Canada because the parties want to present themselves as being

strong and united. Many other differences as well. There are probably about 100 think tanks in Canada, but none of them come even close to the top tier think tanks in the United States. We'll be back in a minute. Let's talk more specifically about Project 2025. So this is the plan that the Heritage Foundation, along with other groups, has put together for a Republican presidency. They put out a policy document that's over 900 pages, so a massive document here. Don, what are the most significant things in it? Well, the blueprint really is intended to cover off every federal government department and agency,

abolish the Department of Education because it's been seen as being too liberal. Supporting the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. A lot of discussion about trade policy, which Canadians should be concerned about. There's a lot of focus on American foreign policy, criticism to the U.S. State Department, advancing a far more isolationist policy. There are recommendations to move away from any organizations that support the principles of climate change. Politicizing the civil service, something that we wouldn't respond well to in Canada because public servants, regardless of the government they serve, are supposed to remain neutral. In Project 2025, the call is for those who enter government,

they must align themselves with conservative-slash-Republican principles. That's a very dangerous thing. What is it about that that could be dangerous? What's dangerous is that in government, generally you want people who are open-minded, who consider the options at their disposal so they can help best advance the public interest. What you don't want to do is to just hear the same message over and over again. The best leaders are those that have the capacity to listen and the capacity to listen to different points of view.

If you begin to politicize the public service in the United States, you end up with a generation of sycophants whose primary responsibility is to support ideologically and politically, even when they know it's the wrong thing to do, the leader in charge. And so it's dangerous in the sense that it minimizes or reduces the number of policy options that leaders would consider viable. It creates an environment that will become even more toxic because people who are qualified but don't want to go down a certain path for fear that it could be damaging could easily be removed from office. And it really forces on the American electorate a very myopic view of how the United States and the world ought to be governed. So the whole idea of government is to make sure you bring people in who have different voices and who can support their initiative by going to the electorate,

because after all, the United States, at least until now, has been a republic where the power flows directly from the people. The last thing you want to do is to create a government that is not for the people, but one that informs the people about what they ought to do and should be doing. So in that sense, it's quite dangerous. Yeah, what you're kind of talking about is like a kind of a system change there. Not only a system change, think of Orwell, 1984. I mean, people in government who see themselves as cogs in a wheel, people who see themselves as part of an idea factory, but all the conclusions lead to the same place, the introduction of more and more conservative principles. What has Trump said about this document? Like, is this actually what he wants to do if he gets

in office? He hasn't gone into much detail. Again, there's been the occasional reference to it. You know, Trump is not the type of president who's going to sit down and wade through, you know, a 900 page document. He'll get an executive brief. But as Trump said, in the four years he was in office, of course, he knows more than everybody else does. So how open and willing he would be to prioritize this document over others, we'd have to see. And we should say he has been trying to distance himself from this in recent weeks. So he wrote on social media, I know nothing about Project 2025. He has nothing to do with them, referring to the Heritage Foundation. So he is trying to distance himself from the organization these days.

It's not only distancing, it's about him being able to take credit for any changes that are made. And he does not want to be seen as being too closely aligned to any organization that would be seen as a mouthpiece for him and his administration. We just have a few minutes left here, Don, but I want to ask you about the Democratic side, too, because the Democrats have really been raising alarm bells about Project 2025, right? The Biden campaign, when it was the Biden campaign, they called it a plan to strip away freedoms. Vice President Kamala Harris has called it extreme and divisive. I guess, what do you make of that kind of rhetoric on the Democratic side?

Well, they wouldn't see it as rhetoric. They would see it as a cautionary tale of what could happen, you know, should Trump be elected to a second term. So they're raising alarm bells because they're deeply concerned about how this organization could fundamentally encroach upon civil rights and civil liberties? What could happen if you populate a government with people who are anti-vaxxers, people who do not believe that climate change is real, with people who would like to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, for people who would want the United States to focus on issues at home and not engage on the world stage. So there are a lot of really important issues that Democrats are focusing on because their fear is it's not only about Trump, but imagine if the 2024 outcome is Republicans win the Oval Office and down ballot, they end up winning both the House and the Senate and a majority of gubernatorial campaigns.

The left has a lot to concern itself about, and this would very much change the political climate in the United States for years to come. And so I don't see it as much as rhetoric, but really as an opportunity to inform and to educate people about what organizations like the Heritage Foundation do and why they ought to be concerned. Don, this was really fascinating context. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Oh, Manika, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much. That's it for today.

I'm Manika Raman-Wilms. This episode was produced by Kevin Sexton. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy-McLaughlin, and Michal Stein. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor.

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.