Sidebar to “A Believable Politics” by Paul Starr
As young progressives at the Century Institute draft their statement of principles, young conservatives are preparing to battle for theirs. Except the conservatives’ counterpart to the Century Institute — the Leadership Institute — is teaching strategy, not issues. And it has the budget to train a much bigger army.
Former special assistant to President Reagan Morton C. Blackwell founded the Institute in 1979 to “build a new generation of conservative leaders,” and still serves as its director. The Institute has a whopping budget of almost $8 million, which it uses to host numerous training programs, including Candidate Development School, Capitol Hill Staff Training School, and Student Publications School. The Institute takes all comers, and charges only a nominal registration fee. Last year, the Institute trained more than 3,000 students, according to Blackwell.
Though many programs are directed at helping college students battle “political correctness” on campuses, the Institute also trains professionals. For example, it held a training session for several dozen scholars at the socially-conservative Heritage Foundation, teaching them how to express themselves on television.
The schools appear successful at preparing young conservatives for battle. The Institute’s Web site advertises a quote from an attendee of a fundraising workshop, saying, “If money is the mother’s milk of politics, Leadership Institute’s Fundraising School is a Wisconsin Dairy Farm.”
The Institute’s “milk” also flows to numerous projects aimed at building young people’s conservative credentials. It gives start-up grants to students who want to found conservative campus newspapers. The Institute has already helped launch 10 student papers this year, including papers at the University of Michigan, Cornell, and Boston College, according to Blackwell. Though he doesn’t expect all of his student journalist protégés to become professional journalists, he views starting a newspaper as a valuable experience that builds young conservatives’ professional skills.
The Institute also trains students on how to get journalists’ attention. This month, it held a program in Washington to prepare a group of conservative college students who later traveled to Bonn, Germany to protest the Kyoto climate treaty. According to Blackwell, some students wore T-shirts that said, “Stop Global Whining,” while others dressed up in chicken suits and shouted, “The sky is warming! The sky is warming!”
The Institute also seeks to smooth the path for conservative job seekers. It promises to place candidates in positions at the National Rifle Association, the Christian Coalition, the American Conservative Union, and with Governor Jeb Bush, among others. The Institute is well connected. It boasts a “Bi-Partisan Congressional Advisory Board” of 117 members; 113 of them are Republicans.
When asked if he knows of any organizations that run so many training programs for liberals, Blackwell shot back, “the entire higher education system of the United States.”
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