cover image: An Uphill Battle - Think Tanks, Donald Trump, and the War of Ideas

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An Uphill Battle - Think Tanks, Donald Trump, and the War of Ideas

23 Sep 2020

Supportive of President Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the CEI represents the kind of think tank that helped make some of Trump’s more controversial policies palatable to segments of the American electorate. [...] More broadly, it did not account for the permutability of the political environment and the possibility of a decline in the currency of adherence to expert advice in constructing the legitimacy of presidents. [...] The final section will reflect on some of the many lessons to be drawn from the involvement of think tanks in presidential campaigns and transitions: among other things, why think tanks may find it difficult to resist the temptation to enter the political arena in such a highly visible way and some of the potential repercussions of their engagement. [...] The purpose of the meeting was to allow the governor of Texas to get acquainted with some of the nation’s leading conservative policy experts. [...] As we will discuss below, a handful of DC-based think tanks came out in support of the president’s position on the travel ban, his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, and his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court.
Pages
18
Published in
Canada