Talk:The Heritage Foundation

Description of "early years"

The early years section of the article says "The Heritage Foundation advocated for pro-business policies, anti-communism, and neoconservatism in its early years, but distinguished itself from the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) by also advocating for the Christian right. But throughout the 1970s, the Heritage Foundation remained small relative to Brookings and AEI." The link is to this book. The description of the book that you can see if you don't have the book doesn't describe the organization in any of those ways. Whether those adjectives could be seen as friendly to the organization and accurate, or the reverse, they come across as loaded one way or the other so I wonder if there's some RS that supports them. Novellasyes (talk) 15:22, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Added here by @Thenightaway:

There are page numbers. What does it say on those pages about The Heritage Foundation? --Hipal (talk) 18:51, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

The relevant pages can be accessed here[1]. It's unclear which parts of those sentences you dispute. If it's the Christian right stuff, page 78 says: "Heritage’s focus on so- called social issues important to the emergent Christian conservative grass roots of the 1970s is particularly noteworthy in that other conservative think tanks like AEI did not focus on such issues at all... Heritage, throughout the 1970s and especially into the 1980s catered to all of these AEI positions but also never neglected Christian conservatism." The other pages in the ref should substantiate the other parts. Thenightaway (talk) 19:21, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I had missed this link and thanks for pointing that out. When I click on it, just to make sure I'm understanding what I am seeing there, what I'm seeing are seven one-paragraph-each summaries of the introduction, five chapters, and the book's conclusion. Is that what we are supposed to be looking at to substantiate the way it is summarized on our article? Novellasyes (talk) 21:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Are you saying that you're unable to access the actual pages cited? --Hipal (talk) 22:02, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That is what I'm saying. I might be doing it wrong but when I click on that link, what I am seeing are paragraphs like this, which is represented as a summary of Chapter 1 of the book: "Before turning to the question of the post–World War II conservative think tank and its usefulness as an institutional basis for conservative organizing, the pre–World War II think tank must be considered. Although the term “think tank” did not come into wide circulation until the 1960s, there most certainly existed such structures before World War II. Before the war, the Brookings Institution, still the largest think tank in existence, provided the preeminent institutional model. While in the postwar period, especially by the late 1960s and early 1970s, Brookings came to occupy a position as the bête noire of..." There are statements on that link that if I had JSTOR access, I'd be able to see the actual full text. But I don't have JSTOR access. Novellasyes (talk) 22:22, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

So you are withdrawing your initial statement that the book "doesn't describe the organization in any of those ways"? --Hipal (talk) 22:31, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

No, because the text summaries that I can see on this link don't talk about Heritage as anti-communist or neo-conservative. They also don't describe it as being pro-business (the text summaries do describe it as advocating for supply side economics). I have no idea whether the actual lengthy text of the chapters from this book do characterize Heritage as anti-communist and neoconservative (and pro business) because I don't have access to that material. Novellasyes (talk) 12:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

If you can't verify it yourself, don't say that there is a problem. Just say you can't access it and would like verification. That's been done for one example. That's good enough for me, assuming good faith that the same level of care was made to all content in the edit under question. --Hipal (talk) 03:32, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for engaging on this. I'm interested enough in whether this description of the early years quite captures the gist that I've ordered the book. What jumped out at me initially as surprising is the idea that Heritage would have been described as neo-conservative. Novellasyes (talk) 12:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Having gotten the book, I think it would be right to remove "neo-conservative" as a descriptor of the early Heritage. Much of the book compares-and-contrasts the early Heritage to the American Enterprise Institute as it was then. The term neo-conservatism shows up in the index as occurring on pages 66, 82-83, 95, 176, and 177-80. On those pages, it is AEI (not Heritage) that is characterized as being neo-conservative. Page 66: "Baroody [of AEI]...promoted a new political identity with AEI as its primary institutional promoter. At this point in time, in 1973, it is probably best to define this identity as 'sensible conservatism'--although as will be seen, it would take on the moniker 'neoconservatism' later on in the 1970s." Page 82: "In this light, it was around 1975-76 that AEI became a key marketer of the identity 'neoconservative'". More like that on page 83, all about AEI. Page 95: "Second, AEI's cultivation of the 'neoconservative' identity led many conservatives to the suspicion that AEI cared little about the grassroots conservative movement." More like this about AEI (not Heritage) on pp. 177-80. I looked on all the pages cited in the original footnote and find none of them using the word 'neoconservative' to describe Heritage, but may have missed it. Interestingly, the first policy topic the nascent Heritage got involved with was the Supersonic transport. And, the early stirrings of what became Heritage was because, according to this book, founders Feulner and Weyrich were aggravated that AEI didn't even put out a policy paper in that battle until after the congressional vote on the matter, because they didn't want to be seen as political in that sense. Feulner/Weyrich said to their early donors that they would be "designed to influence the policy debate as it was occurring in Congress--before decisions were made.Novellasyes (talk) 22:24, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not all the way through the book but it has not so far used the phrase "Christian right" to describe what Heritage was up to in the early years. It uses phrases like "popular conservatism", grassroots conservatives, Christian conservatism and cultural issues that grassroots conservatives had an affinity for. Looking at Christian right#history, especially starting in the third paragraph, that seems to have emerged more as a specific type of identity in the 80s. Could we change "by also advocating for the Christian right" to "by also advocating for cultural issues that were important to grassroots Christian conservatives"? FWIW, what Jason Stahl seems to primarily find of interest is that Heritage was trying to loop in or talk to the grassroots at all (as opposed to just Washington insiders) -- he thinks it was a big tactical innovation in the think tank industry. Novellasyes (talk) 14:38, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Recent Revert

A recent edit of mine was reverted (not Line 82 and 80, those edits were not mine). The reasoning for the revert was "rv PROMO, SOAP." I do not believe the words of the current President of Heritage about what he says the mission of Heritage is PROMO or SOAP (especially when they come from an interview he did with The New York Times Magazine). If this was referring to the edit in the middle of the page that was unrelated to my addition, then this is understandable. Also, if the issue with the edit was including some content in the lead, then I would ask that the information in the body of the page be kept as is. BootsED (talk) 20:16, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

It's an interview. Without independent coverage, it's just him promoting his organization, using the interview as a soapbox. --Hipal (talk) 20:40, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Bush administration

It currently says "According to a 2004 International Security study, the Heritage Foundation confused public debate by challenging widespread opposition to the Iraq War by international relations scholars and experts by contradicting them "with experts of apparently equal authority... this undermined the possibility that any criticisms (of the war) might be seen as authoritative or have much persuasive effect." The citation goes here. There's something off about this. The cited publication is not in International Security (journal) but is rather a different Cambridge publication ("Ethics and International Affairs"). The publication that is actually cited doesn't say anything about Heritage causing confusion and doesn't have a sentence in it about "experts of apparently equal authority". etc. Novellasyes (talk) 19:27, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

You've checked both? --Hipal (talk) 03:00, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I tracked down, downloaded, and read [this article which is where the footnote goes. I didn't track down and read a "2004 International Security study", because that's too vague to go on. International Security (journal). They published a lot of articles in 2004. Not at all clear which one this sentence may have intended to allude to. Novellasyes (talk) 13:02, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Added here by @Thenightaway:.

Maybe Thenightaway copied in the wrong reference, because it's identical to the first. --Hipal (talk) 16:56, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

This is the missing source (p. 45-46): https://www.jstor.org/stable/4137546. Thenightaway (talk) 16:58, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to reading https://www.jstor.org/stable/4137546. Novellasyes (talk) 20:56, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

In the meantime, I recommend removing this footnote. About Heritage, that article says this: "The conservative Heritage Foundation, which had since the mid-1990s warned that bin Laden and the Taliban would prove a toxic mix, provided steady and optimistic support to the Bush administration for both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Commentaries such as “Radical Islam vs. Islam” and “U.S. Functions as World's Strongest Defender of Islam” championed the United States as a heroic figure fighting to save not only itself but Islamic civilization as well. The Foundation's unfaltering defense of the practices at Guantánamo Bay further painted the United States as a flawless combatant pitted against an evil embodied by the detainees. In the first days of the Obama administration, Heritage Foundation commentaries suggested the organization's intention to continue treating the war on terror as the ongoing story of a war declared by al-Qaeda against the United States." While those are interesting observations, unless I am missing something, they are not on point with the claim in the sentence to which the article has been appended as a citation. Novellasyes (talk) 21:01, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Having now read the Threat" article that is being used to support the existing write-up in the article to the effect that Heritage scholars "confused public debate by challenging widespread opposition to the Iraq War by international relations scholars and experts by contradicting them 'with experts of apparently equal authority...this undermined the possibility that any criticisms (of the war) might be seen as authoritative or have much persuasive effect.'" I don't think this works, so I advocate removing the claim. It's a (to my eyes) terrific piece of scholarship that's been frequently cited by other scholars. The article starts out by posing a quandary: Mature democracies are supposed to be better at making foreign policy decisions than other regime types. This is supposed to be partly true because in mature democracies, there is or ought to be a marketplace of ideas that allows sifting and winnowing to occur in order to "weed out unfounded, mendacious, or self-serving foreign policy arguments because their proponents cannot avoid wide-ranging debate in which their reasoning and evidence are subject to public scrutiny". This failed, the article says, with respect to the decision to engage in war with Iraq. Why did it fail? That's what the article analyses in 40-some pages with 164 footnotes. Heritage is mentioned once in the article in a basically throw-away line with no footnotes. The overwhelming burden of the carefully-laid out argument in 99.99% of the article has to do with how the White House (so the article claims) managed to prevent the sifting and winnowing that needed to occur, through four different mechanisms. Subsequent to the publication of this scholarly article, others have been written on the same topic: Why was the threat assessment wrong, wrong, wrong? Reading through them, I didn't see any references to Heritage and any role it did or didn't play (of course I may have missed one). I'd also note that additional scholarship such as Origins of Regime Change: “Ideapolitik” on the Long Road to Baghdad, 1993–2000 contests the thesis of Kaufmann's threat assessment article, and instead claims that "In this essay, I trace the “Ideapolitik” of regime change in the 1990s and show that Bush's post-9/11 rhetoric was firmly embedded in a preexisting foreign policy consensus defining Saddam Hussein as the 'problem 'and his overthrow as its 'solution.' Drawing upon recent research in international relations and public policy, I show how the idea of regime change prevailed in redefining American strategy for Iraq. While the September 11, 2001 attacks had important effects on the Bush administration's willingness to use force, the basic idea that ousting Saddam Hussein would solve the Iraq problem was already embedded in elite discourse." (In other words, this existing elite framework was the problem, not the White House [or way far down the line of importance, the Heritage Foundation] bollixing up information). But other than all this, at the end of the day, the Kaufmann article is just one source. Is it even true that Heritage scholars confused the discourse in a way that enabled the war? If it is true, is it a notable fact about Heritage during the Bush administration that they behaved in this way? It doesn't seem notable, and I say that because I don't see this claim being made elsewhere. Novellasyes (talk) 17:35, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

"Mature democracies are supposed to be better at making foreign policy decisions than other regime types." And where is the empirical data for that? They have blundered their way into wars just as often as any other regime. Dimadick (talk) 18:45, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Truly. I was so surprised to read that opening claim in the "Threats" article. Novellasyes (talk) 18:42, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Trump administration

This section starts out with these sentences: "In the first year of Donald Trump's candidacy for the presidency, the Heritage Foundation did not embrace his candidacy. "Donald Trump's a clown," then Heritage Action leader Michael Needham said on a Fox News panel in July 2015. Once Trump won, however, the Heritage Foundation's position shifted." If they didn't shift their position until he won, then the prior sentence saying that they did not embrace his candidacy during its first year isn't quite right. To be consistent, it would have to say they (at least according to the next sentence) that they never supported his candidacy. Michael Needham is or was from Heritage Action, which is a legally distinct organization from Heritage so whatever he might have said has no bearing on Heritage's position on Trump during his candidacy or thereafter. And Heritage is a 501c3 non-profit which wouldn't have been legally allowed to take a position on his candidacy one way or the other -- they wouldn't have been able to embrace his candidacy. Novellasyes (talk) 19:36, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I think there have been other cases where Heritage Action and the foundation have been confused. I'm not sure we should treat them as independent, but we need to address all cases where we confuse the two. --Hipal (talk) 03:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

BekkerNumbering I removed from the Trump section that comment about Michael Needham per the above, and you added it back in, with a reference. I don't think anyone doubts that Michael Needham says that. My issue is that he doesn't or didn't at that time anyway, work for the Heritage Foundation. Please discuss. Here's the diff where you added it back in after I had taken it out. Novellasyes (talk) 19:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

He was, according to the reference, not just employed there, but was director of its advocacy arm. BekkerNumbering (talk) 22:43, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

BekkerNumbering By "advocacy arm", do you mean the organization known as "Heritage Action"? I'm fine with a discussion here about whether statements/claims/positions taken by Heritage Action should be chalked up to the Heritage Foundation. But I think it bears some consideration because while Heritage and Heritage Action have a relationship with each other, they are not identical to each other. One of them is a 501c3 (Heritage Foundation) while Heritage Action is a legally separate 501c4. They have different boards and different staff. Nevertheless, they have some relationship. The Heritage Foundation launched Heritage Action, and on its website Heritage Action describes itself as a "sister organization" to the Heritage Foundation. Because there is some degree of distinction, I am not of the mind that sayings of employees of one organization should be ascribed to the other organization. You are writing as if you think it is obvious that sayings of employees of one organization should be ascribed to the other. It's not obvious to me, so I hope you'll provide more of your thinking on that. I'd also note that this magisterial 2018 article in the New York Times about the Heritage Foundation and the Trump campaign and administration does not suggest anything like the degree of enmity between the two that the Heritage Action employee's "clown" remark suggests. Novellasyes (talk) 23:14, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Level of detail straying from that of an encyclopedia article?

Granted, it is difficult to concisely summarize information, especially when it comes from multiple sources, but many sections in this article only cite a couple of references. The result is that highly noteworthy events are being drowned out by minutiae, a POV problem. For example, the "2016 Trump candidacy" section. --Hipal (talk) 17:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)