What David Frum Has in Common with Tiger Woods (And Why It Matters)

When the Tiger Woods scandal broke the initial reaction divided people into two groups: those who asked, “Would he get dumped by his wife?” and those who asked “Would he get dumped by his endorsement sponsors?”In Washington, D.C., most people were interested in the latter. Family breakups are sad, of course. But the potential loss of status and money that results from losing a sponsor? Now that’s a tragedy .

The Beltway is obsessed with connections and endorsements—who you are is shaped by who is willing to be associated with you. When a Washington celebrity (or what passes for celebrity in the town) is dropped by a sponsor, it is assumed to portend deep rifts within political factions. A prime example is the case of pundit and former speechwriter David Frum. For the past few days his ouster from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has been the topic du jour of the political media and blogosphere.

When AEI, one of the premier conservative think-tanks in D.C., asked Frum to remain a fellow sans pay, he resigned. Because he had recently written that refusal of Republicans to compromise on health reform marked a generational “Waterloo,” it was assumed by Frum and many of his fellow pundits that had been pushed out by AEI for being critical of the GOP.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time Frum has criticized Republicans and/or conservatives. For the past few years the failing of conservatives (at least the ones that disagree with him) has been one of his chief preoccupations. As he once wrote, “We all have our vices, and yes, I have always had a tendency toward deviationism.” Indeed he does. Frum is the type of “conservative” that believes we should embrace abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and the carbon tax. If AEI had decided that he had deviated a bit too far to represent their mission, they would have been warranted in pushing him out the door.

But it doesn’t appear that AEI was trying to get rid of him, and least not completely. Something more banal, and yet more interesting since it sheds light on Beltway thinking, seems to be going on.

In Politico , Mike Allen wrote :

David Frum told us last night that he believes his axing from his $100,000-a-year “resident scholar” gig at the conservative American Enterprise Institute was related to DONOR PRESSURE [sic] following his viral blog post arguing Republicans had suffered a devastating, generational “Waterloo” in their loss to President Obama on health reform.

[ . . . ]

Frum, who will be 50 in June, had been on the payroll since leaving the Bush White House in 2003. He acknowledges he was very seldom at the office. But he maintains he developed and spread conservative ideas — AEI’s stated goal — with the 300,000 words a year that he writes for his blog, FrumForum.com; his weekly columns for CNN.com, The Week, and the National Post of Canada; his biweekly offerings for TIME and American Public Media’s “Marketplace”; and his three TV and three radio appearances in a typical week. [emphasis added]

If you live in the world outside of D.C.—and the gravitational pull of the Beltway mindset—you might have read those two sections in bold and came to the reasonable conclusion that Frum was asked to resign from a place of employment because he never showed up for work . Most of us would probably assume that if someone were to pay us a six-figure salary that we were not being compensated for writing on our own blog. But the idea that you would be paid not for what you do, but for who you are, is common to only two areas of the country—Hollywood and Washington.

It’s no real surprise then that most of the commentary on the subject never mentioned that Frum wasn’t actually showing up for work. In fact, the only one I’ve seen make that obvious connection is the inestimable Charles Murray , who is himself a fellow at AEI:

I do not have any certain information to convey about David’s departure, except what Arthur Brooks has already said publicly: David resigned. He could have stayed. But I will tell what is common knowledge around AEI: David got a handsome salary but, for the last few years, has been invisible as a member of the institute. Being a scholar at a think tank (or any institution) is not just a matter of acknowledging your affiliation in your books and op-eds. It’s also a matter of blogging at the institute’s blog, not just your own blog (David had a grand total of 3 posts on AEI’s blog in the year since it began), reviewing colleagues’ drafts, reacting to their ideas, contributing chapters to their books, organizing scholarly events, participating on the institute’s panels, attending the institute’s conferences, helping out with fundraising, serving on in-house committees, giving in-house seminars, and mentoring junior staff. Different scholars are engaged in these activities to different degrees. Full disclosure: I’m on the left-hand side of that bell curve (I make the trek from Burkittsville so seldom that I don’t even have an office at AEI). But David was at the left-hand tail. If I had to guess — and that’s what I’m doing, guessing — David’s departure arose from something as simple as this: Management thinks that an employee is not as productive a member of the organization as management thinks he should be. The employee disagrees. They part company.

Murray is an old school kind of guy. He understands the role of think-tank fellow to be that of an employee . Frum is a new media type. He seems to think the role is that of a celebrity endorser and promoter . Rather than being paid to produce an intellectual product, Frum believes he was being paid to be David Frum.

Just as Tiger Woods wore the Nike logo for pay, Frum seems to believe that he was being paid to attach the words “a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute” to his byline. When he was dropped by his endorser for failing to adequately represent their brand, Frum (as well as his defenders and critics) assumed it was because of the unpopular views he expressed. Indeed, the timing of the firing/resignation was most likely motivated by his recent remarks. But it is his failure to understand his role as an employee that appears to be the casus belli for this incident.

Of course, if this were merely about Frum it wouldn’t be worth posting about. But I think that like the Tiger Woods scandal, this incident sheds light on how people think. In particular it reveals the creeping influence of the entertainment-industrial complex model on think-tanks and public policy. Whereas it used to be that the credibility of the institution transferred to the scholar, it appears now that the fellow is expected to be a minor celebrity who lends their fame and notoriety to the organization.

The problem with this approach is that the best scholarly work on public policy is often done by people who are more at home in the research library than they are in a television studio. The ones that have the charisma, experience, and talent to make a name for themselves as celebrity wonks are often those who come up through the ranks of punditry, political journalism, and speechwriting, rather than the PhDs who spent untold hours doing regression analysis on farm subsidies. The result is that think-tanks begin to prize fellows like Frum who are more skilled at marketing—both themselves and their policy positions—than they are in producing new ideas. (When was the last time Frum produced an idea worth implementing?)

Conservatism certainly doesn’t lack for celebrity pundits—we have more than enough of those already. What we need are scholars who are able to weave policy recommendations out of the ancient threads of conservative principles. We need more creators of new ideas, and fewer celebrity wonks who are merely willing to wear an AEI logo on their shirt.