The Baroody bunch

THE BAROODY BUNCH

FINANCIAL mismanagement may well have triggered William Baroody Jr.'s sudden departure from AEI [see "Letter from Washington,' Aug. 1], but some AEI insiders insist bad debts aren't the whole story. They say that under Baroody Jr.'s tutelage, AEI ran out of conservative steam and intellectual esteem. "AEI lost its sense of mission,' said one former AEI insider. "Their new mission was power brokerage without a specific philosophy.' Burton Pines of the Heritage Foundation notes, "Quality scholarship is not enough. You must have a focus. You've gotta know what game you're playing and what side you're on; otherwise it might as well be a university or public television.'

"If managed competently, Baroody's move toward the center might have worked,' says a former AEI staffer. "Instead, Baroody took delight in the trappings of power, acquiring Gerald Ford as a fellow while letting go of excellent scholars such as Walter Berns and Mark Falcoff.' AEI's ludicrous courting of Gerald Ford was both a cause and a sign of the foundation's decline. "AEI had become to thinktanks what Ford was to the Presidency. Gerald Ford's a nice guy, but ho-hum,' comments one conservative intellectual. "Big-name people like Jerry Ford have their own agenda. And it's not necessarily going to be conservative.'

Washington cognoscenti cite the abandonment of Regulation magazine as one of the most striking examples of what was wrong with AEI. Regulation was particularly well received in the intellectual community (Supreme Court Justice-designate Antonin Scalia once served as its editor-in-chief). From 1977 to 1981, while lecturing on public policy at Harvard University, Christopher Demuth used Regulation in his classes. Demuth considered Regulation the most important magazine AEI put out. In fact, Demuth liked Regulation so much, he bought the company. That is, when the staff evaporated and the magazine was dropped, Demuth made an arrangement with AEI to acquire the magazine. Look for an issue of the new, independent Regulation (which aims to be just like the old Regulation) to be out this month.

Back at AEI (now headed by the respected conservative Paul McCracken), staffers dispute charges the AEI drifted to the left, insisting AEI had no problems that a whole lot of money couldn't cure. They refuse to comment publicly on the past and profess only optimism about AEI's future.

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