page_title: Waterloo (blog post)
section_title: Dismissal from AEI
hierarchical_section_title: Waterloo (blog post) / Reaction / Dismissal from AEI
caption_attribution_description: Arthur Brooks speaking at the 2012 CPAC in Washington, D.C. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere.
context_page_description: "Waterloo" is a post conservative American commentator David Frum made to his blog, FrumForum, on March 21, 2010. Earlier in the day the United States House of Representatives had passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, clearing the way for President Barack Obama to sign the sweeping health care reform into law. Frum took his title from an earlier prediction by South Carolina Senator James DeMint that the ACA would be a "Waterloo" for Obama and his presidency if Republicans could prevent its passage, much as they had done with Bill Clinton's similar efforts, which purportedly led to Republicans taking majorities in both houses of Congress in 1994.
  Frum called the bill's passage a Waterloo for Republicans, none of whom had voted for the bill or contributed to its passage in any way. But while their anger over that, he conceded, might indeed rally their base to retake Congress once again in that fall's elections, he counseled, the circumstances of the defeat did not augur well for the party's long-term prospects.
context_section_description: On the next morning, Frum got a call from AEI president Brooks. Frum was told that his fellowship, which paid him $100,000 a year with little responsibility on his part, was being terminated. He was offered the opportunity to stay on as an unpaid fellow, but declined. On the Wednesday following "Waterloo", Frum posted to his blog his letter accepting that his position at AEI had been terminated, implying that the decision had followed his discussion with Brooks.
  Frum did not blame Brooks himself for his dismissal, rather pressure from AEI's donors. "I think Arthur took no pleasure in this", he told Politico. "I think he would have avoided it if he possibly could, but he couldn't." He reiterated one of the themes of "Waterloo", that the conservative movement's intelligentsia were in thrall to the passions of its base. "[T]he elite isn't leading anymore. It's trapped."
  Bruce Bartlett, a George H.W. Bush administration official who had similarly lost a position at another conservative think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), in 2005 after publishing a book critical of some Bush Administration policies, including the expansion of Medicare to prescription drug coverage, supported Frum's contention that pressure had been brought on AEI to conform to an ideological line. He told readers of his blog that Frum had, a few months prior, asked him if he had noticed any AEI scholars making any public comments about the ACA. When he said he had not, Frum speculated that they had been told to remain silent since "they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do." Bartlett later clarified that while AEI's blog had published comments on the ACA, none of them were written by anyone at the institute who was known to specialize in health care. In their conversation, Frum had merely noted this, suggested that AEI was "punching below its weight" on the issue, and merely speculated that donor pressure might be leading its experts to remain silent in the debate.
  Some other conservatives differed with Frum's assessment of the reasons for his departure. They pointed out that even by Frum's own account, he had rarely even come into his office at AEI in three years, letting mail and packages pile up outside its door. Charles Murray, another AEI fellow, wrote on National Review's group blog, The Corner, at what he believed to be the cost of his friendship with Frum, that Frum's account of the events that led to his departure was "beyond self-serving. It is a calumny against an organization that has treated him not just fairly but generously."
  Murray called Frum's suggestion that donor pressure influenced AEI's employment decisions "fantasy". Frum had been "invisible" at the think tank for the previous three years, making only three posts to the group blog during that time and not participating in any other activities to further AEI's mission of spreading conservative thought. "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." He speculated that Frum's departure had more to do with his increasingly tenuous association with AEI than anything Frum had posted on his own blog.
  On the liberal website Salon, Gabriel Winant found Frum's story found it unlikely that AEI's donor base was composed of the "small-town, middle-class Republicans" such as those whose representatives in Congress had been most vehemently opposed to the ACA. However, he split the difference. Brooks' offer to Frum to continue at the think tank without pay did support Frum's contention that donors had expressed frustration with having to continue funding his increasing divergence from the conservative movement's steadfast opposition to the administration's healthcare reform efforts.
  Other commentators from outside mainstream conservatism, and on the left, were not entirely sympathetic to Frum. The American Conservative, an organ associated with the paleoconservatives whom Frum had denounced in National Review five years earlier, noted the irony of "[Frum] himself, now being pu
caption: Arthur C. Brooks, in 2012
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