Daniel Drezner

[Commentary] The past month has made it quite clear that Fox News plays an outsized role in President Donald Trump’s information diet. Compared to 2017, the president has built in more unstructured time to watch television in 2018. And President Trump, like most Republicans, watches and trusts Fox News far more than any other outlet. Just as President Trump has paid more attention to Fox News, the channel has lavished more favorable attention on the president.  Just as the CNN effect is subject to debate, it is worth pointing out the limits of any Fox News effect.

[Commentary] Anybody who works in Washington knows that think tanks play an important role in advising the government on policy. In the foreign policy community, think tanks are widely viewed as the traditional brokers in the marketplace of ideas. But this is changing. Whether based in investment banks like Goldman Sachs, management consultancies like McKinsey or political risk firms like the Eurasia Group, private-sector institutions have started to act like policy knowledge brokers. Consultants have been key advisers to the government for decades, but recent trends have caused their star to rise at the same time that traditional think tanks face new challenges. While for-profit intellectuals make valuable contributions, it would be problematic if they crowded out traditional think tanks.

[Daniel Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University]

[Commentary] I’m not going to sugarcoat this: For policy experts, the next four years of the Trump Administration will be a waking nightmare. This is for two reasons. The first is that President-elect Donald Trump’s team has few if any policy wonks. The second is that this puts the average policy wonk in a no-win situation.

But, what if the Trump Administration turns out to be pretty good at governing? Trump has spent the past year and a half defying most political experts and winning the greatest natural experiment in American political history. What if he and his team prove to be better at governing than wonks expect him to be? What if it turns out that the country is already trending in a very positive direction and even the federal government can’t screw that up? Or what if disruption by inexperienced policy principals is just what the bureaucracy needs?

[Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University]