Who's who.

• Author: Threadgill, Susan
• Position: News Briefs - Brief Article

Democrats are tired of watching right-wing think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation supply the Republican Party with ideas and talent. So a group of Clinton administration exiles--featuring Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright--has been meeting in secret throughout the last year to level the playing field. The venture (which specializes in foreign affairs) was about to launch this fall with a name, web site, and, presumably, some appetizers. Then terrorism made the world unsafe for partisanship. Ringleader Marc Ginsberg, ambassador to Morocco under Clinton, won't say when the christening will occur. "Look, we want to be supportive and not partisan," he says. For now, the group is making due with a "private" web site and a name that Ginsberg refuses to divulge. Word is that the group had settled on "Americans for Forward Engagement" an automotive-sounding moniker ill-suited to an entity seeking to distance itself from dreary think tanks. "That's no longer the name," Ginsberg protests. Will the new one be snappier? "Yes."

Republicans never learn: During the 1996 budget showdown between the Bill Clinton's White House and Newt Gingrich's Congress, Republicans got hammered by vacationing constituents locked out of the beloved Yellowstone Park and the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum during the ensuing government shutdown. That lesson hasn't rubbed off on OMB Director Mitch Daniels, Jr., who has shown remarkable indifference to the needs of Washington politicos. In his quest to clamp down on government spending to pay for tax cuts, Daniels has taken aim at the same sacred cows that forced the Republicans to cave in 1996: the Department of the Interior and the Smithsonian Institution. Over the summer, Daniels quipped that the Interior Department was "the world's largest lawn-care service" and served notice that he wants to privatize U.S. Park Service jobs. More recently, Daniels proposed slashing the Smithsonian's budget, halting renovation of the shuttered American Art Museum and Portrait Gallery, transferring $35 million from Smithsonian research projects to the National Science Foundation, and using $20 million of the Smithsonian's general funds to upgrade security. Already Congress is squawking. Rep. Robert Matsui (D-Calif.), a Smithsonian board member, called the cuts "devastating," and others are sure to follow. After all, the Smithsonian gets 20 million visitors a year--visitors whose D.C. vacations usually involve a...