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Save him. This is the tale of an earnest young fellow Kansan news junky military brat, who blogs at Winds of Change, recruiting himself to AEI. Who answered his call? The dean himself.
...Joe, in an act that can only be described as the act of an absolute saint, decided to pull out all the stops in obtaining other sources for letters of recommendation for me - even going as far as to contact occasional WoC commenter Michael Ledeen to explain the situation to him. With the help of Joe, Robin Burk of USMA West Point, Scott Talkington, one of the CGSC terrorism instructors, and the associate director of the Center for Tactical CounterTerrorism (you meet interesting folks blogging), I soon had my AEI resume complete with some very nice recommendations.
Finally, around mid-April, I received a very cordial phone call from Michael Ledeen.
In all honesty, my first reaction was that was this was some kind of a prank call by several of my peers, who knew about my desire to be an intern at AEI, as well as my high respect for Ledeen and his work. As the realization sunk in that it was Ledeen I was talking to on the phone, I imagine I was acting more than a little stupidly, but he was very kind and very patient to me as he calmly explained that I had indeed been accepted into AEI's internship program for the summer of 2004.
When does his plane land? It may not be too late.
This is one thing AEI and Heritage do really well, and places like Brookings do horribly: cultivate and provide a forum for serious young people who want to get in to the foreign policy discussion in DC, study issues like terrorism, etc. The bureaucracy and credentials one needs to get into a CSIS or Brookings for a program assistant job that pays as much as Washingtonienne's is fairly considerable. The snob factor is pretty considerable too. And the kid probably wouldn't have the opportunity at a Brookings to work on his own stuff either. Without the credentials, the PhDs and the resume as a former deputy director of the such and such, who is going to listen to him? And let's face it, the forum and events on Iraq, intelligence issues, and foreign policy at AEI are just better than any where else in town. [Although since very recently, they seem to have gone dark on the Iraq issue. A planned event for the 25th never materialized, given current events]. They are rarely boring, as so many staid panels and conferences at other places around town are. Noticed in the recent Wash Post article about young conservatives getting jobs in Iraq by posting their resumes at Heritage -- whatever you have to say about an administration that decided to pick their Iraq staff via such a system -- it's smart of Heritage to provide a vehicle for helping to find young conservatives jobs. Why aren't the more lefty think tanks helping out with something like this?
UPDATE: Matt Yglesias agrees, and the comments he's elicited are interesting too.
UPDATE II: A serious proposal: Michael Ledeen should put Dan Darling to work creating an AEI blog on foreign policy and national security. I've been dying to see such a thing. Why not? Faster, Iran, and all that?