uly 1996
EXECUTIVE MEMO
In Defense of Government
bout two years ago, Richard Striner, a historian at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., realized he'd heard a lot about the Washington-based Cato Institute but didn't care much for the think tank's libertarian rhetoric, which he thought marginalized government. So he set out to build a competitor from scratch.
"I decided that if they were going to ransack classical antiquity for their heroes, other people can do that too," Striner says. He settled upon another icon, from 4th century B.C. Athens: Pericles. As Striner saw it, Pericles led a proto-democratic government, unified a divided populace and commissioned major public works projects, most notably the Parthenon. His purpose, Striner argues, was not only to build lasting monuments but to relieve Athenian unemployment.
Thus was born the idea for the Pericles Institute, whose mission is to articulate the kinds of problems that government should be solving, as well as those to be avoided. The institute's 18-member board-consisting mostly of academics, journalists, corporate executives and attorneys-is trying to raise enough money to establish a proper think tank. The institute is self-consciously bipartisan; Striner has been an independent for three decades.
"In the 1950s, the best and brightest went into the government," notes Dorn C. McGrath Jr., a Pericles board member who directs the George Washington University Institute for Urban Development Research. "That's not so anymore. It's a sea change."
Striner, 45, acknowledges the difficulty of rolling back today's widespread anti-government attitudes. "At the moment," he said, "we're trying to offer unconventional wisdom. It's unfashionable to suggest that the government can play an inspiring role in American life and provide services that no one else can provide. But somebody has to."
NEXT STORY: Up in the Air