As Brookings drains brains to administration, hiring rumors

At a swearing-in ceremony in the State Department’s seventh-floor Treaty Room last month, foreign-policy hands from the Brookings Institution were there in force. Newly confirmed Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon, Brookings president and former ambassador to Russia Strobe Talbott, and the vice president and director of Brookings’ foreign-policy program, Carlos Pascual, who is anticipated to be nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico, witnessed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lead the swearing in of fellow Brookings-ite Ivo Daalder as the new U.S. ambassador to NATO. After the formal ceremony, the group mingled with Clinton, State Department Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Esther Brimmer, among other colleagues and friends.

Brookings alum and Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg was traveling in Greece and Macedonia. The anticipated nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Poland Lee Feinstein, a Brookings visiting fellow who served as deputy director of policy planning during the Clinton administration, was also traveling. Former Brookings senior fellow Daniel Benjamin was confirmed last month as the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism.

All in all, sources from the think tank say, some two dozen people who are or have been affiliated with the think tank have taken or been slotted for jobs in the new administration –including Steve Rattner, a member of the Brookings board who advised Obama on the auto industry, and Steinberg, who left Brookings to become head of the public policy school at the University of Texas in Austin before being nominated to become deputy secretary of state.

Brookings senior fellow Susan Rice, one of the Obama campaign’s chief foreign policy advisors, was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in January. Brookings economist Lael Brainard has been nominated to serve as under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs. Former Brookings senior fellow Jason Furman joined the Obama White House as deputy director of the National Economic Council, way back in January.  Brookings Asia hand Jeffrey Bader serves as the Obama NSC senior director for Asia. In May, former Brookings senior fellow David Sandalow, a former advisor to Al Gore, was confirmed as assistant secretary of energy for policy and international affairs.

The brain drain from Brookings to the Obama administration has presented some hiring and promotion opportunities at the think tank.

Should Pascual indeed get nominated and confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Washington think tank hands tell The Cable that Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, will succeed him to be named vice president and director of Brookings’s Foreign Policy program. (Indyk, who serves as director of Brookings’ Saban Center on Middle East Policy, declined to comment.)

(In the current economic climate, only two of those who have left so far have been replaced by outside hires, a think tank hand notes: Kemal Dervis has replaced Brainard, and Dennis Wilder is expected to replace Bader. Gordon, Daalder, and Sandalow are among those not expected to be immediately replaced. Indyk, would be an internal promotion. Steve Pifer, who has succeeded Benjamin to serve as the acting director of Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe, is also an internal promotion, but he’s not expected to stay on in the role, another Brookings hand said. The official search for a new director of the Center will begin next week.)

Brookings hands have shared in sadder events of late. They joined a few hundred people who filled the bleachers at Maret School this past Saturday, where former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were among those who spoke at a memorial service for Talbott’s wife Brooke Shearer, a former journalist and Hillary Clinton aide who passed away last month after a long battle with cancer.