Think tanks have become extraordinarily important in generating the ideas and the rhetoric that permeate our politics — often for the worse. This poem is a first person account of a typical think tanker's rise to prominence... 

The Think Tank Song

For many long years I felt ineffectual
A misunderstood and ignored intellectual
My theories (though brilliant) were hooted and hissed
By colleagues and others their value dismissed.
But still I did labor to make them more statable
In hopes that one day they’d become more debatable
And those that opposed them for reasons nefarious
Would meet a just fate that was most deleterious.

In the tank, in the tank, in my Beltway think tank
Part campus, part book barn, part nut house, part bank.

It’s true a great thinker on great ideas thrives
But it’s also quite true that we have private lives
To best change perceptions and settle old scores
We need the support of big buck sinecures.
The best thinking’s done on a surfeit of calories
And tends to improve in tandem with salaries
This linkage ain’t found in a staid university
Not to mention such places’ diverting diversity.

In the tank, in the tank, in my Beltway think tank
Part campus, part book barn, part nut house, part bank.

It was only by chance that I found my true nesting
The place in my heart I had always been questing
I’d published a screed, arcane and voluminous
So riddled with bile, some tagged it bituminous.
It seemed for a time to attract no attention
Except the occasional snide condescension
Until came that call from a hunter of heads
Who asked if I’d ever considered Op Eds.

In the tank, in the tank, in my Beltway think tank
Part campus, part book barn, part nut house, part bank.

I’d always deemed Op Eds a medium trivial
So compact one’s points couldn’t be unequivial
Yet write one I did, laced with fury and gumption
Too high-brow (I figured) for pop press consumption.
But turn up it did, on a blatt’s viewpoints page
Where it went on to garner both pro and con rage
My head hunter pitched it to tanks with fat coffers
And got back a slew of paid thinker job offers.

In the tank, in the tank, in my Beltway think tank
Part campus, part book barn, part nut house, part bank.

I now have a slot as cushy as jello
I’m called a researcher and visiting fellow
I analyze trends, write books in a gush
All published before being pulped into slush
On TV they love me on talking head junction
A chicken and peas night is my fav’rite function
At fund-raising meets, rich egos I lather
With partisan factoids and scholarly blather.

In the tank, in the tank, in my Beltway think tank
Part campus, part book barn, part nut house, part bank.

I longed for a place where they pay by the syllable
Where spewing odd visions and ideas is billable
Where the kinkiest, crankiest, odd scheme devisors
Can train to become presidential advisors.
A shadowy power most people don’t see
It now wield by thinkers-for-hire like me
My nostrums are slick, and my come backs are rapid
Just perfect for pols whose own brains have gone vapid.

In the tank, in the tank, in my Beltway think tank
Part campus
Part book barn
Part nut house
Part bank.
****
©Michael Silverstein