The 1995 flame out of Jon Cowan, now the leader of Third Way..defacto Dem policy shop. Stunning.

madfloridian

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Fri Jul-08-11 07:57 PM
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The 1995 flame out of Jon Cowan, now the leader of Third Way..defacto Dem policy shop. Stunning.

Not long ago, the president of the Third Way made a strange comment. Here's the guy who is claiming to be the head of a "progressive" think tank announcing that he once led an anti-deficit group which lobbied outside the AARP for big changes to reform Social Security. He actually bragged about that group in a Third Way article.

AARP Opens the Door to Social Security Changes – Offers more than “milk and cookies”

“Two decades ago, I co-founded a group of young people, Lead…Or Leave, that demanded major changes in Social Security. I helped lead the first – and probably the only – protest in front of AARP’s building. With hundreds of young people shouting on the sidewalk, AARP’s leaders invited us in to talk. But when we saw the conference table was set with milk and cookies, we knew they weren’t serious. Now, at long last, they are.”

He also brags about that group in his bio at The Arena at Politico.

Jonathan Cowan

Picture courtesy of The Arena at Politico

Jonathan Cowan is the President and a co-founder of Third Way. He has over 15 years experience at senior levels of progressive politics and government. Previously, Mr. Cowan was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, teaching a course on youth and political advocacy. A Clinton administration veteran, Mr. Cowan was chief of staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, helping to manage a federal agency of 9,000 employees with a $27 billion annual budget. He also served as Senior Advisor to the HUD Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. Prior to co-founding Third Way, Mr. Cowan founded and ran Americans for Gun Safety, which The Washington Post dubbed the “dominant” group on the gun safety side of that debate. In 1992, he co-founded Lead…or Leave, which became the nation’s leading Generation X advocacy group. He also co-authored Revolution X and has been featured in many media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, U.S. News & World Report, TIME, CNBC, Nightline and 60 Minutes.

He is the Third Way leader who gloated that Obama listened to his group and not to the progressives.

He gloated.

Jon Cowan is president and Jim Kessler is vice president for policy at Third Way, a progressive think tank.

Their words:

"That sound you’re hearing is the collective gasps of more than 200 progressive organizations who thought they successfully lobbied President Barack Obama to keep Social Security reform off the table in budget negotiations."

But WAIT...there's more. There was a really great Newsweek article in 1995 about the "flame-out" of his anti-deficit, anti-Social Security group. Note that they were planning to burn their Social Security cards.

Love this article.

Gen X's Dynamic Duo Flames Out

When Jon Cowan and Rob Nelson arrived on the Washington scene three years ago, the capital fell in love. The two twentysomethings were idealistic, savvy and cute--a cross between Robert Kennedy and Kato Kaelin. They formed a group called Lead . . . Or Leave, challenging members of Congress to cut the deficit-or get out of town. One hundred and one lawmakers took the pledge. Ross Perot praised the pair's spunk. U.S. News & World Report put them on its cover, hailing them as "the vanguard of the twentysomething backlash."

But Lead . . . Or Leave shut its doors this month. Cowan and Nelson closed their office, disconnected their phone and sent out resumes-just as Congress begins to debate entitlement reform, the very issue the two championed. Short on cash and on troops to lead, they have decided to leave. "If there have ever been smoke-and-mirror organizers, it's these two guys," says Heather McLeod, an editor of Who Cares, a magazine about youth activism. Telegenic and good at spin, Nelson and Cowan had short attention spans for the details of grass-roots organizing. They got around that problem by inflating membership numbers. Their literature boasted they represented 1 million people, but the pair acknowledges that only 1130,000 either gave money or attended Lead . . . Or Leave events. "There was fudging," admits Andrew Weinstein. who briefly worked as the group's communications director.

Now they are assuming leadership in determining the policies of our party? How is that possible?

It gets even weirder.

And the duo's cheekiness sometimes veered into immaturity. When they stuck a condom in a mailing to illustrate the need to "practice safe politics" by reforming spending, one conservative quit their board. At a meeting with the chief of staff of Sen. Bob Kerrey's blue-ribbon Entitlements Commission, the pair showed up in shorts. "They walked around like MTV stars wearing purple sunglasses and never returned anyone's phone calls." says Paul Hewitt, who started Americans for Generational Equity, a similar (and now defunct) group.

And more:

Cowan, also 30, hopes to be "part of a visionary leadership." But they still promise to make a big splash in the '96 campaign. "We will burn social-security cards in New Hampshire," says Cowan. "It's such an incredibly powerful image." And image is the one thing Cowan and Nelson have always understood.

Well, looks like Cowan sort of got his wish. Somebody, don't know who, made him a leader of a group that gives the impression that the Democratic party and its president answer to them. Not to the party's constituents, but to them....the Third Way.

When you look at their policies, compare them with what is coming out of the mouths of our president and his advisors....they just might be right.