Ed Crane doesn’t really like politicians, nor, for that matter, people who do. So it’s not surprising that the president of the libertarian Cato Institute is brimming with caustic opinions about the presidential race.
“I’m amazed that people take a candidate like [Mike] Huckabee, who doesn’t believe in evolution, seriously,” said Crane, who presides over a Washington think tank famous for telling the government to butt out of people’s lives.
Rudy Giuliani’s approach to civil liberties “scares the hell out of me,” Crane said, and Mitt Romney doesn’t know the difference between being a president and being a dictator. Ron Paul is a friend, he added, but “I mean, he wants to build a wall. How can a libertarian be anti-immigration?” John McCain “is disdainful of free speech” and “hawkish,” Crane said, “and there’s a certain pomposity about the guy I find unattractive.”
On the Democratic side, he derides John Edwards for posing as “the candidate of the downtrodden and getting $400 haircuts, the hypocrisy reeks.” Hillary Clinton, Crane said, is “dishonest and shrill … calculating, manipulating.” Barack Obama “seems like a nice guy,” but then again, “do you want this guy standing up to al Qaeda?” If he absolutely had to vote, which he wouldn’t and never does, Crane said, “I guess I’d vote for Ron Paul, because he’s for the market and against the war.”
That’s the thing about Ed Crane: He knows what he believes, and he’ll tell you what he thinks. For the past three decades, Democrats and Republicans have listened ever more closely as he has built Cato from a three-person storefront operation into a 100-employee public policy powerhouse.
Thinkers of all ilk have flocked to Cato’s six-story modernist glass headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue (complete with live palm trees to remind Crane of his native California) to attend seminars, speeches and book discussions. Cato scholars appear regularly on TV talk shows and newspaper op-ed pages. Capitol Hill seized on a Cato idea to create health care savings accounts, and the U.S. Supreme Court has incorporated some of Cato’s arguments into its opinions. President Bush tried (and failed) to make Crane’s dream of privatizing Social Security a reality. Fred Smith, a longtime friend and fellow libertarian who heads the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said Crane and Cato have managed “to be in Washington without being of Washington.”
Crane, 63, said official Washington has “a grudging respect” for Cato because it is nonpartisan. “We try to produce quality work that is well-researched, and we don’t hide the fact there is a philosophy behind what we’re trying to do,” he said. “To us, the essence of America is respect for the dignity of the individual, and that dignity is enhanced to the extent that people have control over their own lives.”
Growing up in Los Angeles in the ’50s, Edward H. Crane III was supposed to be a doctor, just like the two Edward H. Cranes before him.
“Then I ran into a Saturday morning chemistry lab at Berkeley,” he said. “I couldn’t get up. It was like 8 a.m. I said the heck with it and went into business.”
After earning a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California in the mid-’60s, he began his career as an investment counselor and eventually moved back to San Francisco in his late 20s. “I had this office overlooking San Francisco Bay, with smoked glass windows and blond wood and orange carpet. Oh, it was beautiful!” he said.
Crane left it all to become chairman of the Libertarian Party with the goal of making it a national force. He remembered walking into the hall at the first Libertarian Party convention in a Denver hotel in 1972 and being stunned by the collection of misfits who shared his ideals.
“I always knew it was important, from a Libertarian standpoint, to be tolerant of alternative lifestyles, but until I went to that convention, I had no idea just how many alternatives there were,” he said. “There were all kinds of crazies there — gold bugs, Ayn Rand fanatics, anarchists — but they were good people interested in liberty.”
He managed Libertarian candidate Ed Clark’s 1980 presidential run, and Clark got the largest share of votes that the Libertarian Party has ever won — 1.05 percent. “I gave up,” Crane said. “I thought that was the one shot we had to try to establish a Libertarian Party, and when we didn’t, I just left it.”
Meanwhile, Crane had launched Cato in San Francisco with the backing of the like-minded Charles Koch of Koch Industries, the world’s largest private company. In 1981, Crane moved Cato to Washington, where he thought, rightly, that it would be taken more seriously and would have more influence.
Cato now has an annual budget of $24 million, 80 percent of which comes from individual donors. Cato takes no government money and gets very little from corporations.
“We tell [corporations] what we’re working on, and they say, ‘Well that doesn’t help us,’ and I say, ‘Well that’s what we believe, so there you go,’ ” he said.
Cato takes no official position on anything. As for Crane, he’s against the religious right and for gay marriage, to the extent that he’s for marriage at all. (He and his wife, Kristina, were married in China, at People’s Marriage Office No. 9 in Shanghai, after the libertarian in him balked at asking the government here to endorse their relationship.) He’s against the war in Iraq. (“An unprovoked, pre-emptive war is just insanity!”) He’s for free markets, free speech and lower taxes. He’s passionate about getting rid of Social Security and replacing it with private retirement accounts that people would own and could pass on to their children when they die. But his No. 1 issue, he said, is making sure America develops “humility” in foreign affairs and stops thinking it can just barge in and “spread democracy.”
Ed Feulner, president of t he Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, agrees with Crane on some issues, like tax reform and free markets, and disagrees vehemently on others, like gay rights and legalizing drugs.
Even when they agree, Feulner said, there’s competition to see who can create the first, best analysis on a particular issue, and who can attract the best talent to work with them. “But we collaborate on a lot of things,” Feulner said. “My opening line whenever I am with him — and he rolls his eyes — is, ‘Two Eds are better than one.’ ”
Friends and Cato colleagues describe Crane as passionate and forceful, a strong leader. Detractors say he’s a hard-driving bully. Murray Rothbard, a former friend and Cato board member, once accused Crane of having “a cloven hoof.”
CEI’s Smith, a lefty-turned-libertarian who calls Crane “a good friend,” described him as “brusque, prickly, not overly modest about his own capabilities.” Their regular lunches feature spirited bantering and friendly put-downs.
“Ed and I were in a diet contest once,” Smith said. “I won, but as I was gloating and telling him I won, Ed let me know he had just gotten another million-dollar contributor.”
Ed Crane’s tips for success
1 Be honest in everything you do, and be honest with yourself.
2 Give credit to others.
3 Have a vision for what you want to achieve, and pursue that vision.
4 Work hard.
5 Have a sense of humor.
BIO FILE | Ed Crane
Born: Aug. 15, 1944 Hometown: Los Angeles
Education: University of California, Berkeley; MBA, University of Southern California
Family: Wife, Kristina Crane; three children, Geoffrey, 21, Kathleen, 18, Mary, 16
Key jobs: Investment counselor, Scudder Stevens & Clark; vice president, Alliance Capital Management Corp.; national chairman, Libertarian Party, 1974-1977; founder and president, Cato Institute, 1977-present
Biggest influences: F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason
Favorite books: “In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government” by Charles Murray; “Libertarianism: A Primer” by David Boaz
Quote to live by: “Buy low; sell high.”
