The Obama administration, leery of trolling K Street for experts, has been recruiting heavily from some Washington think tanks. Indeed, the administration (with an assist from the Democrat-controlled Congress) may have nearly put two newish think tanks out of business: The foreign policy focused Center for a New American Security and the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project.

Obama tapped CNAS President and Cofounder Michele Flournoy to become under secretary of Defense for policy, and the center's other cofounder, CEO Kurt Campbell, is widely thought to be in line to become assistant secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific affairs. In addition Obama hired away the group's chief operating officer, and two of the group's board of directors: Dennis Blair and William Lynn.

Meanwhile, between Obama and the congressional leadership, the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project has been pretty much cleaned out. Obama made Larry Summers -- a member of Hamilton's advisory council and one of its leading thinkers -- the head of the President's National Economic Council, and named Jason Furman -- who quit as Hamilton's director to advise Obama's campaign-- as Summers' deputy at the NEC. Furman's replacement, Doug Elmendorf, was snapped up in January by another repeat recruiter: the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO had already spirited away Hamilton's first director, Peter Orszag, only to lose him to Obama's Office of Management and Budget.

Since both think tanks were founded in recent years largely to help set the agenda for a Democratic administration, they could have declared victory and closed up shop. But instead, both are hoping to reinvent themselves. CNAS is replacing all those tapped by Obama: retired Army Officer John Nagl, the co-author of the Army's counterinsurgency manual, will be the group's new president, and former marine officer Nathaniel Fick is its new COO.

The Hamilton Project is still searching for replacements, but Brookings Institution Vice President for Economics William Gale says the project wants to continue to fill "the niche it carved out for itself [helping government officials] think more than five minutes ahead, which is hard given the pressures" of being in office.

                                                                                                             -- Julie Kosterlitz