David Sirota has aptly nailed a phenomenon of our times: liberal-washing.

In this article in Salon, he explains how conservatives and corporations find a friendly liberal organization or liberal politician to give it a patina of bipartisanship or to mask its goals.

Sirota writes:

The most reliable way to liberal-wash something is to get a famous Democrat to support it. This is because even though many Democratic politicians, party officials, operatives and pundits are neither liberal nor progressive, the media nonetheless usually portrays all people affiliated with the Democratic Party as uniformly liberal on all issues.

The famous examples of liberal washing come from the White House. A few decades ago, Democratic President Bill Clinton liberal-washed corporatist schemes like NAFTA and financial deregulation. Today, it is Democratic President Barack Obama liberal-washing theinsurance industry’s healthcare initiatives and now joining with a handful of Democratic legislators to liberalwash – and legitimize – the right-wing crusade to slash Social Security benefits.

But, then, as evidenced by just the last few months of news, liberal washing also operates just as powerfully in other political arenas.

In the Congress, for example, the NSA surveillance programs that so enrich private contractors were frantically liberal-washed by (among others) California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.) In that case, the liberal washing served as a handsome payback for the private surveillance contracting industry that bankrolls the California lawmaker’s election campaigns and her family.

Likewise, in the think tank sector, the Center for American Progress (where I once worked many years ago) is next week liberal-washing Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and another Goldman executive. That’s right: According to the Beltway’s most prominent liberal think tank, the bailed out bank isn’t the Great Vampire Squid that helped destroy the economy. It is, instead, according to CAP, an icon of “shared social goals in areas like housing, clean energy and — most recently — preventive social services.” Such liberal washing is a clear P.R. coup for Goldman Sachs — one it was probably hoping for when, according to the Nation magazine, Goldman Sachs became one of CAP’s many corporate donors no doubt looking to be liberal-washed.