American think tanks play an important role in the multiple subjects of national ideology governance.From the perspective of vertical history, the ideology of American think tanks meets the realistic needs of state governance.From a horizontal perspective, think tanks are deeply involved in the operation of the political system, constructing an ideological discourse system, promoting ideological mass communication, actively infiltrating foreign ideologies, building a consensus platform for ideas, and actively "affecting influential people" through the "revolving door" mechanism, so American think tanks play an increasingly active role in the governance of ideology.Despite the essential differences in institutional attributes, the deeply embedding of American think tanks into the national ideological governance system has also provided useful enlightenment for the construction of new types of think tanks with Chinese characteristics:the government should lead the construction of characteristic think tanks with the trend of specialization; the talent growth and motivation mechanism of think tanks should be established with the criterion of professionalization; the influences of think tanks should be expanded in a multi-pronged manner with the layout of diversification; the ideological governance bottlenecks should be concentrated on tackling with the breakthroughs of thematization.