On Monday at 10 a.m., two hours before the board of the National Constitution Center voted to appoint him the new chief executive officer, David Eisner made a daring move.

"I signed the lease on my apartment in Old City," says Eisner.

It wasn't exactly leaping without a net.

Eisner had served for seven years as head of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that runs programs such as AmeriCorps. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Eisner stepped down last fall after President Obama's election.

He was first approached about the Constitution Center job by a head hunter who called him at home one evening in February. Over the next few months, he met with the center's search committee four times. By early November, he was really optimistic.

Eisner, 48, has a national reputation as a thoughtful, methodical, inspired, and judicious organizational leader. The slightly premature commitment to a home in Philadelphia is not out of character, though. Rather, it's a sign of his impatience to get going.

During a lengthy interview yesterday in his still-bare office in the Constitution Center's underground administrative wing, Eisner said he planned to extend the center's reach. Like his predecessors, he wants to attract more national attention to its programs. He would like to build its reputation as a center for nonpartisan political debate and develop more educational programs.

A bearish man with a close, graying beard and softly gruff voice, Eisner said he was not ready to make any specific proposals. But the concept, roughly, would be to use the center as a politically neutral think tank where experts and the general public could examine issues such as immigration reform and voter registration. Then, he said, participants might take those ideas and put them to use, perhaps circulating petitions or enlisting volunteers.

"We need to make our visitors feel that they're not just being educated, but that they're being called to action."

If that sounds like a lofty objective and a tough one to accomplish, Eisner's supporters say that if anyone can pull it off, he's the one.

"He has demonstrated throughout his career that he is creative and has a vision," said David L. Cohen, executive vice president at Comcast Corp., who was Mayor Edward G. Rendell's chief of staff in the 1990s. "But most important, he knows how to tie that vision to practical results and practical consequences."

When Eisner took the job at the Corporation for National and Community Service, AmeriCorps was moribund.

"It was viewed as President Clinton's baby," recalled former U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford, who preceded Eisner as chief executive of the organization. "David became the leader of those that helped persuade President Bush to go forward with AmeriCorps."

Using political savvy and business sense, he showed the opposition that federal investment in community service improved libraries, schools, and the health of constituents.

"He was the key player," Wofford said, "in helping it to become truly a nonpartisan venture."

The oldest of four children raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Santa Barbara, Calif., Eisner intended to become a doctor like his father, but determination gave way to common sense. "I had to fail organic chemistry three times before I was dissuaded."

Although his parents were Democrats, he became a Republican at Stanford University largely, he said, in reaction to the "lockstep" liberalism on campus.

Eisner loves intellectual discourse, he said, but chafes when it has no practical application. In 1984, he moved to Washington and worked on Capitol Hill.

It was there, he said, that he realized how people can defend the indefensible.

"The human brain has an almost infinite capacity to convince itself of almost anything. The rule for politics is if somebody's interested in a certain direction, they usually manage to convince themselves that it's correct."

After leaving the Hill, he went to work for the Legal Services Corp., attended law school at night at Georgetown University, and then landed at the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard.

Eisner quickly rose from account rep to senior vice president. He was 36 when he left to join AOL, where he would help create the corporation's philanthropic foundation.

Bush appointed him to the Corporation for National and Community Service in 2003.

"David is a visionary," said Karen Kaskey, executive director of PennSERVE, AmeriCorps' state arm. "He doesn't recognize traditional boundaries, and he's very, very bright."

Eisner and his wife, Lori, have four children: Samantha, 12, Callie, 10, Jackson, 8 and Jamie, 6.

Politically, he said, he has grown into more of an independent, although he still believes in Bush's "compassionate conservatism." The only other remnants of his ties to Texas politicians are his four pairs of cowboy boots - one each made of elk, snake, lizard, and ostrich.

Eisner succeeds Linda E. Johnson, a member of the center's board of trustees, who had served as acting president and CEO since Joe Torsella left the post last winter. Johnson's plans are not yet known.

"David's diverse experience in the nonprofit, corporate, and government sectors will be essential for the continued growth of the National Constitution Center as a leading cultural and educational institution," Clinton, the center's chairman, said in a statement. "We are extremely fortunate to welcome someone of his caliber who, throughout his career, has demonstrated strong leadership and a dedication to civic engagement and to the values at the very core of the center's mission."

Eisner plans to spend the next three months listening to the center's staff of 175 full-time employees, 150 volunteers, and 100 contractors before formulating a "proactive agenda."

"I'm very ambitious, but I . . . usually manage to make my ambition more about getting things done than getting ahead," Eisner said. "Somehow, it works for me really well. There's so much that needs to be done."

Contact staff writer Melissa Dribben at 215-854-2590 or mdribben@phillynews.com.