With Reagan
Meese, Edwin III
Awise Milwaukee businessman once told me why Tommy Thompson was a much better governor of Wisconsin than his predecessor Pat Lucey. "I like Pat. He's a good friend. But he wasn't a very good...
...The thousands of nuclear weapons that in 1979 were pointed at us from a hostile power now belong—thanks to Reagan's defense John Von Kannon, former publisher of The American Spectator, is vice president and treasurer of the Heritage Foundation...
...It promised to bring in $98 billion in taxes over three years and to cut spending by $280 billion over the same period...
...The case should be an open-and-shut one, but With Reagan will not get rave reviews...
...Even tax receipts for that year went down—a lingering effect of the recession, which the additional business taxes did nothing to redress...
...That Ronald Reagan did not make that mistake was a large part of his success, as Meese makes clear...
...He too raised taxes in exchange for budget cuts that never materialized...
...He reminds us of 1979: 13.5 percent inflation, a 21.5 percent, prime rate, high unemployment, a crippling tax burden, gasoline shortages, and a general national malaise...
...He named—and, worse, retains—Richard Darman, one of the architects of Reagan's tax disaster, to orchestrate his deal with Congress...
...I was there as publisher of The American Spectator and nervously introduced myself to Bush...
...was a complete departure from our tax-cutting mandate, failed to reduce the growth of government spending, did not decrease the deficit, and divided the President from some of his most ardent supporters...
...eese describes a White House M that did not back down in the face of criticism, but he also gives us a revealing description of what he labels "the greatest domestic error of the Reagan administration," the TEFRA tax increase of 1982...
...Ronald Reagan learned from this experience...
...The result was higher taxes and a higher deficit: Spending for fiscal year 1983 was some $48 billion higher than the budget targets and no progress was made in lowering the deficit...
...That such criticism has been leveled so relentlessly at Ronald Reagan is what prompted former attorney general Edwin Meese to write With Reagan...
...71 WITH REAGAN: THE INSIDE STORY Edwin Meese III Regnery Gateway/362 pages/$24.95 reviewed by JOHN VON KANNON The American Spectator September 1992 59...
...Shortly after the 1981 tax cuts, in response to congressional and media calls to lower the deficit, seventeen congressmen, senators, and executive branch personnel—including David Stockman, Jim Baker, Dick Darman, and Ken Dubersteinbegan a series of meetings...
...Tommy Thompson knows that the first role of a governor is to set policies...
...As Bob Tyrrell explains in The Conservative Crack-Up, the major media simply ignore conservative ideas and attempt to discredit conservative spokesmen, all the while complaining about Republican "sleaze campaigns...
...n late 1979 George Bush spoke at a large Republican women's gathering in Indianapolis that had become one of the early "cattle shows" for aspiring presidential nominees...
...The TEFRA compromise...
...The Reagan presidency, in the phrase of Washington analyst Burton Yale Pines, "repealed the 1970s...
...After a constant barrage from the left—combined with an, almost absolute silence from the Bush White House—we seem to have forgotten how rotten things were in the 1970s, and how dramatically they improved in the 1980s, and Meese sets out to make that plain...
...Ooh," he stammered, "that's a real egghead magazine...
...With Reagan is a cut above the condescending, I-knew-better-than-Reagan screeds so many of his colleagues have written, but Meese's loyalty and effectiveness as a Reagan advocate will only make him a more tempting target for the collection of liberal forces Tyrrell refers to as the Kultursmog...
...My friend's interpretation, however, is open to a glib and persuasive criticism: Shouldn't our leaders know all the details...
...Since then, Bush has become a friend of The American Spectator (due more to the charm of its editor-in-chief, I suspect, than to an appreciation of its "egghead" worldview...
...Yet his comment has always struck me as highly suggestive, not of his intellectual capacity, but of his tendency to undervalue the role of ideas in politics and governing...
...buildup—to a country that is neither hostile nor powerful...
...Congress passed the tax increase and ignored the spending cuts...
...And while Meese's book was written to set the record straight on the Reagan years, it also provides important lessons that it may already be too late for Bush to learn from...
...Here was a cautionary example of what happens when process overtakes policy...
...All of the Republican candidates except Reagan spoke...
...Then, hurriedly pointing me toward his factotum, "Do you know Jimmy Baker...
...George Bush didn't and hasn't...
...The Gang of 17 worked out a proposal that became the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA...
...Darman's handiwork in 1991 hurt the economy even more than it did a.clecade earlier...
...His second role is to be the main cheerleader for those policies...
...The 1980s, by contrast, witnessed the longest peacetime expansion in America's history, with growth under Reagan equalling the entire economy of Germany...
...Reagan, however, won the straw poll...
...He thought he had to understand everything about state government, and then work the process...
...But he wasn't a very good governor...
Vol. 25 • September 1992 • No. 9
