June 6, 2004
Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004
Ronald Reagan was the dominant political leader of the Cato Institute's 27-year history, so naturally Cato scholars have praised, criticized, and analyzed Reagan's policies and legacy many times over the years. In 1981 the Institute moved from California to Washington just a few months after Reagan did. Executive vice president David Boaz offers some thoughts on Reagan's legacy.
In recent years Cato scholars have tended to view Reagan as the epitome of the limited-government conservative now almost gone from Washington, as Ed Crane did in the Financial Times in 2002 and again in 2003, and in Cato Policy Report. David Boaz echoed similar themes in the Australian.
Cato chairman William A. Niskanen served on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers throughout his first term. His book Reaganomics: An Insider's Account of the Policies and the People (Oxford University Press, 1988, out of print) is regarded as one of the most comprehensive and balanced studies of Reagan's economic policies. Niskanen wrote numerous articles on Reaganomics and Reagan's regulatory record.
Niskanen and senior fellow Stephen Moore also wrote frequently about Reagan's fiscal policies, as in this 1996 Policy Analysis and this op-ed in 2000.
More recently, director of tax policy Chris Edwards urged President Bush to look at Reagan's success in cutting federal grants to the states. Fiscal policy researchers Veronique de Rugy and Tad De Haven compared Bush's spending policies unfavorably with Reagan's.
It is the role of a public policy research institute to analyze, criticize, and recommend improvement, so inevitably many of Cato's studies during the Reagan administration were critical of various aspects of the administration's policies. These included David Boaz's critical examination of the administration's spending program, Michael McMenamin on farm policies, Daniel Klein on motorcycle tariffs, Sheldon Richman on intervention in the Persian Gulf, Ted Galen Carpenter on the imperial presidency in foreign affairs, and Sheldon Richman on free trade. Looking back, Richard McKenzie took a more positive view of Reagan's overall record in "America: What Went Right," as did Moore and Niskanen in the study cited above.
In Beyond the Status Quo: Policy Proposals for America in 1985, Cato scholars and others offered policy advice to Congress and the administration on taxes, spending, Social Security, education, telecommunications, foreign policy, the Supreme Court, and more. Another collection, Assessing the Reagan Years (1988, out of print) reviewed the Reagan record on a wide range of issues. Contributors included Cato scholars and such outside analysts as Murray Weidenbaum, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Mickey Levy, Robert W. Crandall, Barry Lynn, Randy Barnett, and Clarence Thomas.
More from Cato Scholars on Ronald Reagan
"Reagan the Intellectual," by Steve Hanke, Forbes, March 1, 2001.
"The Privatization Debate: An Insider's View," by Steve Hanke, Cato Journal, Vol.2, No.3, Winter 1982.
"Reaganomics Won the Day," by Stephen Moore, NRO, June 7, 2004.
William A. Niskanen discusses Reaganomics on CNN. June 7, 2004. [Real Player]
"Reagan’s Budget Legacy," by Chris Edwards, A Cato Commentary, June 8, 2004.
"Reagan: America's Optimistic Advocate of Freedom," by Doug Bandow, A Cato Commentary, June 10, 2004.
"The Reagan Renaissance," by Alan Reynolds, A Cato Commentary, June 10, 2004.