Who remembers precisely what was said that day about discount rates for public projects, measurement issues, the difference between costs and transfers, deadweight losses, or any of the other standard topics? Instead, a far more fundamental memory was forged: That initial lecture was our introduction to real brilliance in the form of Bill Niskanen. Only 39 years old at the time—a fact difficult to believe in retrospect—he had just come to the public policy school after having written Bureaucracy and Representative Government, the pioneering effort to think through the incentives of government agencies under a broad range of alternative conditions and the resulting implications for congressional behavior and budget outcomes.

To say that this book was an intellectual breakthrough is a vast understatement. It represented a major advance in the early evolution of the public choice school, in particular with respect to the application of economic analysis to competition within democratic and government institutions. It was the very definition of “transformational.” Together with work by James Q. Wilson and a few other scholars, Bureaucracy and Representative Government has engendered over the ensuing four decades a broad body of scholarship striving to test, extend, and improve the behavioral analysis of government bureaus. The book remains the beginning of wisdom on the analysis of bureaucracy, and thus is responsible for a significant advance in the state of knowledge. How many people with doctoral degrees can claim even remotely as much?

Professor Chickenfoot | Bill stood about 6 feet, 4 inches tall, with a rather large head and ears that stuck out prominently. Add his ever-present pipe, and it was clear from the beginning that elective office in the television age did not loom large as a prospect for his future career. But that would have been true regardless of his appearance: Bill literally was incapable of dishonesty of any kind, of sail-trimming, of go-along-to-get-along compromises, of straddling, of flip-flopping, of saying things because others wanted to hear them. He also was incapable of backstabbing, a quality vanishingly rare in both academia and the Beltway; his word was his bond. Rigorous, careful, honest, dedicated to the pursuit of truth in the defense of liberty: those characteristics are the reason that the late Herbert Stein, the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, once described Bill as “a member of that rare species, the objective insider.”

Bill’s office at the top of several staircases at the public policy school was a virtual clubhouse, with graduate students camped out essentially on a full-time basis asking questions of Bill, running ideas by Bill, arguing with Bill, reviewing work with Bill, learning something new every day from Bill. Foremost among those lessons were the virtues of patience, of collegiality, of caring about the development of young minds, and of absolute honesty in the evaluation of ideas and work, delivered in a manner both uncompromising and kind.

Bill’s lectures were adventures. He loved to draw decision trees as illustrations of the complexity of given policy issues under discussion, some of which literally covered a huge blackboard in our lecture room. Thus did he come to acquire the nickname “Chickenfoot”—“Professor Chickenfoot” at formal functions—a moniker that he pretended to dislike (he once exiled me from his office for less than a minute after I addressed him as Chickenfoot while some associate dean was there smoking cigars and schmoozing with him), but that in fact he knew full well was a term of endearment both toward and from him and us. That nickname fit Bill perfectly.

And speaking of perfect fits: Let us recall the blessed memory of Bill’s Cowardly Lion suit. A genuine three-piece classic made of the finest corduroy obtainable in Berkeley, Calif., it would have been beautifully appropriate—indeed, an object of admiration—at a vast range of such events as Halloween parties, Purim festivals, campus distinguished lectures, White House press conferences, and speeches on the Fourth of July. But even more majestic was its color: a vision of a bale of straw left for years out in the elements, bleached by the sun, soaked by the rain, struck by lightning, bombarded by endless flocks of birds, and in the end declared a wetland by the Army Corps of Engineers. It absorbed chalk dust by the pound. Not a single speck of lint within a 10-foot radius escaped its gravitational field. It truly was a thing of beauty, worthy of royalty, an absolute inspiration, a source of universal awe, a vast reservoir of material for aspiring comedians. Seeing Bill wearing it every week was like looking forward to a comfortable overstuffed chair at the end of a long day: substantial, dependable, a rock, a lighthouse guiding us toward stability and safety amid the chaos and tear gas of early 1970s Berkeley. Only one man 6 feet, 4 inches, with a large head, with ears sticking out, and smoking a pipe could have worn the Cowardly Lion suit with dignity. That man was Chickenfoot Niskanen.

Toward the end of my two years studying under Bill, I informed him that I had been accepted into the economics doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He congratulated me—he had, after all, written in a recommendation letter that I was “well-trained” (by him)—and then announced to everyone in the class that the UCLA economics department had “the highest ratio of the quality of the faculty to the quality of the graduate students of any economics program in the country.”

Thanks, Bill.

A couple of years later, he wrote a recommendation on my behalf to Alan Greenspan (then the chairman of the CEA) when I applied for an appointment as a junior staff economist, telling Greenspan that I was “well-trained” (by him) and that the CEA “could use a good laugh now and then.”

Thanks, Bill.

Challenging the party line | Bill left Berkeley’s public policy school for the Ford Motor Company in 1975 to be its chief economist. That fall, he happened to be in Los Angeles on Ford business, and he called me to see if we could get together for a drink. So I drove over to his hotel to see him and we had a great time schmoozing and reminiscing; and then the check came, at which point Bill discovered suddenly that he had with him no cash and no credit card.

Thanks, Bill.

In any event, it is very easy for me to believe that the corporate suits had never been confronted with such a strange creature, unwilling to engage in brown-nosing, willing to suffer fools but not to compromise with them, and—to be blunt—far, far smarter and wiser than they. A few years later he was sent packing, having opposed import quotas on Japanese autos and having failed to “find out the view of his superiors and then supply arguments in support of that view.” “That’s not my style,” Bill said; and let me say that truer words were never spoken.

Bill, in 1970–72 the assistant director for evaluation at the Office of Management and Budget, similarly had failed to find out the views of his superior, then-OMB director George Shultz, when Bill had the temerity to point out, repeatedly, the yawning gap between the rhetoric and reality of the spending and regulatory record of the Nixon administration. So Shultz fired him, obviously preferring people willing to support the party line; his decision and Ford’s were driven by motives essentially identical. I wonder if Shultz ever has asked himself whether it might have been better for the country had he devoted his efforts to fighting the Nixon expansion of spending and regulation—and the imposition of wage and price controls—instead of fighting the truth-telling efforts of one of his assistant directors.

When Bill left Ford, it appeared possible but hardly certain that Ronald Reagan would win the presidency, in which case Bill might be considered for an important appointment, as Reagan, when governor, knew Bill from the California Proposition 1 (spending limitation) effort in 1973. So Bill needed a home that might prove temporary. Up to the plate stepped Clay LaForce, formerly the chairman of the UCLA economics department (I am proud to have been one of his teaching assistants) and then the dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Management. Clay gave Bill an appointment knowing full well that Bill might leave only months later. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is reputed to have observed, “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are.” Bill was a mensch who attracted first-class people around him, and vice versa, and Clay was and remains one of them.

Reagan won the election and Bill was appointed a member of the CEA. He offered me a position as a senior staff economist to do energy policy work, an area to which I had devoted some attention. I was quite excited and thanked him heartily for so incredible an opportunity. He noted that he was happy to have me working for him because I was “well-trained”—by then I knew full well what that meant—and also because recruiting for the senior staff positions was proving difficult “because of the low salaries.”

He was sent packing from Ford, having failed to “find out the view of his superiors and then supply arguments in support of that view.” “That’s not my style,” Bill said, and truer words were never spoken.

Thanks, Bill.

I think that another reason he brought me aboard was his hope that his staff would do a bit of his dirty work for him. This occurs to me because of several memories of staff meetings at the CEA, one of which in the fall of 1981 stands out in particular. After going through a list of topics, our chairman, Murray Weidenbaum, turned to the administration’s position on federal/​state fiscal relations—that is, revenue sharing. Bill and I had discussed this issue a number of times, and so I asked Murray why the administration was not acting more boldly in terms of eliminating what is, after all, not much more than a cartel arrangement in which the federal government imposes taxes higher than those that the states could levy if they had to compete with each other. Several of the other senior staff economists jumped in as well, as poor Murray—a class act who nonetheless had to toe the White House line by virtue of his position—was forced to practice arguments that he obviously did not fully believe, with half the staff beating up on him. And Bill? He just sat there with his pipe and a big smile.

Of course, Bill couldn’t escape all the dirty work. He was summoned at one point to testify on a natural gas deregulation issue before a House committee chaired by the ineffable Al Gore, and took me along in case he needed some factoid. Gore, naturally, ambushed him with a bunch of questions about a rumor that the administration was planning to trim the subsidies enjoyed by power customers of the Tennessee Valley Authority—Gore then as now was quite happy to impose costs on others—but neither Bill nor I had heard such rumors (though we wished we had). So Bill had to sit there and listen to Gore’s blather about the Great TVA, prevented from describing the indefensible trough of pork that the TVA was and remains, able to tell Gore only that he would inform the White House of his concerns. Gore, unhappy with Bill’s unwillingness to pander to him, then had the chutzpah to announce to everyone there that Bill’s “hard-earned reputation for candor” seemed to be absent. Gore was his true self that day, in full, and the only surprise is that he didn’t start crying. It was the only time over four decades that I heard Bill actually complain about how he had been treated.

Explaining economics | Bill spent a large amount of time correcting the often-muddled thinking of others in the administration. An example: During 1981–82, a number of senior officials were having trouble explaining to the journalists why interest rates remained high despite the recession and a sharp reduction in the inflation rate. A couple of cabinet secretaries tried to argue that the cause was lingering inflation expectations. But, Bill pointed out, had that been true the dollar should have been weak rather than strong. So they tried to argue that the dollar was strong because of large inflows of foreign capital; but had that been true, interest rates should have been low. Such examples were legion even in the early Reagan years; Bill knew and I learned that confusion among the politicos reigns supreme, even more so than is apparent from the outside, and there is only so much that any one individual can do. Bill (and Murray and Jerry Jordan, then the third member of the CEA) tried to explain to the rest of the administration and to the journalists that the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act had driven up investment activity, that the rise in interest rates signaled strong prospective economic growth, and that the recovery therefore would not be “choked off.” Few journalists could understand an economic argument even that simple.

After two years, I left the CEA for an appointment at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At a farewell dinner, Bill announced to those in attendance that my move “would not improve both institutions.”

Thanks, Bill.

At a wonderful 70th birthday celebration for Bill organized by Cato in March of 2003, I was honored to be among several former colleagues and students offering observations about him to an audience of a couple hundred people. The other speakers extolled his honesty, integrity, brilliance, and kindness; but I decided to have a little fun. So I informed all in attendance that Bill, then for many years the chairman of the Cato Institute, in fact had been operating for decades under deep cover as an agent for the KGB. And the evidence was clear: He had a code name (Chickenfoot), a uniform (the Cowardly Lion suit), and an uncanny record of success in furthering Soviet aims. Had the federal budget gone down during Bill’s tenure as Cato’s chairman? No. Had the regulatory leviathan been tamed? No. Had foreign adventurism been reduced? No. Ad infinitum. And Comrade Chickenfoot could protest all he wanted that he was just a little think-tank cog in the Great Beltway Machine, but the record was clear. Bill learned that in dealings with former students, as in the Beltway, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Afterward, in Bill’s office, he asked me whether it really had been necessary to have everyone in the audience stand for the national anthem of the Soviet Union. In the Hayek Auditorium. Of the Cato Institute. As the very first use of the brand-new sound system.

You’re welcome, Bill.

He and I spoke virtually every week for decades, and I learned something from him every time. I cannot believe that I will be able to call him no more, and I betray no secret when I say that America is substantially poorer for his passing. May William A. Niskanen rest in peace, and may his memory inspire all of us to strive toward his standard of excellence.

Thanks, Bill.