Posted on 09/01/2005 9:05:11 AM PDT by Sonny M
WASHINGTON -- Jude Wanniski might have been called the most important journalist of his time, except that the former reporter and editorial writer was never really a journalist. He was an advocate who changed the world. He fathered supply-side economics, which became the doctrine of the Republican Party and enabled it to be the nation's ruling party most of the last half-century.
When Wanniski died of a heart attack Monday, he was at the low point of his political influence. The doors of the mighty that opened for him in the '70s and '80s long had been closed. In an introduction to the 1998 edition of his book "The Way the World Works," I wrote that our friendship had endured for 20 years because I did not make the mistake of others in trying to change his mind. Alas, I was turned away by his recent accusations of neo-conservative war-mongering conspiracy and saw little of him the last two years. Jude was easy to love and hard to get along with.
Wanniski was a genius, the smartest man I ever met. While he made his living as an economic consultant, his real profession was changing the way the world worked. He had taught himself economics as he learned card counting while a young reporter in Las Vegas. He saw the world in intricate detail but also with a panoramic view from above. He knew the Reagan tax cuts would generate economic growth. He was certain a return to the gold standard would have sustained non-inflationary growth.
Jude was in search of a politician to become the perfect instrument of his policies, and the closest he ever came was Jack Kemp. Wanniski's real choice for president in 1980 was Kemp, but he settled for Ronald Reagan. Supply-side principles that Wanniski enunciated in Wall Street Journal editorials were embodied in the Kemp-Roth tax cut bill, which became Reagan's tax cuts. At the 1980 and 1984 Republican national conventions, Kemp presided over strategy meetings that were orchestrated by Wanniski.
Wanniski talked about being a teen-age Democrat ringing doorbells for Adlai Stevenson before he became a Republican, but he never was much of a Republican. He always was looking for a Democratic supply-sider, preaching to Jerry Brown, Mario Cuomo, Bill Bradley, Charlie Rangel and Bill Clinton. He even had hope for John Kerry, whom he endorsed in 2004 because of his opposition to the Iraq war.
The presidential candidate who was the worst fit for Wanniski was Bob Dole in the 1996 campaign, based on a misunderstanding. Dole thought he was taking on an economic adviser to make him more acceptable to the supply-siders. He found in Wanniski a polymath who wanted to set policies on everything, and Dole was not buying that. It was Wanniski who fired Dole, not the other way around.
The professional campaign consultants wanted no part of Wanniski. He talked Steve Forbes into running for president in 1996 and then was barred from the premises. When Kemp became Dole's running mate that year, Wanniski was kept out. It is hard to imagine a freethinking Wanniski in the buttoned-down regime of George W. Bush.
St. Jude is the patron of lost causes, and Jude Wanniski lived up to his name. He saw qualities others missed in Richard Nixon, Ngo Dinh Diem, Roberto D'Aubuisson, Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro and Raul Cedras. He tried hard to prove that Ferdinand Marcos really won the 1986 Philippine election after trying to steal it. He antagonized clients with his warm embrace of Louis Farrakhan.
The tragedy of Jude Wanniski was that all of his colleagues and friends ended up alienated or at least estranged from him: Arthur Laffer, Robert Mundell, Lawrence Hunter, even Jack Kemp. They were the losers. So was I. It was not Jude's antiwar views (which I largely shared) but the ferocity of his attacks on the Bush administration that kept me away.
I missed hearing his brilliant and cogent theories and his overriding optimism. He appeared on the national scene with a political-economic strategy that convinced Americans they need not be content with double-digit interest rates, double-digit inflation and high unemployment. That is a powerful legacy.
I know former President Reagan called his book "The bible of supply side economics", which made me go out and purchase it.
The book is brilliant, and I recommend it to all...its also not a political manifesto, just an economic one.
Note: He also came up with the name "Laffer curve", according to Auther Laffer....who now disputes the story behind the "curve" (i.e. the napkin story).
What is he smoking?
Novak refers to the Presidency, which Republicans held for 28 years of the last half century.
But Friedman gives alot of credit to Wakkinskis book, as did President Reagan, and Jack Kempt and Roth ( why doesn't anyone ever seem to remember him?).
I just want to see President Reagans version, I know he used to write in the margins and underlined stuff.
Not to many folks know his actual college major.
It was economics, and not liberal arts or drama, as Tip O'neill found out......the hard way.
Then you need to read Gilders obit Piece on Wanniski.
Gilder was loaned a manuscript of TWTWW, and incorporated its central thesis....
He studied economics prior to the rise of Keyenesianism and thus was receptive to supply side economics when Jack Kemp introduced it to him.
If Reagan had been a supply sider during his 1976 campaign he might have won the nomination.
"The Way the World Works" was published in 1978. It introduced analyses that were explicitly SupplySide, raising quite a following among ambitious, younger GOP congressmen and establishing the logical arguments for the Reagan tax cuts to come.
"Wealth and Poverty" was published in 1981 and, although considered a good book, was the foundation for no political trend.
Hazlitt and Friedman had much to do with maintaining free market economics, but almost nothing to do with establishing supply-side economics.
Part of Wanniski's greatness is in his honesty, which cost him considerable influence, fame, and fortune. Had he wanted to, he could very easily have gone along with the flow of DC politics and been a more prominent media personality or even an adminstration advisor or member. Most people in Washington say what is politically expedient, not what they believe. Those people will be forgotten, except for the disasters they cause. Wanniski may not be highly regarded today, but his ideas will endure.
One thing I don't understand is how people can allow the opinions of others to affect their friendship, especially those who have been proven to be good friends. There is more to life than politics. Why take disagreements personally? Novak is right in that those estranged from Wanniski ended up on the losing end. You never know what life will bring. If the person dies, then you end up feeling bad because you weren't on good terms. But this is a very nice article by Bob Novak.
Correct. Friedman would be considered a monetarist. Wanniski critiques both Keynesians and Monetarists in TWTWW.
That was consistant, but according to him (and check his articles previous), Saddam Hussein NEVER EVER used a WMD at all, not against the kurds, not against the Iranians, not against anyone.
He defined WMD differently, and I'm not sure what definition he was using, but apparently, chemical weapons do not count.
Keep in mind that he was not just anti-war, he really was pro-saddam hussein, he felt the was a guy we could cut a deal with and become an ally and friend with, and that we should have sided with Hussein.
Had he wanted to, he could very easily have gone along with the flow of DC politics and been a more prominent media personality or even an adminstration advisor or member. Most people in Washington say what is politically expedient, not what they believe. Those people will be forgotten, except for the disasters they cause. Wanniski may not be highly regarded today, but his ideas will endure.
On economics, yes, but lets all hope his anti-semetism goes into the garbage bin of history.
His mini-love affair with Louis Farrakhan, his support of all that is anti-semtic, his support and condonement of anti-Israeli terrosit groups and his bizarre support for Saddam Hussein (he also opposed the first gulf war) was something that stains his legacy.
One thing I don't understand is how people can allow the opinions of others to affect their friendship, especially those who have been proven to be good friends. There is more to life than politics. Why take disagreements personally?
Your right, but I don't think you know the whole story, Novak only alluded to it.
Jack Kempt has alot of friends who loathe and hate his politics, the reason Wakkinski didn't is that he would alientate (on his own) those who disagree with him.
He took the old college lefty saying "make the political personal" to heart. He dumped those who didn't agree with him, not the other way around.
Its why few on the left or right, liked him.
President Reagan was both a friend and supporter of Friendman....and one of the few people who could openly disagree with him.
My admiration for Friedman is pretty much unbounded, but just exactly who credits him as a father of supply-side economics? And exactly why?
As for Mundell, you're onto something. Journalist Wanniski picked up supply-side from Professor Laffer who picked it up from Professor Mundell. But, it was Jude Wanniski who popularized supply-side theory as political policy.
The media, President Reagan, Bruce Bartlett, Jack Kempt, and most of the Chicago guys.
Once they hung that lable around him (as did Wakkinski), it stuck.
I always felt that Robert Mundell never got enough of the credit he deserved.
Laffer has been very gracious in referring to Mundell and Friendman as the co-founders and the twin fathers of Supply Side.
Sidenote" Laffer while not ouright denying the story of the "laffer curve drawn on a napkin" has though in the past, dropped numerious hints, that the story is fictious.
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have both said they remember it, and at other times, claimed that they could not recall it. Arthur Laffer, if one reads between the lines, basically calls Wakkinskis version a lie.
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