One of the reasons Ronald Reagan was elected president in two successive landslides is that he made sense – good ol’ common sense.
After Reagan stepped down from the California governor’s office in 1975, he began writing radio commentaries. And by the time he began his successful run for the White House in 1979, he had written more than 1,000 of them. Published in the book Reagan In His Own Hand*, many of these commentaries show the depth of his common sense, as well as his ability to see the core principals in any issue.
Nowhere is that more accurate than in his views on the economy, government and taxes.
Here’s what he wrote about the effort to close so-called tax loopholes in 1975:
“The truth is most of what our politicians call loopholes are the legit[imate] deductions the working people depend on to keep their inc[ome] tax from being more intolerable than it is.”
Writing in 1976 about government spending, he made these points:
“In the last 20 y[ea]rs corp[orate] profits have risen 105% -- wages have gone up 213% -- gov[ernmen]t costs have risen 340%. There is one sensible, long overdue answer: fix in the constitution a limit on the share of earnings gov[ernmen]t can take without becoming a drag on the economy.”
In 1977, Reagan discussed the value of tax cuts as a way to boost the economy, as opposed to spending increases:
“We’ve tried spending our way to prosperity for more than 4 decades and it hasn’t worked. If it did, N.Y. City would the most prosperous spot on earth.”
Many of Reagan’s critics didn’t, and still don’t, understand his appeal. They dismiss him as amiable, a great communicator, an actor.
He was all those things, to be sure. But he was filled with common sense. And common-sense Americans knew it.
* Edited by Karon K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson of the Hoover Institution