By John Fund EXCERPT Martin Anderson, who died last weekend at the age of 78, served four presidents. But his greatest influence was on...Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan....With his analytical skills, Anderson eventually persuaded Nixon to dump the military draft in 1973 in favor of the all-volunteer army we have today. Ronald Reagan was so impressed with Anderson that he made him his first domestic-policy adviser, and much of Reagan’s governing agenda had roots in Anderson’s groundwork. Peter Roff of U.S. News & World Report noted this week that [Andersons] books proved that Reagan was “well-informed and even better read.” His ideas were “firmly grounded in conservative principles” and were often “quite nuanced.” The books that Anderson and his collaborators produced have had a profound impact on the conventional wisdom about Reagan’s presidency. Lou Cannon, the most respected of all Reagan biographers, has written that the Anderson effort “drives a stake into the heart of the notion that the president was any kind of a dunce.”
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 23:43:14 +0000