Even Richard Nixon Knew that Trickle Down Economics Was a Scam

Despite its flaws, I read and enjoyed Destiny and Power , Jon Meacham’s new biography of George H.W. Bush. Meacham, who is a brilliant presidential biographer, gives Bush a little too much credit for being a decent man when he should have probed harder into Bush’s inability to be a decent leader. Privately, Bush was smart and reasonable about a number of issues—he seemed to oppose Dick Cheney’s lust for war during George W. Bush’s presidency, for example, and he was a moderate on abortion—but publicly, he failed to lead. Another example of Bush’s failure to lead? His stance on trickle down economics. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Bush rightfully ridiculed Ronald Reagan’s plan to provide tax breaks for the wealthy as “voodoo economics.” This is a term that caused the Reagan administration a lot of trouble after they brought Bush onboard as vice president: But even though Bush, as was his style, became an avid public supporter of trickle down economics, he privately understood that it was a scam. This passage from Chapter 31 of Destiny and Power indicates that the most influential members of the Republican Party understood it, too. On a snowy Saturday in in January 1987, Richard Nixon had come by to see Bush at the vice presidential reside. Nixon loved to talk politics, and he had handicapped the ’88 race for Bush. The most prescient thing the former president had said in the three-and-a-half hour session, though, was about governing, not running. “George, you know you were right about ‘voodoo economics,’ don’t you?” Nixon had asked. “We’ve got to handle the deficit. You know there is going to have to be a tax increase.” Nixon’s prediction had proven accurate. The month Bush defeated Dukakis, the General Accounting Office projected that tax increases “are probably an unavoidable part of any realistic strategy for
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