Business and capital gains taxes are still too high. Initiatives to reform Medicare and Social Security have been inadequate. The Reagan Doctrine has yet to liberate even one nation from Communism. SDI suffers from inadequate funding. These must be top priorities for George Bush.
Presidents leave lasting legacies by establishing new frameworks for public policy debates.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies culminated with Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs 21 years after FDR's death. The new framework that Mr. Reagan created has spawned a generation of new institutions staffed by young people who have abandoned the delusions of their counterparts in the 1960s. This article is adapted from a column in The New York Times on Friday, January 22, 1988.