The establishment intelligentsia dismissed such rhetoric as corny and simplistic, as indeed it would have been had there been no substance behind it. As it was, the president's rhetorical skills helped restore the image of forceful, dynamic leadership to the office of the presidency, and this was crucial in galvanizing support for his policies. For that matter, compare it to that of West Germany, often held up as a model for the United States to emulate. As so many Europeans have come to realize, the economic statistics show that whatever Mr. Reagan did worked far better than their governments' policies. The least we should have learned in the last eight years is that cutting taxes and minimizing regulation spur economic growth and generate revenue.
Whopping deficits develop if spending rises faster than revenues.
But the federal deficit has grown not because taxes were cut but because spending, even spending on social programs, wasn't cut enough. The president's chief failure in domestic policy was his unwillingness to use his veto power to force Congress to revise its so-called budget process. By transferring responsibilities from Washington to the states and cities, Mr. Reagan showed that they can be laboratories where a wide variety of public-policy experiments can be carried out with flexibility and sensitivity to local conditions. The federal bureaucracy, by contrast, is remote, elephantine, arthritic. Some of the least-noted of Mr. Reagan's accomplishments were in foreign policy.