Biggest tax increase ever

Ronald Wilson Reagan

who used to
ride a watersmooth silver stallion, Jesus
he was a handsome man

died Saturday at the age of 93. This remembrance by Lou Cannon in The Washington Post is a good summary of the man's long, remarkable life.

Despite all the star-spangled hagiography over the weekend, some of the former president's lasting accomplishments were overlooked. I want here to highlight three of Ronald Reagan's presidential innovations:

1. The helicopter press conference.

President Reagan invited the press to wave goodbye and shout questions as he boarded the presidential helicopter. As the president smiled and waved, he had an uncanny knack for only "hearing" the questions he wanted to answer. In response to friendly questions, Reagan would smile, take a few steps closer to the assembled cameras, and shout a response that was sure to lead on the evening news and appear in all the papers. If the question was unfriendly, he would frown and squint, raising one hand to his ear, and then offer an apologetic shrug — sometimes mouthing "I can't hear you" before turning and boarding the helicopter.

This was brilliant. Every president since Reagan has borrowed this idea, but none has made it look as genuine. None of his successors has fully captured the look of genuine-seeming disappointment that crossed Reagan's face when he was "unable" to hear those questions about unemployment, the deficit, or the secret funding of terrorists on two continents.

2. The Look-Over-There War.

On October 23, 1983, 241 American Marines were killed in a bomb attack on their compound in Beirut, Lebanon. President Reagan hastily withdrew the rest of our troops from that war-torn country.

On October 25, 1983, American troops invaded the Caribbean nation of Grenada — a cluster of islands north of Trinidad and Tobago with a total area of about 133 square miles. Grenada's military, led by a Marxist with ties to Cuba, had just taken over its government. The American invasion was quickly able to reverse that coup and Grenada was again a constitutional monarchy faithful to her majesty Queen Elizabeth.

Since Grenada was a part of the British realm, you may wonder why the coup there was Reagan's problem, rather than Margaret Thatcher's. The answer is that the British prime minister was already enjoying a surge of popularity from her own splendid little island war, so she didn't really need to invade Grenada and thus generously allowed her American friend the opportunity to do so.

Reagan's invasion of Grenada was a military and political success. His current successor, unfortunately, seems not to have grasped one of the lessons of Grenada and the essential factors of a LOT war: it should be quick, easy and relatively painless. Grenada has a population of about 89,000 — roughly the same as that of Najaf, Iraq. The similarities between the two places end there.

3. The impression of tax cuts matters more than actual tax cuts.

President Reagan oversaw some very large cuts in the top income tax rates. He also approved the largest tax increase in American history — hiking wage taxes by about a third.

For 7 out of 10 American households, payroll taxes represent the largest tax burden. Reagan's legacy, in terms of taxes, was to greatly increase the burden for 70 percent of Americans, while reducing the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest third of the country. President Ronald Reagan raised taxes on most Americans. By a lot.

Somehow, this simple fact was scarcely mentioned in the weekend's orgy of remembrances. Most stories, in fact, spoke of Reagan as a great tax cutter. This is, in part, due to the fact that many of those stories were written by people who belong to that upper third of Americans — the elite few for whom Reagan actually did lower taxes. But mainly it is due to Reagan's unprecedented ability to give the impression he was lowering taxes without actually doing so. He proved that if you just say, over and over and over and over again, that you are a "tax-cutter" then people will believe you — even as they take home less and less of their paychecks due to the largest tax increase of all time.

The same trick seems to work with saying you believe in "smaller government."