Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

Interview with Romanian news publication | 45North | 10.26.2019

Interview with Clark S. Judge, speechwriter in the Reagan White House: seem to be facing an Alice in Wonderland-Queen of Hearts-like moment: verdict first, trial later Clark S. Judge is the founder and managing director of White House Writers Group, as well as an opinion journalist, who wrote for publications such as Wall Street Journal, Financial […]
Posted in Global Issues, Ronald Reagan and the Reagan Administration | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

The Toughest Job in Washington | Wall Street Journal | 4.14.2017

‘Personnel is policy” goes an enduring White House cliché, and of no staffer is that claim more true than the president’s chief of staff. As Chris Whipple argues in “The Gatekeepers,” a group portrait of White House chiefs from Richard Nixon’s tenure to Barack Obama’s , the chief of staff has been the key to […]
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments closed

The Rust Belt Is Right to Blame Obama | Wall Street Journal | 12.18.2016

Donald Trump hasn’t wasted time moving to revive America’s economic growth, with an emphasis on manufacturing. Critics may say the recent Carrier deal, which will save 800 American jobs, is small potatoes, but Mr. Trump’s pledge to reduce regulation is decidedly not. A new analysis confirms that the average industry’s regulatory risk has increased nearly […]
Posted in Economic Policy: General | Tagged | Comments closed

Reading Bill Buckley in the Age of Trump | Wall Street Journal |9.30.2016

In their lifetimes, Winston Churchill, Alistair Cooke and Richard Nixon each published collected profiles of prominent figures in their time. In “Great Contemporaries” (1937) Churchill’s subjects (Kaiser Wilhelm II, Leon Trotsky and Adolf Hitler, among them) were indeed great or at least prominent, and his assessments were considered. But the totality read as if he […]
Posted in Book Reviews | Also tagged | Comments closed

The Cowboy At Commerce| Wall Street Journal | 1.5.2016

Ronald Reagan was once asked if he considered any member of his cabinet a “true visionary.” Two, Reagan replied: United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige. In Reagan-era Washington, Baldrige was best known as the cowboy secretary. A card-carrying member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, he retained his professional status by […]
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments closed

He Rose to the Challenge, Review of “Reagan: A Life”| Wall Street Journal |5.8. 2015

On the day Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency, the United States faced challenges as daunting as any in its history. The country’s globally dominant economy was like an all-but-beaten prizefighter, a giant on wobbly legs, eyes glassed over, swaying toward collapse. The legs were unemployment and inflation. Economists from the super-confident neo-Keynesian consensus of the ’60s […]
Posted in Book Reviews, Ronald Reagan and the Reagan Administration | Tagged | Comments closed

Countering the Democratic Midterm Push | The Wall Street Journal | 09.07.14

With an unpopular president in office and many congressional seats up for grabs, the Democratic high command is fundraising with a vengeance, hoping to swamp the 2014 midterms with dollars and attack ads to retain control of the Senate. So what should Republicans do? Here are some suggestions. • Remember why the GOP lost Congress in […]
Posted in Political Commentary: General | Tagged | Comments closed

The Debt Battle Is Good for the GOP | Wall Street Journal | 07.18.11

Watching the debt-ceiling battle on Capitol Hill—and even more the battle between the tea party young guns and older House Republicans—feels like déjà vu, or, rather, 1995, all over again. Sixteen years ago, in the middle of the government shutdown, I found myself racing up Capitol Hill in a car filled with Republican congressmen. I […]
Posted in Economic Policy: US Debt Crisis | Tagged | Comments closed

10 Tips for the GOP in 2010 | Wall Street Journal | 01.10.10

It is an old rule of politics. When your opponent is in the process of destroying himself, don’t get in his way. Despite tanking poll numbers both for themselves and their president, congressional Democrats have persisted for months in a stunning act of political self-destruction. The evaporation of home-state support for Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson […]
Posted in Political Commentary: General | Tagged | Comments closed

Capitalism by Proxy Fight | Wall Street Journal | 11.22.09

It’s no secret that sometime in the fall of 2008, the waters of the Potomac River began to flow into the Hudson. With the vast underwriting of Wall Street financial firms by the government, a handful of corporate executives received a searing education on Washington rules under klieg lights. Now the world of politics is […]
Posted in Communication Strategy | Tagged | Comments closed

Where Does the GOP Go From Here? | Wall Street Journal | 09.04.08

When John McCain accepts the Republican nomination tonight, he will address a party that doubts itself. In the hall and around the nation Republicans are asking, why does every generic ballot show the GOP losing to the Democrats? Is it just the normal public fatigue after eight years in control of the White House and, […]
Posted in Political Commentary: Campaign 2008 | Tagged | Comments closed

Say What They Want to Hear — And, if Possible, Mean It | Wall Street Journal | 01.23.07

A few weeks after President Reagan delivered his 1988 State of the Union address, Dick Wirthlin, the president’s pollster, met with the White House speechwriting staff, of which I was a member. In the first and only presentation of its kind to Reagan’s writers, Dick shared the results of a new polling technique: pulse, or […]
Posted in Book Reviews, Communication Strategy | Tagged | Comments closed

Bearing the Burden of Writing the Speech | Wall Street Journal | 08.24.05

Three days before his inauguration, as Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey sat down to interview him, president-elect John F. Kennedy was scribbling on a yellow pad, crossing out words and scribbling more. The two men were on JFK’s campaign plane, flying from Palm Beach, Fla., to Washington. Kennedy was writing his inaugural address and eager […]
Posted in Book Reviews, Communication Strategy | Tagged | Comments closed

P.R. Lessons From the Pentagon | Wall Street Journal | 04.01.03

As bombs drop and bullets fly, the global media has turned a growing part of its coverage of the Iraqi war to the subject it knows best — itself. But as the war thickens, the embedded reporters will continue to be a brilliant strategy by the Pentagon — one that should echo in the rules […]
Posted in Communication Strategy | Tagged | Comments closed

Congress’s Stealth Tax | Wall Street Journal | 06.24.02

Congress is racing to enact an accounting reform bill. But have the members stopped to consider the fine print? If they did, they would find in the Senate version of the legislation a provision with the potential to cause more havoc in our markets than a dozen Enrons. The bill, written by Sen. Paul Sarbanes […]
Posted in Economic Policy: General | Tagged | Comments closed

‘Poor’ Assumptions in the Tax Debate | Wall Street Journal | 05.04.01

Now that House and Senate conferees have agreed on a $1.3 trillion tax cut, Democrats are lining up to attack this package as a giveaway to “the rich.” Many Republicans have taken this critique to heart by crafting tax cuts weighted toward “fairness” instead of economic stimulus. But all these criticisms are based on a […]
Posted in Economic Policy: General | Tagged | Comments closed

Thresholds of Pain | Wall Street Journal | 08.10.94

Like a canary in a mine, an obscure, high-technology entrepreneur named E.O. Schonstedt may have been a warning signal to the U.S. economy. In the 1970s, he learned that a friend of his, in complying with civil-rights reporting demanded of government contractors with 50 or more employees, had been required to submit eight pounds of […]
Posted in Economic Policy: General | Tagged | Comments closed

Reagan Gives Republicans A Reality Check | Wall Street Journal | 08.17.92

Tonight Ronald Reagan will speak before the Republican convention in Houston. You’d think the media would consider it a momentous event: a distinguished elder statesman addressing his party and the nation for the first time since leaving office. Don’t count on it. Mr. Reagan’s long frustrated adversaries in oh-so-clever Washington have devoted much of the […]
Posted in Political Commentary: General | Tagged | Comments closed

The Tax That Ate the Economy | Wall Street Journal | 06.24.91

Between May 1990 and this April, the U.S. suffered a net loss of 879,000 jobs. It wouldn’t have happened and there would be no recession today if the financing of small and young companies had not collapsed after 1986, when tax reform mandated raising the top rate on capital gains to 33% from 20%. Despite […]
Posted in Economic Policy: General | Tagged | Comments closed

Indexing Capital Gains — Fool’s Gold | Wall Street Journal | 06.27.90

As the current inning in the long-running game called the budget process reaches its climax, many in Washington are betting that the congressional Democrats are about to make a double play. Getting George Bush to move his lips on taxes was their first out. Stopping him from moving them on capital gains tax reduction could […]
Posted in Economic Policy: General | Tagged | Comments closed

Let Consumers Pull the Health-Care Purse Strings | Wall Street Journal | 09.26.89

Some issues get rolling and there’s no stopping them. A case in point is national health insurance, growing in popularity in policy circles even as the nation’s elderly cry for relief from the catastrophic burden of federal catastrophic care insurance. Now, in New York, the Cuomo team has barged into the act. David Axelrod, the […]
Posted in Economic Policy: Health Care | Tagged | Comments closed

Problem Isn’t Rate of U.S. Savings, but Where the Money Goes | Wall Street Journal | 03.23.89

A rose may be a rose, but, as anyone who buys a house or analyses a financial statement discovers, when it comes to money, a number is not necessarily a number. It can appear to tell one story but, once explored, really tell another. For example, look at a report issued earlier this month by […]
Posted in Economic Policy: General | Tagged | Comments closed