This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Matto with David Davenport of the Hoover Institution

with his colleague, the late Professor Gordon Lloyd, have written Equality of Opportunity.

Ronald Reagan, 1968, 13% of the nation is Judge Poor, Poverty, 1980, the election of

80, 13% of the nation is Judge Poor, Poverty. No movement whatsoever. And Reagan quipped

Poverty 1 in the war on poverty. So we declared a war on poverty in Poverty 1 in Poverty

1. God, it was quick. However, he did have a vision of what he wanted to achieve, and

it was not the spending, but the opportunity. He was keen on that. And he was so keen

that he came up with, quote, an American opportunity society in which all of us will go

forward together, arm and arm. Was that convincing to the Congress? Did that work, David?

First of all, Reagan was the first one president that really pushed back toward the founders

view of equality, which is it's the role of government to get out of the way and let

individuals have their own equality. But his approach to that was to try to beat back

government regulation, reduce taxes, put more money in individuals' pockets so that

they could make more choices. And so it was a large economic package of things that Reagan

wanted to implement that he thought would raise all ships, including those who were

unemployed, those who were poor. So rather than targeting groups, as Johnson had done,

he said, let's try to raise all ships and create more opportunity for everyone, including

the poor. And frankly, the Congress was not as helpful because he ended up with some

larger spending problems because they wouldn't make the cuts that he wanted to bake. And

so he was not able to accomplish everything he wanted to. But I think he did rhetorically,

if not actually, really change the equality conversation back to the sort of thing that

the founders were interested in, which is equality is something that people ought to be able

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