Welcome, I'm Anastasia Glova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

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On behalf of the Cato Institute, I'd like to wish our listener is a fantastic July 4th holiday.

As you enjoy your fire, grilled burgers, festivities, and fireworks, I hope you also consider the meaning of the holiday.

On July 4, 1776, the founders of this country claimed their independence from Britain.

Two hundred and thirty years later, we ask Edward Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, whether it is

still true that, as Thomas Payne wrote, that government is best which governs least.

How did big government conservatism emerge as a political movement?

Well if I had to say when it started I would point to 1984

when Ronald Reagan had an opportunity to really move the small government, the Reagan

Goldwater agenda forward and instead ran for re-election as a very popular president on a

theme of Morning in America. Instead of laying out an

agenda for radically reducing the size of the federal government, he opted to

take an easy way out. He won 49 states if he had a good agenda for privatizing Social Security,

fundamental tax reform, and other opportunities to abolish the Department of Energy and the Education Department

and the Commerce Department.

Maybe he would have won 40 states, but he would have had a mandate.

And so that was a mistake.

And then a worse mistake was in 1988 when he allowed George Bush,

George H.W. Bush, to ascend to the Republican nomination.

I mean, Reagan was so popular by 88 that just a

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