This is John Bachelor. This is a preview of a conversation I have at length with David Davenport

of the Hoover Institution, who with his late colleague Gordon Lloyd, have published equality of

opportunity, a century of debate, the idea that through the centuries, and especially since the

early part of the 20th century, there have been different approaches to equality of opportunity,

equal opportunity. And different presidents have interpreted it. This is Ronald Reagan's

interpretation, lifting all boats together. Here's David, very carefully, and this is just a piece

of the much longer conversation I recommend on tonight's show. 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 government,

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 to enjoy on their own rather than

have government attempt to create. And Reagan was very clear that he thought that Johnson's approach

of trying to have government plan how people would be brought out of poverty was just something

government wasn't very good at for one thing and wasn't the right thing to be doing in a free

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